BOULDER — If Fisher DeBerry had his druthers, Mel Tucker would’ve followed in Troy Calhoun’s footsteps.
Another quirky narrative surrounding Saturday’s CU-Air Force game — the first between the two neighboring FBS programs since 1974, and the first for the Buffs and Falcons in Boulder since 1973 — is that DeBerry, at one time or another, recruited both Tucker, the Buffs’ first-year coach, and Calhoun, in his 13th season with the Falcons, to play quarterback for him at the Academy.
Only Calhoun bit.
“Mel was a good potential quarterback,” DeBerry said of Tucker, who, three decades earlier, caught the then-Falcons coach’s eye as a standout wishbone signal-caller at Cleveland (Ohio) Heights High School.