Casper Minor League Baseball Moving To Grand Junction

It's now offical, the Casper Ghosts minor league baseball team will be moving to Grand Junction, Colorado. Monday night the Grand Junction City Council approved a lease for the team and Spulizio Field. It's a 15-year lease with the option of three-five year extensions. The team will be known as the Grand Junction Rockies and the Monfort Investment Group that owns the team will pay $25,000 of rent annually plus $500 a game. In addition, the owners still have to pay the City of Casper a $200,000 exit fee. The Grand Junction exit fee will be $100,000. Spulizio Field is undergoing $8.3 million of renovations, but still needs another $800,000 of improvements to expand the locker rooms, build a training room and office space for the team. The Rockies will pay $100,000 of that. Ghosts General Manager for the past season Tim Ray will accompany the team to Grand Junction.

The Wyoming Cowboys will have a second bye week to their schedule this week after beating UNLV on Saturday at Memorial Stadium 41-14. Cowboy receiver Chris McNeil was named the Mountain West Conference special teams player of the week. He returned a punt 76 yards for a touchdown, the first time Wyoming has done that since 2004. McNeil also threw a TD pass to quarterback Brett Smith, and also threw a pass for a two-point conversion. The Cowboys are now 4-2 overall and 1-0 in Mountain West play.

The Denver Broncos in their bye week made some news off the field. They traded receiver Brandon Lloyd to the St. Louis Rams for a draft pick next year. Lloyd is in the final year of his contract which is paying him $1.4 million this year which is a bargin considering his productivity. Last year he caught 77 balls for 1448 yards and 11 touchdowns. This year however, 19 catches for 283 yards and no TD's.