The Honorable Bruce McFarling, a judge in the 362nd District Court of Texas, has spent more than 25 years on the bench reviewing evidence.
So, as he sat in a bar in Boulder's Omni Interlocken Hotel before Texas Tech played Colorado recently, he was skeptical of what he was seeing. McFarling, a Red Raider, was a big Mike Leach fan. He knew the legendary tale of the Pirate "losing" a fake play script in his only appearance on the Oklahoma side of the Texas-OU rivalry and fooling the Longhorns.
Twenty or so of McFarling's old 1980s fraternity brothers had made a trip to Boulder for an annual get together for a Red Raiders road game. When they gathered in the hotel bar, one said, "Look what I just found," and produced a playbook of sorts for the Colorado football team tailored for the game against Texas Tech.
"It was just a stapled packet of 8½ x 11 sheets of paper," McFarling said. "On the front, it says University of Colorado. Imagine that. He had found it right there in the lobby. It was just lying on a table out there. So we were passing it around trying to figure out, all right, is this legit? Is this real?"
McFarling reconsidered the scene. When he walked in, there was a banner that said, "Welcome to Buffalo Country." It turned out the Colorado team was staying at the hotel Friday night.
"It didn't have a name on it, and that was another thing that gave me a little pause," McFarling said. "I would've thought that when they handed them out, they would have individualized them so they could collect them and make sure they got everybody's copy. I don't think it was any type of intention because the guy who found it said it was just lying on the table out there in the lobby, and he just walked by and went, 'Look at that.'"
The group of friends all graduated between 1985 and 1990 -- "We're all old," McFarling jokes -- and over dinner with the playbook in hand, their college personalities started to come back into play, McFarling said. The classic mixing-it-up guy hatched a plan.
"One of the guys says, 'I've got to try to get this to our guys,'" McFarling said. "And I'm like, 'Dude, you don't.' Of course, one of my fears was we got it to them, they used it and got killed by a Mike Leach prank or something."
But off to the message boards he went anyway.
"OK I'm not posting pics of it but a bunch of us are in the Colorado team hotel at the bar and we found a 25 page or so playbook that I would bet large amounts of money on is the actual CU playbook. It's got opening plays, red zone info, our tendencies, etc., etc. Seriously, how can we get this to the Texas Tech team? Does anybody know what hotel they're staying at?"
The post, on the "Inside the Double T" message board, was made by a man we know only as "VivaTerlingua," a nod to the classic 1973 Jerry Jeff Walker album of the same name recorded in Luckenbach, Texas. It was a fitting pseudonym for a bit of an outlaw. Then, a screenshot hit social media on the Message Board Geniuses account, and everyone started talking about the leaked Colorado playbook.
A new group chat legend was born for a group of dads reliving their college years. Reporters were sniffing around. The hunt for VivaTerlingua was on.
"His thing was, 'I'm not talking to anybody,'" McFarling said. "And the next thing I know, he's out there and people are quoting him [by his anonymous handle]. That's exactly the way he always was in college."
McFarling pleaded the Fifth on any more information on who VivaTerlingua might be.
"We'll keep his identity a secret, because he's stirring the pot," he said.
McFarling said to his knowledge, no coaches were actually contacted, not even by that rascal VivaTerlingua, and he was convinced the info wasn't that useful anyway.
"It's got what their plans are, as far as, 'These are some of the things we're going to run,'" McFarling said. "I didn't know if it was an actual script, like the first 10 plays or something. I was skeptical of that. But my thought was, anybody who's scouted and has been watching film for hours has the same stuff."
Then the game started, and that play script was right on.
Update: It was real. 1st six plays of the first half and 1st two of the second half (then picked off) https://t.co/BkNt6Ov475
— Jody S. Laughter∴ (@Lubbockist) October 4, 2026
This was no Leach-style ruse. Colorado drove 75 yards for a touchdown on its opening possession and ran the plays matching those shown in photos of the discovered booklet exactly.
"If anybody had gotten ahold of it, it didn't really do much good," McFarling said. That drive produced Colorado's only score in the Red Raiders' 29-7 win. McGuire said the Red Raiders were unaware of the playbook, and On3 reported that McGuire joked that defensive coordinator Shiel Wood could've pitched a shutout if he had it.
At his Monday news conference after the loss, Buffaloes coach Deion Sanders was dismissive about the playbook falling into the hands of the group of Red Raider fans.
"If someone had left that, they left it, mistake, what are we going to do about it?" Sanders said. "It's over."
McFarling said one of the group members still has the evidence. The group chat lights up every time another story about it comes out, like when Sanders brushed it all off.
The group already is making plans for next year's game. They usually look for interesting spots or good college towns. Maybe Lawrence, Kansas. Maybe Laramie, Wyoming. But no matter the destination, it'll be tough to top this year's excitement.
"It made it a great story all weekend," McFarling said.
