Jamie Guy's project of preservation: digitizing the history of CU football

Beginning in 2019, Colorado Director of Sports Video Jamie Guy began the time-consuming project of digitizing Colorado's archival football footage, some of which dates back to the mid-1930s.

Guy has unearthed countless games and clips spanning decades and has committed himself to getting everything digitized from old film and VHS.

Soon, his efforts will be viewable to the public on the Colorado Football YouTube page.

Guy, who entered his 20th year with Colorado athletics this summer, is unsure just how much is out there in terms of content for him to digitize, but generally speaking, it is a considerable amount, even with the progress he's made to date.

And it's not all football clips — eventually, Guy plans to get cracking on digitizing a variety of old men's and women's basketball, volleyball and soccer content.

A significant amount of his energy so far has been digitizing the vast collection of VHS tapes from a few decade ago, while looking back even further, the old film CU has held on to over the years adds another layer to his project.

“I want to guess that I’ve probably digitized 1,500 different pieces of content so far," Guy said. "I would say I probably have another 200-400 tapes to convert and then as far as cans of film, I know there’s storage bins — I remember seeing them when we moved to the (UC Health) Champions Center from Dal Ward (Athletic Center) — that was the last time I saw them, but there were probably three to four really big crates full of stuff."

"It’s hard to give a number on those things, but based on the size and weight, there’s probably 400-500 cans of film in each of those boxes, maybe more. It’s so hard to tell.”

The above video is a prime example of some of the old VHS tapes in Guy's possession that he's been working to digitize.

That particular clip is a snippet from 'The Bill McCartney Show,' recorded early into the 1989 season.

McCartney, the winningest football coach in CU history, who led the Buffs from 1982-1994, sits down with former CU All-American Dave Logan to recap his team's first two wins of the year over Texas and Colorado State.

Logan and McCartney discuss the No. 14-ranked Buffaloes' 27-6 season-opening win over the Longhorns at Folsom Field.

Sophomore quarterback Darian Hagan, making his first start for the Buffaloes, is shown handing the ball off to junior running back Eric Bieniemy for a short score.

Later in the clip, junior linebacker Alfred Williams picks up a sack. Hagan then goes on to connect with senior tight end John Perak for a first down over the middle before finding junior fullback George Hemingway in the endzone for a touchdown.

For Guy, his project of preservation is two-fold, with the overarching objective being to ensure that the history shown in all the archival footage is easily accessible to CU's former players, their families and admirers of the program alike.

"I felt that one, it was important to preserve, because it was on formats that might not age well — a lot of it was on VHS and S-VHS and old tape and things like that," he said.

"...But I also thought it was important to, once I digitize it, put it on a platform where the former players, staff and their families and loved ones can then also access that content online and be able to show those memories. I thought it was really important to do that."

Guy said that he can digitize three or four VHS tapes of old football games per day.

Keep in mind, the games themselves run on average about three hours. Then, there's the postgame coach shows (such as 'The Bill McCartney Show' clip above, which adds another half an hour to the tape's length) and sometimes, random TV programs preceding the games themselves will appear on the VHS tapes.

All in all, it's a complicated process.

Once Guy has things digitized, he'll begin the process of editing, after which point it's onto the next piece of content to repeat the process.

"I'll import it into editing software, trim up some of the other bits out of it so it’s a cleaner copy, I export it again after I trim it up and then it’s usually ready for distribution," he said.

"In some cases I need to fix the audio and things like that, but I haven’t done a whole lot of that yet because there’s so much volume. I want to get everything imported first.”

Some of the earliest pieces of Colorado football film Guy has come across are from the 1930s.

With VHS debuting having debuted in 1976, there are multiple decades of CU football games and highlights that were shot on film, making the digitization process significantly more complicated for Guy.

Luckily, John Templeton, who worked at CU from 1973-2017 as a technical director and audio engineer, managed to get a significant head start in that regard during his long career in Boulder, converting old film to VHS, the format from which Guy now works to move to digital.

“From the mid-70s — and we probably have about 10 of them — they’re melt reels of games," Guy said. "The cinematography and the look of it in all these games is just outstanding...it's just awesome to look at that stuff."

