The unlikely climb of Colorado, which will play for the Pac-12 South Division title Saturday in Boulder against Utah, has highlighted an impressive fall of college football on the Front Range.
CU, Colorado State, Wyoming and Air Force will play in bowl games this season. It’s the first time since 1990 and only the second time ever that all four of the programs will play in the postseason.
But those programs aren’t the only ones turning heads this season.
Soaring through the Division II playoffs is Colorado School of Mines, which beat Southwest Baptist 63-35 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament last week for its first postseason victory in 12 years.
The Orediggers can advance to the quarterfinals with a victory Saturday at traditional D-II power Ferris State.
There has always been something intriguing about the team that played on the hill in Golden, putting up video-game numbers under offensive mastermind Bob Stitt.
Stitt left Mines at the end of the 2014 season to become the head coach at Montana, but the Orediggers haven’t slowed under new coach Gregg Brandon. Mines put up 614 yards of offense in the victory over Southwest Baptist, running 86 plays.
“They do a lot of good things offensively,” Southwest Baptist coach Robert Clardy said after the Orediggers ran his team up and down the field last week. “It makes it hard for a defense to catch a rhythm and try to get something going.”
At the controls of such a blistering tempo is Justin Dvorak, a senior quarterback who is a front-runner for the Harlon Hill Award, the D-II version of the Heisman Trophy.
In the Orediggers’ first-round playoff victory, Dvorak became the all-time leading passer in the history of the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference. He has thrown for 13,103 yards and a conference-record 132 touchdowns.
If the Orediggers are to complete a magical run to a national championship game, it will be the right arm of the 6-foot, 200-pound quarterback from Tomball, Texas, who gets them there.
The juggling act of Mines student-athletes is tough to comprehend. The academic load for engineering students at the school is enough to make head spins, and that’s before you start cramming complex offensive schemes into the equation.
“Itap tough to have to wake up for 6 a.m. lifts or running, go to class all day, then meetings and practice until 7:30 p.m., then do homework until itap time to go to bed, knowing that you have to do it all over again the next day,” Dvorak recently told the Mines student newspaper.
The dedication of Dvorak and his teammates has led to a remarkable climb. When admiring the Front Range fall of success, don’t forget about the little guys.
