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Tom Costello

President Saliman.

Chancellor DiStefano.

To the Senior Class Council, Board of Regents, professors, staff, alumni and parents:

Thank you for your warm introduction and for inviting me to return home to CU for the tremendous privilege and honor of speaking to you today!

Wow!

Hello CU, hello class of '22!

Yes...I know I committed a cardinal Buff sin a few months ago on-line.

It's sko Buffs��now, not go Buffs!

Thank you for all the good-hearted tweets and emails urging me to get with the times!

Look at where you are!

Stand up��- Turn around - Look at this place and this time!

Wave to your parents who got you here … and who are so, so proud and happy….that they’ve written the last tuition check!

Keep smiling and waving, since you’ll need them to keep paying your cell phone bill for a while.

But for just a moment, right now put the phone down�����Ի� look��at that blue sky, those Flatirons, this stadium that holds 100 years of history.

After four years of hard work��- Maybe Five or Six years – who’s counting?

You made it!

Breathe this in and remember this.

The most beautiful campus in America!

It’s why I brought my wife, Astrid, with me.��

Originally from Belgium, she went to college there.

And my daughters are also here - Charlotte and Chloe.��

I tried!��I tried to convince them to go to CU, but they went to college out east.

But Chancellor DiStefano, can we make them honorary Buffs today?

(Without me writing a check?)

It is a great privilege to be asked to share this moment of your��success with all of you, your friends, your families, your classmates, your roommates.

You will remember and cherish this day for the rest of your life.

We have all been through a historically challenging two years.��

But for you, this campus and this city …. Navigating through a pandemic, studying remotely, coming together after a mass shooting, caring for each other during horrific fires that destroyed 1,000 homes!

Very few communities or campuses have gone through so much in such a short period of time.

You exemplify tenacity, kindness, selflessness, and community!

Colorado has noticed and I’ll tell you - as I now live in Washington, DC, the country has noticed!

So, on behalf of the entire alumni network – we salute you – students,�� faculty, and staff – for all you have accomplished, your perseverance, and the examples you have set. You’ve made us all proud!

And if you don’t mind, Covid also kept my daughter, Chloe, from having an in-person college graduation after 4-years of hard work.

So, since she’s now an honorary Buff …. Chloe …. Welcome to your graduation!!!!

(just gotta teach her the fight song!)

Now, I know what you’re thinking … you just sat through four years of lectures ….and now you gotta sit through one more lecture before you can grab your diploma.

But here’s the deal:

These folks up here promised me I’d get more than the 2-minutes I typically get for a report on the Today Show or NBC Nightly News….
“Take all the time you’d like, they said.”

So I’m running with it!

What do I remember from my commencement speaker at the Events Center?��

Well, It was Robert Redford, the Academy Award-winning actor who also went to CU!

True story:��20 years later, I was at the NBC studios in New York.

I looked over and realized I was standing next to him in the men’s room …. Doing what men do.

“Hey, You were my commencement speaker…..I know you!”

(I did not say)

I promise you, for the rest of your lives, when you meet new friends, co-workers, neighbors … certainly if you live in another state … people will ask you where you went to college.

And when you say CU, you will always hear the same response:

“Ooooooohhhhhh, I wanted to go to CU too…”�� they will tell you.

Instant Jealousy!

But as we gather here today – I am so mindful that we are all in the presence of giants��- past and present!

145-years of giants��in academics, science, literature, entertainment, medicine, politics, sports, the military, law, journalism….people who have changed this school, this state, the country, and the world.

So if you’re both excited and terrified about this day and what comes next – you’re in good company!�� So were all of those giants.

And yet look what they did…what they believed in and built and fought for.��

And so will you!

Sitting among you right now … are people who will make both profound and subtle changes in the coming decades.

Discovering a cure for cancer, developing a hit TV show, composing a new orchestra piece, writing beautiful poetry, or making a difference in a child’s life, or taking a stand to protect the most vulnerable, leading men and women in uniform, inventing the smart phone or cars, cleaning our air and oceans, or saving a life in an ICU.

The possibilities are endless.�� Big and Small.��

So while this moment in your life may be a bit intimidating right now …. Embrace it!

You have unlimited possibilities and very few obligations to hold you back!

This is the time to Be Bolder!

So I thought I’d share with you a few of the risks that I took over the years�� that paid off.

And yes, you’ll probably have to start at the bottom of the career ladder.

But chances are, you won’t start any lower than I did!

Look underneath your feet - right over there in the bleacher section!

I started down there!

Our student TV studio was beneath those bleachers, down a long hallway, tucked into a dark corner.����

We all learned how to do interviews, write and edit our stories, run the cameras, get in front��of the camera and read the breaking CU News!

We had typewriters, not computers.��

No one on campus had a cell phone yet.

And none of us had ever heard of the internet.

Spam? That was cheap, canned meat some of us lived off.

But it was there … down that dark hallway in a makeshift studio that I made CU TV history.

I dropped my first on-air F-bomb.

My first and last on-air F-bomb!

Thank God I learned my lesson with a cable TV audience of roughly 2-dozen people!

And it was Boulder … so most folks here had heard an F- bomb before!

For years, Professor Steve Jones used a recording of that on-air flub as blackmail material to lure me back to campus to talk to journalism students.

But it was a very good, early lesson:��

Someone is always listening and watching.�� Always!

When I graduated,