Byron "Whizzer" White is an unquestioned Mt. Rushmore figure in Colorado athletics history.

One of four football players to have his number retired by the Buffs, White was Colorado's first All-American in 1937, having led the Buffs to an 8-0 record within the Rocky Mountain Conference.

White rushed for 1,121 yards that year, as the Buffs appeared in the Cotton Bowl.

In an NFL career that lasted from 1938-1941 with the Pittsburgh Pirates (Pittsburgh changed its name to the Steelers in 1940) and Detroit Lions, White was twice named first-team All-Pro.

During World War II, he was awarded two Bronze Stars for his service in the Navy.

Following his military service, he attended Yale Law School and graduated in 1946. From there, he went on to practice law privately in Colorado through the early 1960s.

Then, in 1962, President John F. Kennedy appointed White to the Supreme Court, where he served as an associate justice until his retirement in 1993.

As he's continued to digitize content, something that stuck out to Guy was film of White from 1937, showing him looking dapper on CU's campus as well as chatting on the gridiron with Bunny Oakes, Colorado's coach from 1935-1939.

“I actually got this from Getty Images," Guy said. "It was from the All-American team foundation or whatever — whoever ran the All-American team back then — and there’s videos of Byron White at practice, on the field and there’s videos of him shaking hands with (former CU president) George Norlin at Macky Auditorium."

"You can tell it’s like a feature (story) about how well-rounded he is because it shows him doing the dishes at one part, playing football the next part, so that was pretty interesting."

It should go without saying that Folsom Field has changed significantly over the years.

Most recently, the completion of the UC Health Champions Center less than a decade ago reinvigorated the student-athlete experience at Colorado and visually altered Folsom Field itself.

The opening of the Dal Ward Athletic Center in December of 1990 had a similar impact.

One aspect of Guy's digitization project is that it has illustrated the evolution of Folsom Field from the 1930s onward, revealing some interesting images and scenes from days long gone.

“The earliest thing that I have, and the only way I can verify it is the label on the tape, but it says, ‘Clips from the early ‘30s,’" Guy said. "The first game we have is from 1935 vs. Missouri."

The capacity at Folsom Field at that time, 1935, would have been about 26,000, compared to the 50,183 seats in the house now.

In the above clip, showing a CU loss to Missouri at Folsom Field late in the 1955 season, the simplicity of Folsom Field compared to today is easily noticeable.

The total lack of security at the game — fitting for the time period (not even a fence separates the fans in the bleachers from the field itself) — sticks out, as do the absolutely alien offensive formations utilized by the Buffaloes.

"They’ll show different snippets of the stadium and things like that," Guy said. "It’s really cool to see all that. You can see all the cars that are parked alongside the field — there’s all kinds of random stuff like that that’s really cool to see."

"They are really cool clips, especially starting around ‘49, they show the handshake at the middle of the field and the coin toss. Then, after the game, they show the coaches’ handshake. Sometimes, our fans would rush the field back then, even."

Guy has seen firsthand the demand that exists among former players, many of whom are eager to get their hands on any pieces of content or film from their own days in Boulder.

"Every time I see Matt McChesney or anybody that’s around, they’re always asking, ‘Hey, can I get some old game film?’ That was a motivation, too," Guy said. "I know (former players) are interested and want to share it. Doing those things for people like that is amazing, in my opinion.”

As Guy alluded to above, it's hard to be precise in calculating just how much content remains for him to digitize.

But for now, he feels he has made sufficient enough progress to begin releasing specific projects on the football standouts to have come through Colorado.

"Now that we’ve got a lot of this stuff digitized, I want to start going through and taking clips from a lot of our prominent players and very good players over the years," he said. "So, maybe we’ll put a package together on Kanavis McGhee or Chad Brown or Greg Biekert — a lot of those guys that played here."

In the near future, you'll be able to see more examples of Guy's digitization work, which will be posted to the Colorado Football YouTube page.

It's been a long road, with more work remaining to be done still on the horizon, but Guy has made sufficient enough progress to warrant sharing it with the many fans and former players themselves.

"Finally, I’ve gotten to a point where we’ve got so much content that we can start getting it out there soon, so all those people can enjoy it and have those memories," he said.