Colorado Buffaloes


The Colorado Buffaloes are the athletic teams that represent the University of Colorado Boulder. The university sponsors 17 varsity sports teams. Both the men's and women's teams are called the Buffaloes or, rarely, the Golden Buffaloes. "Lady Buffs" referred to the women's teams beginning in the 1970s, but was officially dropped in 1993. The nickname was selected by the campus newspaper in a contest with a $5 prize in 1934 won by Andrew Dickson of Boulder. The university participates as a member of the Pac-12 Conference at the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I Football Bowl Subdivision level. Rick George was announced as the sixth athletic director in program history on July 17, 2013, following the resignation of Mike Bohn, and after an interim appointment by former Women's Basketball Head Coach and current senior associate athletic director and senior women's administrator Ceal Barry. Colorado has won 28 national championships in its history, with 20 in skiing, including 2015. It was ranked #14 of "America's Best Sports College" in a 2002 analysis performed by Sports Illustrated. The University does not have men's baseball, tennis, soccer, lacrosse, or volleyball programs.

History

Competitive football began on the Boulder campus in 1890. Early games, which bore more resemblance to rugby than modern football, were played against the School of Mines and Utah. The football stadium, originally named "Colorado Stadium," was opened in 1924 and was officially named Folsom Field in November 1944 to honor Coach Fred Folsom, one of the most respected college football coaches of his day.
In 1934, the university's intercollegiate teams were officially nicknamed the "Buffaloes." Previous nicknames used by the press included the "Silver Helmets" and "Frontiersmen." The final game of 1934, against the University of Denver, saw also the inaugural running of a bison in a Colorado football game. A bison calf was rented from a local ranch and ran along the sidelines.
The year 1947 marked key point in race relations on campus. The Buffaloes joined the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association, commonly known as the Big Six. However, Missouri and Oklahoma had rules which would not have allowed them to challenge teams with "colored" players. A student outcry, led by campus paper Silver and Gold, led to a movement against these Jim Crow restrictions which expanded to all the campuses of the Big 7 and eventually lead to their repeal.
On June 10, 2010, the Buffaloes announced that they would join the Pacific-10 Conference, soon renamed the Pac-12 Conference, in all sports beginning on July 1, 2011.

Varsity sports

The University of Colorado was a member of the Colorado Football Association in 1893, and became a charter member of the Colorado Faculty Athletic Conference in 1909, which changed its name a year later to Rocky Mountain Faculty Athletic Conference. Colorado left the RMFAC to become a charter member of the Mountain States Conference in 1938. CU joined the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association in 1947, then commonly known as the Big Six, changing the common name to the Big Seven. In 1958, the conference added OSU to become the Big Eight Conference. It remained the Big 8 until 1996, when it combined with four member schools of the defunct Southwest Conference to create the Big 12 Conference. On July 1, 2011, the school joined the Pac-12 Conference along with Utah. A total of 12 of CU's 17 varsity sports compete in the Pac-12, except the ski teams, indoor track & field teams and the lacrosse team. The ski teams participate in the Rocky Mountain Intercollegiate Ski Association, of which it has been a member since 1947, along with fellow Pac-12 newcomer Utah. The indoor track & field teams participate in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation as the Pac-12 doesn't sponsor indoor track. Women's lacrosse was added in the spring of 2014; that team competed in the MPSF until the Pac-12 Conference added women's lacrosse as a sport for the 2018 season. Colorado is the only Pac-12 school and one of only four Power 5 schools that do not sponsor baseball, the other three being Iowa State, Syracuse, and Wisconsin.

Football

The Colorado football program is 16th on the all-time NCAA Division 1 win list and 22nd in all-time winning percentage. Since Folsom Field was built in 1924, the Buffaloes have been 280-132-10 at home. The Nebraska game in 2006 was the school's 1100th football game. Bill McCartney is the most famous head coach, leading Colorado to its only National Championship Title in 1990. The current head coach, Karl Dorrell, was approved by the University of Colorado Board of Regents in March, 2020.
Beginning competitive play in 1890, Colorado has enjoyed much success through its history. The team has won numerous bowl games, 23rd, 8 Colorado Football Association Championships, 1 Colorado Faculty Athletic Conference, 7 RFMAC Championships, 4 Mountain States Conference Championships, 5 Big Eight conference championships, 1 Big 12 conference championship, 4 Big 12 North Championships, and an Associated Press national championship in 1990. The team holds rivalries with Nebraska, Colorado State, and Utah.
Colorado football also has one Heisman Trophy winner:
There have also been 9 unanimous All-Americans:
There are seven players and one coach in the College Football Hall of Fame:
They play at the CU Events Center on campus and are 401-166 at home, through the 2015–16 season, including 88-15 in six years under coach Tad Boyle.
¹ Invitations

Women's basketball

Women's Basketball started at Colorado in 1975. The team has had seven coaches and the current coach is JR Payne.

Skiing

The CU ski team competes as a member of the Rocky Mountain Intercollegiate Ski Association, as CU is one of two members of the Pac-12 along with Utah that competes in skiing. Colorado is one of the dominant programs in the NCAA in skiing, winning 20 total national championships, including 19 NCAA Championships, most recently in 2015. The Buffs have won three NCAA Championships since 2011, and have finished in the top four at NCAAs for 13 straight years with four championships in that span. The 13 straight top four finishes is the longest streak in the country. The Buffaloes have won 28 RMISA championships, most recently in 2017. The Buffaloes have had 53 individuals connected to the school participate in the Olympics 85 times. Colorado has had 94 individual NCAA Champions, including David Ketterer and Petra Hyncidova both sweeping their respective races in 2017.

