Not being ready for prime time is usually just an expression, but in the case of the Rocky Mountain Showdown, it is literally true.

Who ever heard of a college football game kicking off at 10 a.m.? How do you tailgate for a 10 a.m. kickoff?

I can see the e-mail already: D'oh! You start slammin' Bloodies at 6!

But let's say you don't belong to a fraternity.

The annual match between Colorado and Colorado State starts at 10 a.m. next Saturday so that Fox Sports Net can move on to UCLA-Stanford, North Texas-Oklahoma and Idaho-Southern Cal to complete a college football quadruple-header. You get the feeling CU and CSU would fly to New Zealand and kick off at 2 a.m. to make the national lineup.

Which should come as no surprise. Take the vibrant local attachments out of it and you are talking about a team that was 2-10 last season playing a team that was 4-8. This has kept everyone remarkably humble in the lead-up to the game.

For example, when Friday's kickoff luncheon crowd in the former Mile High Stadium parking lot greeted CU coach Dan Hawkins with applause, Hawkins responded gratefully.

"Wow, all that for winning two games!" he said. "I wish my wife had been here. She'd feel a lot better about things now."

In fact, he had a self-deprecating little routine prepared, as if David Letterman had loaned him a writer for a minute or two.

"I was a little disappointed to find out that our team in 1892 scored more points in one game than we did all year last year," he said.

"So one of the reasons we're scrimmaging a little bit more is we're trying to get them to understand where the goal line is. They're thinking rugby or something. They figure if they kick the ball, that's good. That's part of it, but not all of it."

CSU coach Sonny Lubick has rather a different oratorical style, having long since mastered the Lawrence Ferlinghetti stream of consciousness in which the only concept out of place is punctuation.

I don't want to suggest Lubick is behind the times, but he still seems to be fighting the cold war. He reported that former CU coach Gary Barnett, now a broadcaster, was spied at one of his wide-open Fort Collins practices.

"We don't have all these fancy hideouts," Lubick said, putting the best face possible on CSU's limited athletic facilities.

Nevertheless, the Barnett sighting didn't faze him: "I said, 'Hell, he can't figure it out any more than we can.' "

And then, in that lazy Montana drawl: "I know that coach Hawkins would never stoop to anything so low as to watch our practices."

Both of these programs have seen better days. Both surely will see better days again. For now, they're glad someone still is paying attention.

"It is a great rivalry," Hawkins said, using a word many CU fans resist when it comes to this series. "We're honored to be a part of it."

Remarkably, CU doesn't even seem to mind having the game in Denver again this year.

"It's awesome that we're able to come down here to the capital city and bring college football down here and play at Invesco," Hawkins said. "It's great for his kids and for our kids. I know we brought our guys down here the other day and it took me a while to get all the true freshmen to kind of quit looking around at the stands and oohing and aahing."

Speaking of freshmen, true and otherwise, the subject of Hawkins naming his son, Cody, to start at quarterback did come up.

"This may affect my life at home," he said. "If that guy can't move the football and score points and beat Colorado State, then I'll be sleeping on the couch because there'll be another guy in there. That's how it works in our profession."

And here I thought coaches slept on couches because of the hours.

An in-state rivalry has its own local drama, whatever the status of either program, as CBS 4 anchor Jim Benemann, a CSU alum, and KHOW talk show host Dan Caplis, of CU, demonstrated at the luncheon.

Caplis seemed to have uncovered yet another salacious scandal, something about Rams, love and a Web site. I couldn't quite make it out, but I understand those responsible will be called to account over the airwaves forthwith. Benemann might have mentioned Montana State.

When Caplis noted that CU has a co-national championship in its trophy case, Benemann complimented him on his memory.

Let's hope Hawkins still likes the capital kickoff two years from now, when CU will have the option to deflect the series back on campus, raising the age-old question: Can either school afford a Rams home game?

Better to make what hay they can from a rivalry that couldn't beat North Texas-Oklahoma for a time slot. For Denver, CU-CSU is a bigger event than it actually is. For the college kids who play the game, the home of the Broncos always is a grand stage.

With any luck, one of these schools will get off to a 1-0 start, which might very well not happen if they weren't playing each other.

Not only that, you'll have plenty of time to mow the lawn afterward.

kriegerd@RockyMountainNews.com

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