Nike Free Commercial

During my College CC days the team had a thing about running naked. I’m not sure how it originated or where it started, but its part of the tradition at the school, but from what I understand it’s died down over the years. However, there were a number of naked running events, and our school was even famous for a Naked Soccer Match during finals week at the end of the spring semester, that was played at 2am, aka bar closing time on the library lawn.

Every summer, before school started, the CC team would have a camp and we would stay in Estes Park and do all of our runs in RMNP and do all the other things that 18-22 year old college kids did, which mainly meant drinking beer.

One day we did a run up to Fern Lake, which was about 4 miles from a parking lot in RMNP. The tradition was that the team would run naked back to the junction with the other trail, which was about two miles from Fern Lake. Well this was in the summer, tourist season and there were a decent amount of people out on the trail.

I would say that 90%+ of the team participated. Thus, these poor tourist were subject to seeing about 20-25 college kids running down the trail head naked, well some of the guys kept their shirts on, if they were wearing a shirt to begin with and a few others put their shorts on top of their head. Most of the tourist thought it was pretty funny and would start clapping and since we were all running downhill we were moving at a pretty good clip.

I was never a fan of the tradition and did not participate, mainly because there were a lot of kids on the trail and I didn’t think it was the appropriate thing to do in a family environment like RMNP. But, I digress.

Anyway, hilarity ensued. This tradition had probably been going on for 10+ years, running down Fern Lake naked. However, when we got back to campus a few weeks later someone contacted the College, upset at the CC Teams antics in RMNP. It was obvious to tell what college we represented since so many of the guys had on College CC Gear. Well anyway, the Athletic Director was upset and the Coach yelled at us and pulled us from our next meet which was a fairly big meet at the U of Minnesota.

But that commercial brought back some memories of the college days, funny stuff.