Cross country

The high altitude at Boulder, Colorado adds aerobic stress to distance runners and is known to produce a competitive edge when altitude-trained athletes compete at sea level. The 1998 cross country team was the subject of a book, Running with the Buffaloes, which documents the team's training regimen under long-time coach Mark Wetmore. Colorado has won five NCAA Men's Cross Country Championships and three NCAA Women's Cross Country Championships. The men's team also has won four individual titles, while the women's side has won two.
The men won the first twelve Big 12 Conference titles in the conference's history and the women won 11 of the first 12, with the two teams combining for 23 of the 32 championships awarded before the Buffs left the Big 12 in 2011 to join the Pac-12. Since joining the Pac-12 Conference, the Colorado men won their first six conference titles and the Colorado women have claimed four conference titles, including three consecutive following a shot lapse.

Baseball

The Colorado Buffaloes baseball team was discontinued after the 1980 season. Baseball, wrestling, men's and women's gymnastics, men's and women's swimming, and women's diving comprised the seven programs that were discontinued on June 11, 1980, due to

Men's golf

The men's golf team won three Big Eight Conference championships: 1954, 1955, 1968. Hale Irwin won the 1967 NCAA Championship.

Club sports

Colorado has a very active and developed club sports system with over 30 sports.
Colorado's rugby program was founded in 1967. The Buffaloes play in the Western Division of Division 1-A, where they play against local rivals such as Colorado State and less localized teams like the New Mexico and Utah State. The Buffaloes are led by head coach Murray Wallace, assisted by John Barkmeier Chris Dyas, Justin Holshuh, Conor Sears, and Steve Brown. Kevin Whitcher coaches the Buffaloes sevens team.
The Buffaloes have consistently been ranked among the top college rugby teams in the country.
Colorado's best run was 1984–1985, when it reached the 1984 national finals before losing 12-4 to powerhouse Cal, and finished third in the 1985 national playoffs losing again to eventual champion Cal, this time in the semifinals. More recently, in 2008 the Buffaloes went 15-3 and reached the semifinals of the national championships. Colorado won the 2011 Pac-12 rugby sevens tournament, defeating Utah 14–12 in the final, to qualify for the 2011 USA Rugby collegiate rugby sevens national championship. Colorado finished the 2011–12 season ranked 14th in the nation. In the 2012–13 season, Colorado defeated Wisconsin 54-24 to advance to the national D1-A quarterfinals, before losing to St. Mary's. The Buffs also won the plate final in the 2015–2016 season at the Las Vegas Invitational 7s tournament in the college bracket. Most recently the Buffs lost in the plate final to Clemson in the inaugural international Red Bull University Sevens tournament.
The Buffs are currently ranked 25th in the nation with a competitive season ahead, and plans to travel further West in the spring.

Championships

NCAA team championships

Colorado has 27 won team national championships.
The University has had several fight songs that have lost and gained popularity over the years. The oldest, "Glory Colorado", is sung to the tune of "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and has been around nearly as long as the school. Glory Colorado is considered to represent all campuses of the University. "Go Colorado" was originally sung exclusively by the Glee Club at football games, though it is now played and known almost exclusively by members of the Golden Buffalo Marching Band. The most popular of the three fight songs and the most widely recognized is "Fight CU." Originally sung by the football team, the song has gained enough popularity that few people outside the band know that it is not the only fight song of the university. The original version included the line "fight, fight for every yard" but the line was changed to "fight, fight for victory" to allow the song to be used for all sports, not just football.

Mascots

The two mascots present at all football games are Ralphie, a live buffalo, and Chip, a costumed mascot who was selected to the 2003 Capital One All-America Mascot Team and won the 2009, 2010 and 2020 UCA Mascot National Championships. Ralphie is actually Ralphie V and leads the football team onto the field at the beginning of the first and second halves. A buffalo leading the team onto the field dates as far back as 1934 and the Ralphie tradition began in 1966. In 1934 after the selection of Buffaloes as a nickname when a group of students paid $25 to rent a buffalo calf and cowboy as his keeper for the last game of the season. The calf was the son of Killer, a famed bison at Trails End Ranch in Fort Collins, Colorado. It took the cowboy and four students to keep the calf under control on the sidelines during the game, a 7–0 win at the University of Denver on Thanksgiving Day.

Colors

The official school colors are silver and gold, adopted in 1888 as a symbol of the mineral wealth of the state. In 1959, the athletic teams started using black and yellow, because silver and gold ended up looking like dirty white and dirty yellow. The colors have stuck and many are unaware that the official school colors are silver and gold.
On May 28, 1981, black was curiously replaced by "Sky Blue" by a mandate of the CU Board of Regents, to represent the color of the Colorado sky. However, this color was different than the blue uniforms of the U.S. Air Force Academy. After three years, the blue was changed in 1984 to a darker shade, though still unpopular. In black and white photographs the players' numbers are nearly invisible. During a difficult 1-10 season in 1984, football head coach Bill McCartney employed black "throwback" jerseys for an emotional lift for the games against Oklahoma and Nebraska, without success.
In April 1985, the CU athletic teams were given the option of blue or black. The football team chose to wear black, and at Folsom Field the background for the signature "Colorado" arc, blue for four years, was repainted black as well. On the football uniforms, the blue was reduced to a stripe on the sleeve for three seasons before being dropped completely in 1988. In 2007, CU debuted new football jerseys that reintegrated silver as a uniform color.

Facilities

University of Colorado Athletic Hall of Fame

Criteria for automatic selection: Three-time all-conference selection, two-time All-American, trophy winner or previously retired jersey. Beginning in 2015, the school went from a two-year to one year induction cycle to catch up on its history. Inductees are nominated by their peers in the Alumni C Club or by members of the selection committee.

Class of 1998

Don Campbell