BOULDER, Colo. — Longtime University of Colorado associate athletic director and sports information director, David Plati, will be taking semi-retirement this January 1, athletic director Rick George announced Friday.
Plati will reach 40 years of full-time service for the university on January 9, 2023; he will then step back a bit, serve as SID-Emeritus and Program Historian, the latter which he has essentially done since 2001, when Fred Casotti, CU's longtime SID and associate AD passed away.
Curtis Snyder, who worked in the SID office as a student in the mid-1990s, served as an assistant in the office and most recently as an assistant AD, has been named interim SID by George.
"David has been an icon at CU and in this industry for over 40 years," said CU athletic director Rick George. "He is nationally recognized, was inducted into the CoSIDA Hall of Fame and given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the football writers. He has had a distinguished career and we look forward to reading his future columns and book in Plati-'Tudes."
Plati first walked through the door into CU's sports information office as a freshman on August 30, 1978, "I want to say six days before my first class," he recalled. Then SID, the late Mike Moran, gave him the team's football roster to retype – no computer in those days.
He worked as a student assistant, mainly on the football and basketball stat crews and updating stats briefly under Moran, who left in December that year for the U.S. Olympic Committee. He was then under interim SID Mike Bialas for four months until Tim Simmons was named to head the department in April 1979. When Simmons left for Coors in 1981, graduate assistant John Clagett took over the office, and he literally was the assistant SID as a junior. After he graduated from CU in December 1982, he was named assistant SID, and when Clagett departed in May 1984 for the auto racing world, Plati became the very last hire by CU's late athletic director, Eddie Crowder. He was named SID on July 24, 1984.
His only time away from CU was four months during the summer of his senior year, when he served as the publicity director for the Denver Bears (he's still proud that he was the PR man for what is still the largest crowd in minor league baseball history – 65,666 at the Bears' annual Fireworks Night). Along the way, he was a member of the Denver Broncos statistics crew for 40 years, served as an official scorer for the Colorado Rockies for 17 seasons, has worked race week for the BolderBoulder for 35 years, and was a talent statistician for numerous NFL and NBA games among a long list of side jobs that also helped make CU visible to the media with whom he interacted.
Plati will actually work his 500th Colorado football game tonight against TCU. Only the late Frank Potts was a longer full-time athletic department employee, as he coached the cross country and track teams for 41 years (1927-68).
"I've had several mentors in my career, but the special shout outs really go to Tim Simmons, Jim Saccomano of the Denver Broncos, the Count (Fred Casotti) and Irv Brown," Plati said. "And if it wasn't for corresponding with Mike (Moran) as a senior in high school back in New York – he offered me a student position through the mail – who knows what path I might have taken. I came to college wanting to be an accountant because of my love for numbers; after miserably earning an "F" in beginning computer (which will come as a surprise to no one), I switched from Accounting to Journalism.
"Tim loaded me up with unbelievable responsibility as a student assistant and convinced the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference to hire me to do its PR on the side; Sacco agreed to add me to the Broncos stat crew in 1980 and gave me the freedom to create whatever stat I could think of, not to mention the chance to observe who many consider the best PR director in NFL history; Fred showed me that you could utilize humor in your notes; and Irv told me to do whatever I could in college to build a resume, whether it paid or not.
"And I have to credit my two favorite professors in the Journalism School – Mal Deans and Sam Kuczun – my writing wasn't the best until I took their classes," he added. "And my peers in the profession – we all learn a lot from each other, sharing (and stealing) ideas. Some of my best friendships in the business through the years were with SID's from schools who are our biggest rivals – CSU, Nebraska, USC among them."
"The time is about right, yet I can remain involved with the program I've spent my entire adult life with," he said. "I need to address some health concerns, would like to travel more, and spend more time with my five nieces and nephews. I'll still do some SID duties for the foreseeable future, continue to coordinate some special projects and be available to Rick, Curtis and really anyone he could use the 'department dinosaur' in any way I can help."
"I've been fortunate to work at the alma mater I've loved since I first saw the campus as a 12-year old," he added. "And the start of every football season, I still get goose pimples watching Ralphie's first run of the year. That's always reassured me that I made the right career decision."
He earned the CU Boulder campus' Robert Stearns Award in 2015 for extraordinary service to the university. Plati was inducted into the CoSIDA Hall of Fame in 2019, the same year he was honored with the Football Writers Association of America's Lifetime Achievement Award. The FWAA has honored CU's SID operation under his guidance nine times with the "Super 11" Award.
"Those awards are obviously nice, but wouldn't be possible with the terrific assistants I've had through the years, full-time and students alike," he said. "It's been a total team effort and I have the faith and trust in Curtis to continue what has been built here dating back to when Fred Casotti was named SID some 70 years ago."
Initial plans will call for Plati to continue to assist with CU's Athletic Hall of Fame and Athletic Hall of Honor, coordinate football game day operations in the press box, statistics and postgame notes (his two specialties), serve on the district selection committee for the NFF/College Football Hall of Fame, write more for CUBuffs.com and in particular his column, "Plati-'Tudes," and keep his role as the SID for CU's men's golf team, something he's done since Simmons gave him the team's "beat" in 1979.
Plati will also continue to work game weeks for the Rose Bowl and the College Football Playoff, serve on the Colorado Golf and Colorado Music Hall of Fame committees and plans to write a book he cleverly has the working title of "Plati-'Tudes: The Book." Already the author of two CU football books, this one will be a "notes party" that will include seldom heard stories or those CU fans have forgotten through the years, mixed in with anecdotes and some fun facts. It will include some leftover tidbit from Casotti, who didn't get the chance to write his fourth book but left him with a lot of material he plans to use to that history isn't lost.
During his 40 years as SID, nearly 100 of CU's student assistants have gone on to work in the business on either the college or professional levels. "That's probably the one thing I most proud of, seeing the CU SID tree grow and grow."
As "historian" becomes part of his official title, Plati recalled what Casotti once said of such a position: "Historian is a job that demands great age. But I'm looking forward to it."
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