CSU ticket sales up Colorado State reported ticket sales for the Rocky Mountain Showdown as 28,240 as of Wednesday morning, showing a fourth straight year of increased sales for the rivalry game with Colorado. Of that number, 10,800 were student-ticket sales. Because it is considered CSU’s home game, the number also includes 9,058 season tickets. “I think that’s awesome,” CSU coach Mike Bobo said after Wednesday’s practice. “I think there’s interest in the game, I love that both sides are excited about the game. I’ve heard we’ve sold almost 11,000 student tickets, and that’s been a big push from our administration and (athletic director) Joe Parker and even us as a football team to try to get out and try to get involved with our students and let them know it’s their football team. “I think it’s awesome. I’m glad they’re going to Denver and I hope the next home game we have 11,000 students or more.” In 2012, CSU only sold 18,169 tickets to the game. That number jumped to 23,392 in 2013 and up to 27,000 for last season’s game, making this year’s total a 55.4 percent increase in sales from 2012. In those same four years, attendance has risen for the Showdown in general, with last year’s crowd hitting 63,363. As of Wednesday, Colorado had sold 30,003 tickets, 6,916 of them to students. Training room — Receiver Rashard Higgins is still on the mend, and the more Bobo sees, the more encouraged he becomes. “Rashard looked better today, looked good, ran some pass-skill routes,” Bobo said. “I’m expecting him to play. I expected him to play last week, but we’ll see how it goes. We’ve got a plan either way, but it was good to get him out there, and hopefully we can get him out there more and more and we can get him cleared.” Cornerback DeAndre Elliott, linebacker Kiel Robinson and defensive lineman Terry Jackson were all out at practice on the defensive side, but none of them have been cleared yet.

FORT COLLINS — The grooming of young quarterbacks is nothing new. It takes the right touch of understanding and insistence for a coach to get the player where he needs to be in order to perform on game days. More often than not, games in the future.

What Mike Bobo is facing in his first year as head coach at Colorado State is getting two young quarterbacks ready to play and perform now, and this Saturday will provide the biggest stage yet, the Rocky Mountain Showdown at Sports Authority Field in Denver against Colorado (5 p.m.; CBS Sports Network) in front of a crowd pushing 60,000 with a few days to go.

His resume and track record are pretty good. He was a quarterback himself, so he has that understanding of the process from that side. He’s also guided some pretty good signal callers as a quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator at Georgia.

But what may be his best qualification for the current situation is his role as father of five children, ages 11 and younger.

Or not.

“I hope not. I don’t know. My wife says I don’t have much patience with my own kids, and (the CSU quarterbacks) probably thought I didn’t have much patience with them today,” Bobo said after Tuesday’s practice. “I keep trying to tell them it’s going to be hard at practice. I want to put pressure on you, because you’re going to feel that pressure in the game. You’ve got to learn to embrace it, you’ve got to learn to go out and, ‘hey, I’m playing the next play, I’m the man, I got it.’

“You’re going to mess up in the game, and if you feel pressure if you mess up or you feel pressure if I get on to you at practice, then I don’t know if you’re the one to lead the football team. I try to apply pressure.”

There’s a right and wrong way at home, the same as there is on a football field. In the spring, Coleman Key said he loved the way Bobo coached the quarterbacks because it reminded him of, well, his dad’s approach to day-to-day life.

“He’s going to get on you when you need it, when you’re doing something wrong,” Key said of Bobo. “When you do something right, he’s going to let you know you’re doing something right. I think that’s important to us because it’s not always negative or positive. He’s honest, he’s blunt about it. He’s straight up, and that’s what I like about it.”

In both games so far, Bobo has used both Nick Stevens and Key, just like the coach said he would. Stevens had a breeze of a time in the opener against Savannah State, throwing five touchdown passes to five different receivers. When Key came in, nobody asked any questions because it was a blowout.

But against Minnesota, Stevens struggled. His first pass of the game was intercepted, and he’d eventually throw another in what would be an 8-of-19 performance for just 51 yards, 238 fewer than the week before.

So when Key came in and threw a touchdown pass and briefly gave the Rams the lead in the fourth quarter, the questions were on their way.

Only Bobo defused them in short order, saying there was no quarterback controversy. Period. He had picked his guy, and one game wasn’t going to sway that decision. He told Stevens that in the locker room before he told anybody else.

It isn’t a snap to pick a starter, even harder to pull him and put in another young quarterback. Stevens not only understood, but appreciated the way it was handled, start to finish.

“I think it shows a lot, his trust in me,” Stevens said. “We both know what I can do, and it just wasn’t there for me on Saturday. My eyes were just in the wrong place a couple of times. I came in, saw that and corrected that, so I think these past two days I’ve been making the right reads. I just have to apply that on Saturday.”

Just as blunt, Bobo said they both have to play better. Stevens has his two turnovers and Key has had a part in four. The Rams lead the nation with nine giveaways on the season, and the six fumbles lost also top the charts. Not exactly categories a team favors.

With two young quarterbacks, Bobo expected those numbers to be higher, because they always have been in his experience. He’s definitely not encouraging them, but he also has to show a deft touch in eliminating them. Focus on the causes and correct those fundamentals, not threats.

A skittish quarterback does a team no good.

“If you tell a guy, ‘hey, we can’t turn the ball over, then they’re afraid to pull the trigger as a quarterback,” Bobo said. “I want them confident, see it, throw it, your feet tell you to do it.”

What Bobo needed to see this week was how both of his young quarterbacks responded, and both were on the mark. Key said his performance last Saturday changes nothing in his mind, nor his preparation moving forward.

Stevens, buoyed by the support of his coach, went to work fixing his flaws, unconcerned about the appearance of a quarterback controversy.

Yes, the vote of confidence was nice, just not as valuable as the teaching.

“Sometimes if you’ve got a coach that will baby you, you don’t know when you’re making mistakes because they don’t want to tell you that and get you down,” Stevens said. “He’ll come up and tell you. He won’t get on you as much as you think, but like during a game setting, he’ll come up and say, ‘you’re doing good out there, you just need to get your eyes on the safety instead of the linebacker,’ or whatnot. I think that just helps you kind of understand what you’re doing wrong and be able to fix it on the next drive.”

Mike Brohard: 970-635-3633, mbrohard@reporter-herald.com and twitter.com/mbrohard