FORT COLLINS — Colorado State has never commanded this spotlight before. Few college football programs will have experienced anything like it. So why the Rams?
The first NCAA FBS kickoff of the 2017 season is in Fort Collins at 12:36 p.m. Saturday, CSU against Oregon State, in the debut of the Rams’ new $220 million on-campus stadium. The stars aligned for a national audience on the CBS Sports Network to witness a Rams’ football renaissance. The exposure for the university, athletics and community alone warrants excitement from third-year CSU coach Mike Bobo.
“I don’t think you could put a dollar amount on it,” he said.
“It was a lot by chance,” CSU athletic director Joe Parker added.
The short answer to how CSU positioned itself for the national stage: Oregon State was scheduled to play in Fort Collins on Sept. 23, but the way the Mountain West structured the Rams’ conference schedule, they weren’t slotted to have a bye week this fall. To balance the schedule, Parker suggested moving the Pac-12 matchup to Zero Week. Oregon State agreed. The CBS Sports Network carried rights to the first Mountain West game of the season and picked the matchup as its opening time slot.
“Intuitively, thatap a very feel-good moment,” Parker said. “You’ve got a chance to capture the attention of a nation thatap interested in college football. The people that are out there, I don’t think they have any idea what we’ve done on our campus.”
What won’t be on visible on Saturday, though, is the long and arduous road that led to this moment. How a 2011 conversation between university president Tony Frank and now former athletic director Jack Graham sparked a plan. How it brought on fierce community debate, with dissenting opinions over the merits and true costs of an on-campus stadium, to create fault lines between supporters of the venture and Hughes Stadium’s loyalists.
Among the more than 21,400 people who came to the stadium August 5 for a community open house and public scrimmage was Kathy Graves, a 1986 CSU graduate and Fort Collins resident, who initially didn’t mince words while seated in the west stands.
“I was anti-new stadium,” she said, “just so you know.”
Outside the north gates, the Mirenda family (Anthony, Tara and their three children) posed for a photo with their donated brick, inscribed with each name, among hundreds of others dedicated to the facility. The Mirendas, 2001 CSU graduates, will commute to games from Littleton this fall, but the concerns of some locals — game-day traffic, losing tailgate space, neighborhood infringement, the university incurring millions in debt — carry weight.
“I think itap understandable,” Anthony said. “But overall, just from a university standpoint and a community standpoint, I think it will be a great benefit to Fort Collins.”
Most notably, of course, a benefit to the football team.
CSU redshirt senior offensive lineman Jake Bennett recalled the Rams’ previous locker room, last updated in 2005 with a $200,000 donation from former CSU defensive end and All-Pro NFL linebacker Joey Porter. It didn’t take long to show its age. Location also posed problems, as it sat in the depths of Moby Arena, some four miles east of Hughes Stadium.
“We probably had five working shower heads in there,” Bennett said, “and four broken couches.”
The new football facilities under the west stands are modernized and streamlined. Itap a short walk between a state-of-the-art locker room, weight room, nutrition center, training room, practice fields and game turf.
“Everything is just so accessible that itap made our lives a lot easier,” Bennett said. “These young guys are spoiled.”
CSU’s underclassmen were sold on the on-campus stadium vision before ever setting foot inside the finished product. When Bobo’s staff welcomed an incoming prospect on an official visit, “to be totally honest,” he said, “we didn’t go to Hughes.” So, parents and recruits sat in hotel conference rooms with coaches looking through mock-ups of a player lounge with leather couches, the 84-foot wide video board and four hydrotherapy plunge pools.
Now that itap a reality, and the weight of expectations have arrived with it, especially following consecutive 7-6 seasons with bowl losses under Bobo’s leadership. CSU was picked in the preseason Mountain West media poll to finish second in the Mountain Division. The Rams last won a conference championship in 2002.
“This facility is going to be an awesome thing to put the brand out there, the image, and when they see it full with the electricity on this campus, and the buzz,” Bobo said. “But as a coach and a player, you have a big responsibility. When you build something like this, then your expectations are raised. We talk about that a lot with our guys.”
But will the fan support follow suit? CSU football’s best average attendance year on record was 1998, when 31,292 watched the Rams at home each week — buzz built from an 11-win season the year before. With a capacity of 41,000 and 36,500 permanent seats, CSU will have an opportunity set a new mark this fall. A sold-out home opener moves the Rams in the right direction.
There will undoubtedly be fans in attendance Saturday like Graves who previously admitted being “anti-stadium” — despite purchasing season tickets with her husband, Todd, this fall. But much of her animosity faded soon after touring the facility.
“Itap beautiful,” she said.
“I partied in the parking lot at Hughes when I was a student 30 years ago,” she added. “I’m just used to that. Itap hard, sometimes, to change.”
CSU hosted a July block party in the Sheely neighborhood directly south of the stadium where Parker interacted with Fort Collins residents whose routines six Saturday’s this fall will certainly be altered with thousands of fans pouring onto campus. Even with potential inconveniences, he believes community morale for the project has improved by some of those most affected.
“I think a lot of those folks were probably against the stadium and the thought of bringing this experience close to their home, and there were a lot of people that evening who said they’ve adjusted their thoughts on it,” Parker said. “They’re probably not in the same place as they were three years ago.”
As for Bennett, the Rams’ starting center, the buildup to Saturday has felt like an eternity. Playing in front of small crowds for the public scrimmage and the freshmen welcome party has been like “dangling a carrot in front of us” for the real thing, he said. Bennett’s phone has been buzzing more than usual lately with texts from old teammates he hasn’t seen in years, all asking about tickets. But Bennett has given out all of his personal allotment. Same goes for most his teammates, too.
Oregon State’s arrival marks the first CSU football game played on its own campus in nearly 50 years, dating back to when the 1967 team battled on Colorado Field just off College Avenue. A new generation of Rams aims to carry that history forward this Saturday.
The first kickoff in the country for a new era of CSU football.
“You can try to picture it,” Bennett said, “but I don’t think anybody has been a part of anything quite like what’s going to happen on Saturday.”