By Mike Kahn
CBS SportsLine Executive Editor
Sept. 5, 1998
DENVER -- This was the game that was supposed to change everything in college football for the state of Colorado. Too many people just weren't allowing for Rick Neuheisel and the Colorado Buffaloes to be coming off an aberration of a season.
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It isn't as if the 25-10 record Neuheisel had fashioned, despite last year's 5-6 mark, was weak. The bigger problem was Colorado State finished 11-2 last year and won impressively last week over a highly-regarded (if overrated) Michigan State team in East Lansing.
This game, traditionally played later in the season, was obviously more heated than normal. It was 95 degrees on Saturday, and with more than 76,000 people in this debut of the Rocky Mountain Showdown in the Big City, there were too many variables for it to be easily tracked.
So why were so many surprised by the 42-14 Colorado victory?
"We hadn't played in 280 days and so many things had to be proven," Neuheisel said. "But this team showed we have a lot of heart. This is not the season and we do have a lot of things we have to work on. The big thing is we went out and beat a good football team tonight."
COLORADO HAS MAINTAINED FAR TOO much command of the series for Colorado State to have been favored. But they were. True, the Rams came into the game ranked 15th in the country, with the Buffs coming off a sub-par season. Then again, the last time CSU won a game in this series (1986), most of the Colorado starting lineup was in first or second grade.
The change of habit also had the original fair-haired boy in the state -- Neuheisel -- under fire at Colorado. Meanwhile, CSU coach Sonny Lubick had stolen the limelight with a 42-19 record (.688) as the hot college coach in the state. And it was also the battle of Colorado -- though Mile High Stadium had the feeling of a CSU home game, maybe it's the 48 Colorado natives that play for CSU as opposed to just 27 for Colorado. All these angles were more difficult to read than a hypotenuse triangle.
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The Rams just weren't on the same level as the Buffaloes Saturday night. (AP)
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"I didn't pay any attention to all of that," Neuheisel said. "It would have made things more difficult than they already were. We just needed to prepare for this season the best we could. Now we've started. We started off with a great win and we just have to keep on improving."
This was all about Neuheisel's young and unproven Buffaloes. Names like Mike Moschetti and Cedric Cormier joined preseason All-Big 12 picks, Marcus Stiggers, Dwayne Cherrington and Darrin Chiaverini in this generation of Colorado football lore. Any perception that Colorado State would win was the product of some over active imaginations.
"OH MAN, THERE WAS JUST SO MUCH hype about them we could hardly take it," Cherrington said. "But hype don't last long when you get socked in the mouth on the football field. You've got to go out there and play four quarters. We couldn't wait.
"We went through a lot of bad stuff last year, and coach Neuheisel knew things had to be different. We're smarter and more disciplined because he doesn't take anything from anybody now. He's tougher, so we're tougher. I think everybody saw that tonight."
There was a reason why Colorado held a 52-15-2 series lead and had been 9-1 versus their intrastate rival since 1983. It's because of the tradition and pride that is passed on from generations. For more than 28 minutes of the first half, it had that appearance of a big brother/little brother mystique as the primary factor -- with the additional factor of the young Buffs showing more size and speed than the Rams.
But one play at the end of the half -- a 36-yard touchdown pass from Ryan Eslinger to Frank Rice -- breathed enough life into the Rams to create this illusion of an exciting football game. Just as they fell behind Michigan State 16-0 in their opener last week before pulling out a 23-16 upset, the Rams showed resilience might be their greatest strength.
Eslinger engineered an 11-play, 80-yard drive following the second half kickoff, and it was like a different team with the ball. Suddenly, the Rams led 14-13 and the momentum shift was apparent to everyone except those on the Colorado side of the field.
It turned out to be nothing more than a blip on this screen of omnipotence in this series, until the next possession. With no barometer from which to view these Buffaloes in their opener, all that mattered was the present.
MOSCHETTI REQUIRED JUST EIGHT PLAYS to take his squad 79 yards. People can talk about conference games all they want. When CU showed the poise to regain the lead on the ensuing drive, the intensity on the field reached a new level. This game mattered more than any game in the Big 12 for Colorado. This was all about bragging rights in the Rocky Mountains. It was about whether Neuheisel had lost it and Lubick found it.
"That's a lot of bull," Cherrington said. "You saw why tonight. They're a good football team, but we're just a lot better."
The size, speed and confidence of Colorado had a staggering effect on the Rams. And Moschetti, a junior college transfer from La Mirada, Calif., who played safety in spring drills, had everything to do with it. His ability to improvise and execute will go a long way toward the success of this team once the conference games begin.
"This is just the start," Moschetti said. "A lot of good things happened, but we're a long way from being the kind of football team we need to be."
It was one thing when Moschetti hit Stiggers with a 53-yard touchdown pass. But freshman Cormier, just minutes after Moschetti had brought CU back into the lead, took a punt on his own 18 and outran all 11 Rams for an 82-yard touchdown -- Colorado's first punt return for a touchdown since 1990. Moments later, a fumbled punt snap gave the Buffs the ball back inside the CSU 20. Less than three minutes into the final quarter, CU had built a 21-point lead.
The Rams found out something that was necessary before feeling too good about themselves. It's one thing to overtake Michigan State, a team that lost 48-14 Saturday to a mediocre Oregon team. It's quite another to be the dominant football team in the state of Colorado.
It just wasn't going to happen.
So don't go counting out Rick Neuheisel and the future of this program. Rumors of his demise turned out to be nothing more than a lot of hot air on this summer night in the Rockies.
"We're a good football team and we're going to get better," Chiaverini said. "Right now, it's for bragging rights. But by the end of the year, I think this game will go a long way toward helping everybody's confidence."
Particularly that blond guy they call "Coach."
Mike Kahn is CBS SportsLine's executive editor.