Folsom's First Century Chapter 4: The Brightest Lights

In 1987, the Colorado football program was on the rise. So, too, was ESPN. Since their first college football broadcast from Folsom Field eight years earlier, they had become a major player in the sports media landscape. The Big 8 had adjusted its schedule that season so that CU now played Nebraska at home in odd-numbered years, which meant the rematch of 1986’s shocking upset would again be played in Boulder. ESPN wanted the game, but the proposed 2 PM start time in late November meant that it would finish in darkness. The only problem was that Folsom Field was not equipped with lights. The solution was to bring in portable lights from an Iowa-based company specializing in large events like football games. 

The 1987 Nebraska game was notable for another reason. To mark the occasion of playing under the lights at home, Bill McCartney, always a consummate showman, dressed the Buffaloes in black pants for the first time ever. The look was a winner, but the Buffs were not, and they missed out on a bowl game that season despite a 7-4 record. 

The following year the Buffs, behind quarterback Sal Aunese and running back Eric Bieniemy, won eight games and entered the national rankings for the first time in a decade. Folsom Field also hosted its first true night game, when ESPN broadcast the game against Oklahoma. CU came up short once again, but they would become an ESPN late night favorite for the rest of the decade; and they would usually come out on top. Folsom Field is a stunning setting for a daytime football game, but there’s something magical about the place at night. 

The third (and final) version of Folsom’s astroturf debuted the following season. Players raved about its bounce and grip at the time, but it also lead to even more nasty turf burns than the previous iteration. 

1989 was the one-hundredth season of CU football. It was also the most special. With Sal Aunese terminally ill with stomach cancer, sophomore quarterback Darian Hagan and the Buffs started the season with three home victories in front of Aunese, who watched from the stands. Players would point to his box in the Flatirons Club after big plays. A 38-7 destruction of 10th-ranked Illinois would be the final game Sal saw. He died one week later.

The loss of their spiritual leader did not derail CU’s best team in history. It only inspired them to play harder. Nothing could stop the 1989 Buffaloes, and they ascended to #2 in the country by early November, when third-ranked Nebraska came to town. 

November 4, 1989 may have been the single greatest day in the history of Folsom Field. It was a clash of two undefeated teams with national championship aspirations. More than that, the opponent was Nebraska, who had by now become CU’s most hated rival. CBS was on hand to bring the game to the nation. The Buffs were the Cinderella story of the season, but Nebraska was Nebraska. After a snowstorm earlier in the week, Saturday was perfect football weather. 

The game was tight all the way and featured one of the most memorable plays in CU history, known simply as “the pitch”. When Nebraska’s final hail mary attempt fell incomplete as time expired, the most emotional celebration Folsom has ever seen unfolded. It was called the “game of the century” around Boulder, and it just might top my list of Folsom’s greatest games. 

The 1990s were the most prosperous decade in CU football history. National television was on hand regularly as the Buffs staged memorable battle after memorable battle. CU spent 143 consecutive weeks in the AP Top 25 from 1989 to 1997, which is still one of the ten longest streaks ever. While the decade’s most famous plays happened in Ann Arbor and Columbia, and the national championship was won in Miami, Folsom Field was the site for much of that golden era’s drama. Without the last second wins over Stanford and Washington in 1990, the Fifth Down, the Clip, and the national title would never have happened. 

CU kicked off 1991 under an enormous “1990 National Champions” banner. More importantly, the banner was hanging from a brand new athletic center in the north end zone. The Dal Ward Center, named for the only CU coach besides Bill McCartney to win an Orange Bowl, was an enormous and much-needed upgrade to the team’s facilities. Finally, the team had a weight room, locker room and meeting rooms worthy of their on-field excellence.

McCartney, along with athletic director Bill Marolt, had been hired during a time of austerity for the athletic department, but after Mac’s team came within one game of a national championship in 1989 he began to demand better facilities. The previous CU team house was constructed in 1961 and was never intended to be anything other than a temporary solution. The facility was cramped and decidedly uninviting for recruits. McCartney maintained it had already cost him several, and argued that the university could not afford to fall further behind, especially now that it was competing among the nation’s elite programs. 

Original plans called for the new team house to be ready for the 1992 season, but Coach Mac pushed for 1991. Shortly after CU’s 1990 home finale, the old “sweatbox” was demolished, and construction began. Ironically, less than two decades later Dal Ward itself would be referred to as “cramped” and “outdated”. Such is the college facilities arms race. But by the standards of the early 90s, it was mighty impressive. 

Financed largely through a $5 million donation from the Adolph Coors Foundation, the $12 million team house won Athletic Facility of the Year in 1991. An interesting piece of trivia: the Coors Foundation’s donation was the reason the CU Events Center basketball arena bore the Coors name for 28 years. Whether the decision to put the name on the arena and not the team house was the university’s or the foundation’s is not clear.

Built in the campus’ signature Lyons sandstone, Dal Ward was a major aesthetic upgrade to Folsom. The north end of the stadium finally matched the rest of the exterior. It also housed a more advanced scoreboard that could show increasingly sophisticated animations (though video replay wouldn’t arrive until the end of the decade). 

