Get to Know Your Foe: Colorado State

Out in Fort Collins, Colorado, lies one of the oldest programs in the Pac-12, the Colorado State Rams. The Rams played their first game in January of 1893 against Longmont Academy. They went by the nickname of the school’s acronym, the CACs, and their colors were decided by the orange and green ribbons players and fans bought on the morning of that first game.

The full name of Colorado State at the time of the football program’s inception was Colorado Agricultural College. Founded in 1870, it spent over 80 years as an agricultural school before becoming Colorado State University in 1957. Even today Colorado State is still one of the top agricultural science schools in the country.

The football program took a brief hiatus from 1895 to 1898, returning to the gridiron in 1899. That 1899 season, while only three games long, was highlighted by a controversial game in their first game outside of state lines against Wyoming. A disagreement between an official brought in from Colorado A&M (nickname prior to becoming Colorado State) and an official brought in from Wyoming ended with a Wyoming forfeit and a brawl between the two teams. This would be the beginning of a century-old rivalry with Wyoming, named the Border War.

Colorado A&M hit their stride in the 1910s under Harry W. Hughes. Under Hughes, the Aggies (later becoming the Rams in the 1950s) won eight conference titles in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference. The conference featured BYU, Colorado, Denver, Utah, Utah State, Wyoming, and other smaller colleges in the state of Colorado. Hughes coached Colorado A&M for 31 seasons from 1911 to 1941, going 125-92-18. His trademark play was nicknamed the “Million Dollar Play,” which was a triple pass out of an end-around.

Colorado A&M, along with those named bigger schools from the Rocky Mountain Conference, formed the Mountain States Athletic Conference in 1938, more affectionately nicknamed the Big Seven and then the Skyline Six after Colorado left in 1947. The conference evolved into the Skyline Eight after adding New Mexico and Montana in 1951. Colorado State didn’t see the same level of success as they did under Hughes. Robert Davis took over the program in 1947 and led the program to its first bowl appearance, the Raisin Bowl, in 1948. They lost to Occidental College 21-20 in the waning minutes of the game. Davis led Colorado A&M from 1947 to 1955, going 54-33-2.

Like many A&M schools across the country, Colorado A&M adopted the nickname the Aggies. However, that started to become the Aggie Rams at the end of the 1940s. When the school became a full-on state university in 1957, they simply became the Rams.

The Skyline conference lasted until 1962, when BYU, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming all left to form the Western Athletic Conference. Colorado State would be left behind, operating as an independent from 1962 to 1967 until finally receiving an invite to the WAC in 1968. The Rams continued to enjoy varying levels of success through the 1960s and 1970s. In 1977, Sarkis Arslanian led the Rams to nine wins in his fifth season as the head coach. The nine wins were the most wins in a season since 1949. But, just four seasons later, Arslanian was fired midseason after starting 0-6. The Rams finished 0-12.

Colorado State finally returned to a bowl game in 1990 under Earle Bruce. In his third year at the helm, the Rams went 8-4, earning a trip to the Freedom Bowl against Oregon. In a tight back-and-forth game, the Rams had a narrow 26-25 lead and added on with a 52-yard touchdown to make it 32-25. The Ducks were able to block the extra point to keep the deficit at seven with just under five minutes to go. Oregon went down the field and punched in a touchdown to make it 32-31 with about a minute to go. But, rather than tie the game at 32, the Ducks went for the two-point conversion and failed, giving the Rams their first bowl victory. The shine of Bruce’s success in leading the Rams to their first bowl win was quickly erased after he was fired in 1992 for verbally and physically abusing his players.

That brought in Sonny Lubick, the former defensive coordinator at Miami. Lubick was fresh off of helping shape one of the best defenses in college football, helping the Hurricanes win two national championships in his four years at “The U.” Prior to all that success at Miami, he was the offensive coordinator at Colorado State from 1982 to 1984.

Despite a 1-4 start to Lubick’s inaugural season in 1993, the Rams rallied to win four of their last six games to finish 5-6. Lubick and the Rams rolled that momentum into a magical 1994 season. The Rams put the nation on notice when they went into Provo, Utah, and stunned the 22nd-ranked BYU Cougars, 28-21. The 5-0 start to the season launched Colorado State into the AP poll, debuting at 24th. They put their ranked status and 5-0 record to the test when they traveled to sixth-ranked Arizona in week six. Arizona entered the 1994 season ranked number one by Sports Illustrated, seventh in the AP poll, and eighth in the Coaches Poll.

The Rams drew first blood with a play-action touchdown pass from 10 yards out. That was setup by a 43-yard pass on the prior play as Matt Phillips got behind the Wildcat defense. The Rams stifled the Wildcat offense for most of the first half, but Arizona was still able to tack on a pair of field goals to make it a 7-6 game at halftime.

