Behind the chutes: It’s tailgate time

CHEYENNE – Eight days.

Just eight more days, folks.

It’s tailgate time! Oh yeah, and there’s a pretty important
football game at 5:30 that night, too. Wyoming -- currently a 17-point underdog,
according to Vegas -- will host Missouri of the mighty SEC. We will keep an eye
on that betting line, and there will be plenty in the coming week about the
visiting Tigers.

But first, we tailgate.

Thanks to our friends at Cowboys in Colorado, we will be slinging some grub and booze in the Ford Parking lot right outside of the Indoor Practice Facility beginning around 11 a.m. Rock Ranch Grill and Café 307 of Pine Bluffs have kindly donated some burgers and margaritas. I hear there will be some pulled pork on those burgers, too. I believe it’s called a “Little Piggy” on the menu.

If you haven’t been Pine Bluffs yet, I strongly suggest it.

We will also be handing out shirts, courtesy of Hometown Printed Apparel in Douglas. Those will be distributed in the Summit View parking lot across 22^nd Street from the main lot. We have brown and Gold ones with our logo on the front. Big props to Hayden Barker and his tremendous team in the Jackalope City.

This all a way of saying thank you to our readers. Our
numbers are telling us that there are a bunch of you. In just 20 days this
month, we eclipsed 100,000 views on our website. I am baffled by that number
every time I see it.

We appreciate you all.

Story time
I hear a lot of funny anecdotes and tales when I am interviewing random people. Sometimes they just don’t fit into the story I am writing, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be shared.

Take Dan Christopulos for instance.

The Cowboys former place kicker, who grew up in Cheyenne, proved
to me in a hilarious way how seriously his family took Wyoming football. He
said before the 1968 Sugar Bowl between the Cowboys and LSU Tigers, his father
went to a local store and “bought” a new television, only to turn around the
next day and take it back.

I guess he just didn’t need the TV that badly after all.

Ryan Christopherson, Wyoming’s all-time leading rusher before a guy named Brian Hill arrived on campus, told me he nearly quit the team after his first season. He saw a whole slew of running backs ahead of him on the depth chart, including Terry Hendricks.

He just didn’t see a way to crack the lineup. He went back home to Arizona and thought about packing it in. Instead, he listened to motivational tapes. He recalls one by former Notre Dame head coach Lou Holtz. It struck a chord with him.

Years later, Ryno ran into Holtz. He said he made a fool of
himself explaining what the coach did for him.

When Austyn Carta-Samuels decided to leave the UW football program in 2010, he went the junior college route. He didn’t have much of a choice. He said then head coach Dave Christensen “blocked” him from playing football at another Division-I school.

An interesting tidbit was that Carta-Samuels ended up reaching out and befriending the quarterback that followed him in Laramie, Brett Smith. They became fast friends and talked often.

Carta-Samuels laughed and said Smith’s stellar performance
during his freshman season took a lot of heat of him for leaving.

Need tickets?
We are currently running a promotion on the 7220sports Facebook page, giving away two tickets and a parking pass in the Ford Lot for the Mizzou game.

They are great seats and the parking spot will allow you to
have another beer just minutes before kickoff. In all seriousness, we were just
looking for another way to hook up our readers. You also help us by spreading
the word about our site.

I call that a win-win.

We will be launching a video podcast – The Roaring Repeater -- next Tuesday. We will announce the winner of the tickets and parking pass there. That will be on the site, YouTube and social media.

Metrics
Apparently, former UW quarterback Carta-Samuels is still very much a household name in Wyoming.

That was our most read story last week with 5,800 views.

Our most read story of the last two weeks was a feature about Sheridan’s Dontae Crow and the tragic loss of his mother. That one hauled in 7,000 views.

Others in past two weeks:
Wyoming releases depth chart – 1,900
He’s still my dad (Trey Smith) – 1,700
Who wore it best (No. 43 Cory Talich) – 1,550
Making an entrance – 1,530

Top 5 states this week:
Wyoming
Colorado
Missouri (making its first appearance. Gee, I wonder why?)
Texas
California

Top 5 countries this week not named America:
Canada
Germany
India
Japan
Belgium

Social media:
Facebook – 2,584 followers
Twitter – 1,233 followers

We want to promote your business
We have been busy behind the scenes – that’s a titanic understatement – coming up with a new marketing plan to draw in more businesses to advertise with us.

Our do-it-all marketing dude, Martin Gubbels, has been burning the midnight oil to come up with a plan that fits the big boys and the mom-and-pop shops. We love them all. We need them all, too.

If your business is interested, or you know one that might
be, please send them our way. We have a package that fits everyone’s needs – I promise.
We are already racking up big numbers. With football season on the horizon, we
expect an even larger spike in the audience that visits our site daily.

Please feel free to reach out at Martin@7220sports.com.

Have you downloaded our app?
Our state-of-the-art app is just a few clicks away. And by state of the art, I mean you just need to google 7220sports.com and then hit a button, adding us to your home screen. It’s not really an app, but it does basically the same thing. And it gets you one button away from all the UW action.

Check out this video made by our media guy, Kasey Orr: