Trea Jones commits to the Buffaloes after official visit to Boulder

The development folks at the local universities here in the Triangle may want to pay attention to this: At the University of Colorado, fundraisers are considering asking fans at football games to make small donations to the school via text-message.

Think about it: You have 60,000 or so fans of your school, a captive audience. If the team's winning, they're probably in a good mood. Most of them have cell phones, and let's face it, they've been texting messages about pass protection and third-down play-calling back home to their buddies for an hour already that day, so they know their way around a keypad.

So why not announce that Big State U needs their help, and that they could just commit to, say, $5, and send their pledge to a particular address. The donation will debit automatically from the cell phone user's bill.

Sounds almost too easy, doesn't it?