Still holding the eighth-ranked Wildcats at bay, the Rams extended their lead with another big play by their quarterback, Anthoney Hill. On a play-action bootleg, Hill rolled right, escaping from an Arizona defender, and fired a strike to a wide-open Justin Schull, who strolled into the end zone for his second touchdown of the night, giving the Rams a 14-6 lead.

Arizona wouldn’t go down without a fight. The Wildcats put together a solid drive, getting all the way to the Rams’ 11-yard line. From the 11-yard line, the Wildcats lined up in an I-formation. As Dan White took the snap and turned to try and hand the ball off to his running back, linebacker Garret Sand went right past the center, hitting White before he could even get two steps in. The hit jarred the ball out of White’s hands and it was picked up by Sean Moran, who ran it back all 77 yards for a now commanding 21-6 lead, silencing the Arizona crowd.

That Arizona crowd would get right back into it after the Wildcats tacked on a field goal and touchdown in the fourth quarter to make it a 21-16 game. The game came down to a pivotal 4th and 10 with 21 seconds to go from midfield. White fired a strike to a diving receiver, but he couldn’t hang on, allowing the Rams to hang on for a 21-16 stunner over the Wildcats.

The Rams would jump up to 13th in the AP poll following the win and rolled through UTEP the following week to put their record at 7-0. However, they would falter against 18th-ranked Utah, 45-31, ending their winning streak. The Rams would win their final three games of the season, including a 44-42 thriller against Fresno State to end the regular season. The 10-1 record earned them a top-10 ranking in the AP poll, a WAC championship title, and a trip to the Holiday Bowl against Michigan. The Rams would lose that Holiday Bowl, 24-14.

1995 wouldn’t be as successful but was still a solid year, going 8-4 overall with a loss to top-10 Kansas State in the Holiday Bowl to cap the year. But Lubick reignited some of that magic in the 1997 season. The Rams started out on the fringes of the AP poll, hovering between the top of the receiving votes and the top-25 through the first four weeks. However, a stunning 24-0 loss to Air Force in week four erased the goodwill they had built up as they dropped to 2-2. That ended being the last game Colorado State would lose in 1997. They finished with a 9-2 overall record and a 7-1 conference record that put them into the second-ever WAC Championship game. The Rams bulldozed New Mexico in that game, 41-13, sending them back to the Holiday Bowl. This time, they would avenge their losses from 1994 and 1995, beating Missouri 35-24.

In 1999, Colorado State, along with Utah, BYU, Wyoming, San Diego State, New Mexico, Air Force, and UNLV, left the WAC out of concerns of rising travel costs to form the Mountain West Conference. That same year, Colorado State also snapped an eight-game losing streak to hated rival Colorado to open the season, dominating the Buffaloes, 41-14. A payback for the years of torment the Buffaloes caused the rivals through those strong years and for upsetting the Rams 42-14 last season when the Rams were ranked 15th early in the season. The Rams would end up going 8-3 with a loss to Southern Mississippi in the Liberty Bowl.

Lubick continued to coach the Rams through the 2007 season. In his final years, the Rams started to falter, going 17-30 in his final four seasons. He finished his 15-season tenure with a record of 108-74, three bowl victories in nine appearances, and six conference titles between the WAC and Mountain West.

Since the end of the Lubick era, haven’t made a whole lot of national noise. Under Jim McElwain, the Rams would go an impressive 10-2 in 2014 but lost to Utah in the Las Vegas Bowl. McElwain would leave Colorado State after that season to coach Florida, passing the baton to Mike Bobo. Bobo led the Rams to three straight bowl games to begin his tenure, going 7-6 each year, but would be relieved of his duties after going 3-9 in 2018 and 4-8 in 2019. Jay Norvell took the reins in 2022, building up the program into a modest 2024 season. The Rams under Norvell went 8-4 but lost to Miami-Ohio in the Arizona Bowl. That success quickly faded as the Rams started 2-5 and fired Norvell. They finished with a 2-10 record.

Now enters Jim Mora at Colorado State, who is coming over from leading the UConn Huskies out of irrelevancy. At UConn, Mora went 46-30, leading them to two bowl appearances and a pair of nine-win seasons in 2024 and 2025. Mora, of course, coached the UCLA Bruins in the Pac-12 from 2012 to 2017.

The Rams’ top rivals are Air Force, Colorado, and Wyoming. All three feature trophies the Rams fight for. Currently, the Rams do not hold any of the trophies and will only be playing for one, the Bronze Boot, against Wyoming to open the 2026 season. The rivalry with Wyoming extends the annual meet-up that has been played every year since the end of World War II. Colorado State hasn’t met up with Colorado since 2024, and this will be the first season they haven’t played Air Force since 1977, and they have no scheduled games with the academy in the near future. They are scheduled to meet Wyoming every year through at least 2036 and will renew the Rocky Mountain Showdown with Colorado in 2029.