Kristy Mccartney

Time marches on, someone once said. And so it seems like no time at all has passed since January 1990, when I was sitting in a hotel room overlooking the intercoastal waterway in Miami writing a story about the University of Colorado football team.

The occasion was the 1990 Orange Bowl, Notre Dame vs. the Buffaloes. And if you were writing about the Buffs then, you were writing about Sal Aunese.
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Aunese was Colorado’s quarterback in 1988 and his story was Shakesperean in its complexity: First he sturck up a romance with Kristy McCartney, the daughter of his head coach, Bill McCartney. Then Kristy got pregnant by him. Then, after McCartney somehow was able to separate Aunese the football player from Aunese the father of his grandson, Aunese was stricken with stomach cancer.

He was dead before the leaves turned in ’89. And Colorado’s season became a vast tribute to him as a result.

Now it’s almost 20 years later, and the story goes on. This chapter belongs to the child of Aunese and McCartney — T.C. McCartney — who’s now a backup quarterback for Les Miles at LSU.