80 Years Ago: The Birth Of Buffaloes

Chip the costumed buffalo mascot joins the C-Unit at a men's basketball game.

BOULDER—Head coach Bill McCartney needed a gimmick. Or, he may not have needed it. His team had finally gotten off the snide a week before. But, when you have wallowed with the Davids of college football for this long and then come face to face with one of its Goliaths, a gimmick often comes in handy.

The evolution of former head coach Chuck Fairbanks and Regent Jack Armstrong from university hierarchs to avant-garde artists by trade produced an idea that could most kindly be described as “misguided” by this point when they officially decided to mask the athletic program in a superfluous sky blue. Now, after three years of losses dealt in excruciatingly harsh doses, cries for change deafened from every outlet.

So, on October 16, 1984, a tilt with fifth-ranked perennial powerhouse Nebraska looming, McCartney’s gimmick took form. He made the decision to adorn his team, not in that same sky blue that had tarnished the previous coaching regime, but in black as a program, and a university trademark, made its triumphant return. For three quarters, the Buffs played like the missing piece to the puzzle was finally in place. They led the might Huskers 7-3 heading into the final quarter primed to pull off what was to be the biggest upset since an altercation in the Valley of Elah a few thousand years before, or at least it felt that way.  

“They wanted to announce in advance that we’ll be wearing black to make sure all the guys out there who have worn that black jersey, and worn it with so much pride and distinction, know that we would dedicate this game to them,” cried McCartney the Monday before. “We’re going to play our hearts out for every Buffalo who has ever passed thru these doors.”

In the end, they came up just short but a precedent had been set. Less than a year later black, and a glorious past with it, was finally restored.

The decision to blur what was then only a quarter-century of tradition was a puzzling one at the time, but when you realize that the university’s athletic department went nearly twice as long at its outset without an identity, it may have actually seemed strangely appropriate.

For the first 44 years or so, they were an anonymous bunch, nomads, drifters and the like without any kind of distinction. They unofficially went by the “Silver and Gold”, Yellow Jackets, Hornets, Arapahoes, Big Horns, Grizzlies, but none ever served as more than a passing fad.

Since 1890, CU had fielded football teams that had experienced considerable success. Fred Folsom had coached this group to 102 wins in 15 seasons. They had sported a 21-game win streak around 1912 (still the program’s standard to this day).

There were undefeated seasons, five of them in fact. All of this and still by 1934, no nickname, no character, no individuality. Nothing on the surface to separate it from the scores of other programs from across the country, some of whom may not have put together the kind of on-field accomplishment that Colorado had but, at the very least, they had a moniker to hang their hats on.

The anonymity of the CU football program would finally come to an end in ’34 but even that quickly became a muddled ordeal.

Colorado's logo in the 1940's

That summer, The Silver & Gold, a popular student newspaper at the time, decided to sponsor a contest that would, at long last, provide a nickname and a mascot to a faceless outfit. News of the contest soon spread to the far reaches of the country as newspapers carried the idea nationwide.

Nationalism, complete with it designs on war, was reaching its peak abroad and the depression was hindering life at home.

In these tense times, a $5 prize to the entrant who created the winning submission was enough to pull even the passive and uninterested up from their seats as they began scribbling descriptive handles on letterhead and then rushing them to the local post office with designs on the “hefty” prize.

Applicants poured in from all from every state in the union, over 1,000 of them. The team would finally be christened but the chaos that would arise in determining a winner had only begun.

After delving through the entries for the better part of the next few months, judges Harry Carlson (athletic director), Walter Franklin (graduate manager) and Kenneth Bundy (editor of the Silver & Gold) had come to a decision. Claude Bates of New Madrid, Missouri and James Proffitt of Cincinnati, Ohio were declared the winners, both choosing the name “Buffaloes.” Ten days later however, the newspaper had decreed that Andrew Dickson of Boulder would instead be deemed the winner as his entry, also of “Buffaloes,” had actually arrived several days earlier.

