CHICAGO — The last time CU and CSU shared this much rare air at the same time, Deion Sanders was breaking Jim Mora’s heart.
On Sept. 25, 1994, Sonny Lubick’s Rams were 4-0 and knocking on the door of the Associated Press Top 25. CU was 3-0, Kordell Stewart had just fired off the “Miracle at Michigan,” and Bill McCartney’s Buffs were about to crack the top 5.
The 25th was a Sunday. Over at Candlestick Park, Coach Prime’s 74-yard interception return in the fourth quarter sealed his 49ers’ 24-13 win over New Orleans. Mora, now CSU’s head coach, happened to be an assistant on the Saints staff at the time.
Small world. Small state. We bring this up because it’s been 32 years — September 1994 — since Ralphie and Cam The Ram opened the same college football season with the same 2-0 record.
And, yeah, yeah, we know — one of the big reasons for that little slice of trivia is because CU and CSU played one another early on in the season every year from 1995-2019.
Yet these Buffs and Rams feel … well, they feel different, don’t they?
CU under Sanders beat a Power 4 team on the road (Georgia Tech) by running the ball and playing defense, the way Coach Mac’s best teams used to do. CSU destroyed hated Wyoming in Jim Mora’s debut as Rams coach, and CSU QB Hauss Hejny is the first FoCo signal-caller this century to open his Rammies account by throwing for nine touchdowns over his first two games.
“I think state of Colorado’s in a really healthy place right now when it comes to college football heading into Week 3,” NBC/Peacock football analyst Yogi Roth told me over the phone Thursday. “But we all know how things can change drastically.”
In other words, welcome to College Football 2026 — Tulsa beats Oklahoma State, then Oklahoma State beats Oregon, and bettors beat their collective heads against the nearest wall.
It’s “Show-Me” Saturday for the two biggest college football brands in the Centennial State. How real are the Buffs and Rams? This is the weekend we find out.
On Sept. 12, CU and CSU took turns beating up on small Utah schools in their backyards. Buffs quarterback Julian Lewis threw for four scores and ran for another in a 52-21 rout of Weber State. Hejny pulled the same trick a few hours later in a 58-24 demolition of Southern Utah.
Everybody steps up a weight class on Saturday. Or several, in the case of the Rams, who’ll host No. 11 BYU at Canvas Stadium as 17.5-point underdogs. Sanders’ Buffs, in the meantime, head east again — this time to take on Big Ten middleweight Northwestern in the finale of the Wildcats’ temporary on-campus stadium. That tussle is expected to be delayed, impacted, or both, by suburban Chicago rain.
“It’s been fun to watch (the Buffs) compete this year,” Roth continued, “and they’ve got a big-time test, in an environment that is atypical to what they’re used to playing in front of.”
The set-up in tiny Evanston, Ill., will feel closer to a soccer match at DU than a football game at historic Folsom Field. Northwestern Medicine Field at Martin Stadium was built for lacrosse and soccer only a few yards from Lake Michigan, a 2,000-seater whose capacity got bumped up to 12,023 seats thanks to a pair of huge temporary bleachers behind each of the two end zones. Northwestern’s slated to open its permanent home, $875-million Ryan Field, on Oct. 2 against Penn State.
“My son (Jerry) is on that staff, and (the Wildcats) don’t have the depth that the big boys have,” former Buffs coach and CBS Sports analyst Rick Neuheisel told me earlier in the week. “So it’ll be an interesting game there in Evanston.
“But you love the fact that (the Buffs) are buying (into) it. It was interesting — I talked to (CU radio analyst) Gary Barnett over the summer, and he said that (instead of getting) the high-profile guys in the portal, they went and got guys with great experience. And you can see that that experience now is paying off. But also the coaching is paying off to the experience. So I think that they’re in a good place.”
Roth and Neuheisel said they were more impressed, and surprised, by CU’s 2-0 start when compared to the Rams. And both expressed concerns with Mora’s defense after the FCS Thunderbirds of Southern Utah put up 442 total yards in FoCo last week, 206 on the ground.
“They’ve shown they’re explosive. They’ve shown they can they can play offense,” Neuheisel said of CSU. “Now the question is, can they stop (BYU)? When you’re playing a Bear Bachmeier team, (and he’s) kind of like a fullback playing quarterback, you better be able to stop the run.
“That (tailback) for Southern Utah (Floyd Chalk), I don’t know what his numbers ended up being, but he was well over 100 yards when I started noticing he had a lot of big plays. Those things have got to get calmed down. Jimmy’s a defensive guy, so they’ll have reactions, and hopefully corrections. But that can’t happen against BYU.”
Some context applies to the Rams’ hot start, too. Wyoming’s taking on water right now and the Pokes should’ve lost to UNC at home — shades of CSU a year ago. Southern Utah’s not remotely in the Pac-12’s competitive zip code.
Yet the thing about the Rams’ first two games that strikes you is how they’ve delivered on almost everything the Jay Norvell Era promised — but never quite delivered.
What was supposed to be a high-tempo, high-octane passing game from 2022-2025 was more notable for inconsistent QB play and painfully stagnant offensive development. CSU under Norvell also developed the habit of shooting itself in several feet with drive-killing, and sometimes game-swinging, flags. The Rams ranked No. 82 in the FBS last fall in fewest penalty yards per game (56.3).
This season, the ship looks tighter. CSU ranks ninth nationally in fewest penalty yards and heads into the weekend tied for third with just three flags per contest.
Teams that don’t beat themselves while also getting electric QB play? Those are ones that tend to rise up and shock the world.
“The anatomy of an upset, which this would be if they could knock off BYU, is to play clean,” Neuheisel noted. “Create some turnovers and be around in the fourth quarter, where all of a sudden the home crowd can sit there and say, ‘We have a chance.’ And the visiting team can look around and go, ‘Holy smokes, we are in a hornet’s nest.’ And that’s exactly how they can find their way to a major upset in one of those show-stoppers that the country takes notice of.”
Miles to go yet. Although the parallels to ’94 run deeper than just those matching 2-0 starts. In the Buffs’ third tilt of that season, they trekked to a Big Ten campus (Michigan) and came away with one of the signature wins in program history. In Week 3 of CSU’s slate 32 years ago,
CSU finished 10-2 in 1994. CU finished 11-1. It’s too early to work yourself into a lather on the third Saturday of September. But it’s never too early to dream.
