When Sonny Lubick was the coach at Colorado State and Fisher DeBerry at Air Force, their annual meeting on the field was one of the highlights of their seasons.
Now retired, the two former coaches said there was always something special about the game against their Front Range rival.
“When we played CSU, we knew it would be as tough as our game with Navy or anyone else we played,” DeBerry said Thursday.
“ESPN always would call and get our game with Air Force on its television schedule,” Lubick said. “We had some great games, and the national television audience loved them.”
DeBerry said don’t be fooled by the records (AFA is 4-1, CSU is 1-4) and the heavy odds favoring the 25th-ranked Falcons (the latest line has AFA by 25 points) for Saturday’s game.
“Anyone who is favoring Air Force by more than three touchdowns doesn’t know the history of the series,” DeBerry said. “They don’t understand the emotions that are part of this game.”
Lubick, whose first conference win was the Rams’ 8-5 victory over the Falcons in 1993, believes there’s more tradition involved when CSU plays Air Force than when the Rams play Colorado. But he didn’t deny that for fans, “There’s nothing like beating CU.”
Lubick and DeBerry pretty much talked about the same games when discussing their rivalries from 1993, when Lubick took over at CSU, to 2006, when DeBerry retired.
“We were behind 35-14 in the third quarter in 1996,” Lubick said. “It was a night game and we won 42-41 on a pass from our quarterback, Moses Moreno, with a few second left in the game.”
DeBerry remembered the following year in Fort Collins when the Falcons posted a 24-0 victory and “our linebacker Chris Gizzi had five or six sacks.”
They talked about the 2000 game that was played in blizzard conditions in Falcon Stadium.
“I think the chill factor in the game was like minus-22,” said DeBerry, whose Falcons won 44-40. “They had to scrape the field after each quarter. It was remarkable that there were no turnovers by either team in a game played in those conditions.”
Added Lubick: “It was so bad we couldn’t see the other sideline.”
Irv Moss: 303-954-1296 or imoss@denverpost.com
