NOVEMBER 14, 2024|
Photo – UW Athletics logo – Bigfoot99 file image
The bitter rivalry between Wyoming and Colorado State is bone-deep, true and time-tested.
In 2010, Colorado State stopped counting the first Border War in its official history of games between the schools.
CSU professors may have been scrubbed from the game, from their official history book, like some Orwellian mind trick. In Wyoming history, though, the first Border remains a bitterly contested defeat.
It occurred on Thanksgiving Day 1899. November 30th was the date.
College football was new and not as well-organized as we know it today. Wyoming and Colorado each offered its own official to serve as a referee.
The Aggies proffered Professor E.B. House as its official. The kindly professor endured the insults and curses of Wyoming players to every unfriendly call he flagged.
The Fort Collins Express reported that Wyoming fans surrounded the professor waving canes and yelling, “Kill! Kill!, Kill!”
Yes, that’s right. It resembled the jailhouse scene from Arlo Guthrie’s Thanksgiving song, “Alice’s Restaurant.”
Currently, CSU recognizes there was an attempt to play a football game with Wyoming in 1899, but it was a forfeit and does not count in the record.
Wyoming, on the other hand, still counts the game and holds it with a deep, hostile memory that serves as bitter fodder every year. Mascots have been stolen, fields have been scarred with school letters burned into the grass, and one of the greatest rivalries lives on into its third century.
Saturday’s matchup will be played out in Fort Collins.
The annual Bronze Boot Run takes place this morning with University of Wyoming ROTC detachment running the game ball to the state border on U.S. Highway 287 where ROTC members from CSU will complete run to CSU following a short ceremony at the summit on the state line.
The 116th Edition of the Border War game between the two rivals will be played Friday, November 15th at 6 p.m. Mountain Time at Colorado State’s Canvas Stadium in Fort Collins. Bigfoot 99 will have the radio broadcast beginning with the pregame show starting at 4:30.
