‘No, Seriously, You’re Starting’

LARAMIE -- The rumors started swirling at breakfast.

Easton Gibbs not being present at that team meal made it a tad more convincing. So did the concerned looks plastered across the coaches' faces.

"No, seriously, you're starting."

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Shae Suiaunoa and Connor Shay delivered that still-surreal message. Read Sunn, who called those two "jokesters," wasn't buying it. During the team walkthrough, though, just a handful of hours before the Cowboys were set to host Front Range rival Air Force, word started to spread about the seriousness of Gibbs' condition.

Wyoming's starting middle linebacker was sick. He spent the night throwing up in his hotel room. A spiking fever and drastic weight loss necessitated a doctor visit.

His status for the game, unknown.

That's what Sunn thought, anyway.

Confirmation soon came in the form of a brief chat with the head coach.

"Craig Bohl comes up to me, literally as they're opening the doors for us to walk out for the Cowboy Walk, and he's like, 'Hey, you're going to start today, we're confident in you, you're going to do great,'" he recalled, referring to that September evening in 2022. "I was like, 'Oh, crap.'"

Sunn wasn't the only one to have that reaction.

Jay Sawvel, then the defensive coordinator, said his pregame routine was to head to the staff room alone and take advantage of some last-minute film study. Meticulous preparation was particularly important on this night. The unbeaten Falcons, like they often are, were leading the nation in rushing yards. Troy Calhoun's triple-option attack was humming, averaging an eye-popping 508 yards per game.

"In this game plan, the middle linebacker is the bell cow," Bohl would say postgame.

Chad Muma led the Cowboys in tackles during the previous meeting. Before him, that honor belonged to Logan Wilson.

Guess what position those guys played?

"Coach Bohl come in, and it's like an hour-and-a-half before the game, and I'm about ready to go down, get changed and all that stuff," Sawvel said on Monday at his weekly press conference. "He's like, 'Well, Easton Gibbs is out.' It's like, so what do you do now? He goes, 'Read Sunn will start.' He just walks out of the room. That's all coach Bohl said to me. So, I appreciated that."

The other coach Bohl, the leader of the linebackers, Aaron Bohl, handled things a little differently.

"I'm an optimist, but I had to go shut my door and just sit there," he said with a smile. "I thought, 'What are we going to do?' I had no clue."

Sunn, then a redshirt freshman, had two career tackles under his belt heading into that one. He missed the previous season with a torn patellar tendon in his left knee. The former walk-on spent the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season as the team's long snapper.

That bio is enough to make anyone nervous. The man himself included.

"I'm a lot more focused when you get that extra adrenaline going. So, I've never been scared of nerves. I kind of embrace it," the Wasilla, Alaska product said last Monday. "I don't know if I've ever been as nervous for a game as I was that one, though. I remember when we ran out of the tunnel, they did a flyover that game and I didn't even know there was a flyover. I was so, like, tunnel vision. My chest was beating."

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Anxiety only grew for Sunn as Wyoming's offense opened the game on an 15-play, 73-yard drive that took 7:32 off the clock. John Hoyland would cap that possession with a 20-yard field goal.

There would be no easing into this one.

Sunn was involved in the first two stops, swallowing up ball carriers John Lee Eldridge and the country's leading rusher, Brad Roberts.

"Once you make that first tackle, it's like, all right, here we go," he said. "Like, we're good to go."

Enter No. 28.

Gibbs, who had been receiving IV fluids all afternoon -- and we would later find out had a fever hovering around 104 and had lost roughly 12 pounds over the previous 24 hours -- was checking into the game.

"Obviously, Easton was such a good player that, I mean, you got to do whatever is going to help the team," Sunn said with a smile. "But, after those first couple plays, when I saw him get loose on the sideline and then realized, like, OK, yeah, he is ready to roll, there was a little part of me after those first two tackles, and I was like, dang. Easton came in and obviously did a great job that game. He's a warrior for coming back and fighting through that.

"Getting that opportunity was a special moment for me. That's something
I'll always remember."

Air Force ran just 55 offensive plays in that 17-14 loss inside War Memorial Stadium. Sunn was on the field for 13 of those snaps. He joked that he stood next to the head coach on the sideline all night. Bohl, who kept a close eye on Gibbs, would throw him in anytime his captain was slow getting to his feet.

Sunn finished with a career-best four tackles, including one for loss, on that memorable night. Gibbs capped his outing with six.

Why did he fight so hard to get back on the field? That's simple.

"I love every guy on his team," Gibbs, pale and exhausted, said during his postgame press conference. "So, it was hard for me, sitting there and not being with them this afternoon and just kind of knowing that at some point they told me I wasn't going to play. So, it was hard. Then, I just really pushed through and told myself, you know, I have to give it a shot. I just went out and did that."

While Gibbs grabbed the headlines -- and rightfully so -- Aaron Bohl said he will never forget the role Sunn played in that key victory, which helped vault the Cowboys to a seven-win season and a berth in the Arizona Bowl.

"Read did a great job," Aaron Bohl said. "He stepped up and played great ... He played at a high level, and this is Read's, you know, type of game."

That outing remains a special one for Sunn.

He recalled seeing his parents on 22nd Street before the game, hugging them and letting them in on the news that he would be making his first-career start. It even brings back memories of his rookie year when he replied to a team-wide text. It asked if anyone had long snapped in high school. Sunn had.

Though he was taking one for the team in 2020, his desire to play linebacker never wavered. In fact, Craig Bohl offered him a scholarship after the season finale. It came with one stipulation: remain the snapper.

Sunn respectfully declined, instead taking a chance on himself.

"That had been my dream forever, to play college linebacker," he added.

After a solid offseason, and the departure of Charles Hicks, who lost the starting job to Gibbs, Bohl again approached Sunn. This time, it was the news he had been waiting for all along. He was getting a full-ride. That celebration was put on hold just 20 minutes later.

"I was walking out of the locker room when he told me they were putting me on (scholarship). I ran back inside, called my parents, and I was like, 'Hey, practice is about to start, but I just wanted to let you know I got put on. Sorry, I have to go, bye,"' he recalled. "Then I called them after practice and they're still all excited. I'm like, 'Hey, yeah, by the way, also, I'm going to probably be out for the season. I just tore my knee.'"

How's that for a mixed bag of emotion?

Sunn and the Cowboys (0-4) host Air Force (1-2) this Saturday in Laramie. Kickoff is slated for 6 p.m. Mountain Time and the game will be televised on CBS Sports Network.

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