With credit for the name finally in rightful hands, the next step came in officially bestowing the name on the program. No better time could have been chosen in order to provide the emotional boost that the ritual might conjure up than November 10, 1934 as the football team was preparing to welcome regional rival and perennial thorn in its side, Utah. The Redskins (now Utes) had defeated the Buffs nine straight times by the gaudy average of 21 points per game dating back to 1924.

The nickname was officially adopted at a ceremony attended by the entire athletic program on that November day.

The “Buffaloes,” Buffs for short, rode a wave of emotion much like they would almost exactly 50 years later with return of black against Nebraska.  This time though, they got the job done. They defeated those pesky Redskins 7-6. The gods on high must’ve welcomed the new nickname as a point blank field goal try by Utah went awry late in the game, helping CU preserve one of its biggest wins in a decade.

The football team finally had the kind of identity that had eluded them for so long and for the better part of the next year, they played like a group with a newfound sense of purpose. They finished that season on a five-game winning streak and actually would not lose any home game as the “Buffaloes” for over a calendar year.

Along with the new nickname also came, for the first time, a mascot. Shortly thereafter, for the season finale at the University of Denver, a group of students paid $25 to rent a buffalo calf along with a real cowboy to help keep it in line.

It took the cowboy and four students to control the calf on the sidelines. This inauspicious moment would become the foundation for one of the college football’s most unique traditions.

In essence, an identity and a mentality with it, was now fully transitioning thru its infant stages. 

Live buffaloes would appear off and on at games over the next three decades but nothing permanent would be adopted until the mid-1960s.

1959 saw the debut head coach Sonny Grandelius and a “horned helmet” that allowed the team the opportunity to commemorate the nickname through their attire for the very first time.

The uniform change gave way to a conference title and a berth in the Orange Bowl two years later.

What role the change actually played in the team’s successes on the field may have been minimal but, as the team in ’34 had shown and the group in ’84 still would, a sense of individuality, a source of pride always comes with it a hidden value of raw emotion and energy that can’t ever be measured.

That same year, black was introduced as the team’s most prominent color. Three years later, silver resurfaced as new head coach Bud Davis looked to separate his team from those of the previous regime which left the program in shambles after being handed numerous NCAA sanctions during the aftermath of the ’61 season. One year later, Eddie Crowder replaced Davis and black returned.  

Crowder would enjoy the winningest tenure in the history of the program over his 11 seasons.

“Blood looks better on black,” ex-Buff Phil Irwin once quipped.

This strange evolution was coming into form. The Buffs had built a reputation in those years as hard-nosed and gritty, a team that was able to pound the ball on the ground and smother an opposing offense its tracks. Needless to say, they were the very embodiment of their namesake.

They were a program defined by their persistence, their hard-charging tenacity, everything the free-roaming buffalo personifies. Maybe that’s what Mr. Dickson, Ms. Bates and Mr. Proffitt had in my mind.

By 1966, the tradition of running behind Ralphie was born and today proudly stands as a ritual without equal all in of sports.

Ralphie I runs prior to the Kansas State game in 1968.

They would ride an offensive overhaul during mid-week first into a battering of Indiana days later and eventually all the way to 8-3 season and a battering of storied Alabama on the strength of the most rush yards the Crimson Tide had ever given up at the time.

They handed a seemingly invincible Penn State team their first loss in three years in ’70 then completed the daunting task of winning in both Death Valley (vs. LSU) and in Columbus (Ohio State) over a three-week span a year later.

Then, on May 28, 1981, the switch was made to sky blue as the predominant uniform color. With that came a stigma that hovered over the program like a grey cloud for the better part of four years. The Buffs suddenly played like a team that had been robbed of its individuality over the period demonstrated by the miserable 10-31-1 record the team sported from ’81-’84.

McCartney brought an identity back on that October day against Nebraska in ’84. Black was officially back. and that although some may have lost sight of it in May of ’81, it had helped the program and its players develop a level of recognition the equivalent of what Boulderites experienced in ’34 when their team shed its “anonymous” label. The way those same Boulderites must have felt when Ralphie became its undeniable symbol by ‘66.

Unprecedented levels of pride and prestige have arisen from the “personality” this program has developed in the time since. That personality is now 80 years in the making and it all derived from a small school newspaper and its own gimmick.