Folsom Field hosted only one rock concert in the 1990s (Paul McCartney paid a visit in 1993) but Bill McCartney used the stadium three times for his evangelical Promise Keepers men’s ministry. The first rally in 1992 drew 22,500 worshippers (and several hundred protesters). The next two events in 1993 and ‘94 sold out, before he moved the proceedings to Mile High Stadium in 1995 as the movement grew.

By that time, the winningest head coach in Colorado football history had already announced his shocking retirement at age 54. After a two-year honeymoon under new head coach Rick Neuheisel when the party rolled on like nothing had changed, CU football hasn’t had sustained success since Coach Mac left. 

Mention of Neuheisel’s name will still draw grimaces from most people in Boulder, but he was the first CU coach to seriously campaign for an indoor practice facility next to Folsom. It was a vision he shared with CU Athletic Director Dick Tharp, who took over from Bill Marolt in 1997.

Tharp and Neuheisel also wanted to expand Folsom’s capacity by 8-10,000 seats, and it’s easy to see why. Between 1990 and 1996, Folsom sold out 28 times – two out of every three home games. However, it’s probably a good thing that expansion didn’t happen then, because there would be only 15 more sellouts over the quarter-century between 1997 and 2022.

What was definitely not a good thing, however, was the failure to build an indoor practice facility, or even the inflatable bubble that Bill McCartney had started campaigning for back in 1991. In an eerily prescient column written in early 1997, Terry Frei of the Denver Post wrote:

“…if you consider the Buffaloes’ mission to remain among the elite, then it isn’t so much an issue of comparing facilities in 1997 – but in 2002. Say spending all that money would be misordered priorities? Fine. But if the football team starts going 4-7 and funding becomes tougher for the nonrevenue sports, both men’s and women’s, then don’t whine, either.”

It would be nearly two decades before CU got a full indoor practice facility, and their average record from the day that column was written until the day the IPF opened was 5 wins and 7 losses. 

On a brighter note, Folsom Field returned to glorious natural grass in 1999. SportGrass, a hybrid of five types of bluegrass with a synthetic mesh underneath, replaced the Astroturf that had covered Folsom Field in various iterations for nearly three decades (though you can still walk on Astroturf on the sidelines today). The new field had a layer of sand underneath for drainage, plus four miles of subterranean heating pipes. The price tag was $1.2 million, and it was worth every penny.  SportGrass was 20 to 25 degrees cooler in the summer than artificial turf, it reduced injury risk, and it looked absolutely gorgeous on a fall day with the flatirons in the background. 

Neuheisel had advocated for the natural grass field, but by the time it was ready for the 1999 season, Slick Rick was in Seattle as the coach of the University of Washington and CU’s head coach was Gary Barnett. For 1999 Folsom also received new scoreboards in the north and south endzones, both of which could show video highlights. The new “BuffVision” setup cost $3.6 million and was financed by selling advertising on the new boards. 

With the Dal Ward Center and new natural grass, Folsom looked the best it had in decades as the new millennium began, but big changes were around the corner. 

Next time: the largest expansion since the 1960s, blackout games, and the most famous final score in CU history 

Folsom’s 25 Greatest Games Nominees from this chapter:

• September 16, 1989 vs. #10 Illinois – Highly touted Illinois quarterback Jeff George begs the officials to quiet the CU crowd six different times. Final score: Buffs 38, Illini 7
• November 4, 1989 vs. #3 Nebraska – This one might end up #1 when we rank all of these. It’s the highest ranked matchup in the history of Folsom Field, and also the most emotional. They won it for Sal. 
• September 6, 1990 vs. Stanford – Eric Bieniemy plunges over the goal line on fourth down for CU’s first win of their national championship season, following an opening week tie with Tennessee
• September 29, 1990 vs. #12 Washington – Deon Figures intercepts a Mark Brunell pass in the end zone with seconds on the clock to preserve CU’s 20-14 win 
• November 2, 1991 vs. #9 Nebraska – in a game that would decide the Big 8 title, CU runs a blocked extra point back for a two point conversion and blocks a game winning field goal attempt at the end of the game in a 19-19 tie which led to the Buffs and Huskers sharing the conference title with matching 6-0-1 records
• October 17, 1992 vs. Oklahoma – starting punter Mitch Berger, filling in at kicker, nails a 52 yard field goal as time expires, giving CU a 24-24 tie with the Sooners and preserving their 25 game Big 8 unbeaten streak. 
• September 17, 1994 vs. #10 Wisconsin – CU sets the tone for a special season by demolishing their highly touted Big Ten visitors 55-17. The Buffs repeat the performance in Madison the following year. 
• November 19, 1994 vs. Iowa State – Rashaan Salaam clinches the Heisman Trophy by going over 2,000 yards on the season with a dramatic 67 yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter, touching off one of the biggest celebrations in Folsom’s history. Also Bill McCartney’s final home game as CU coach. 
• September 23, 1995 vs. #3 Texas A&M – in a marquee early season non-conference matchup (the teams would be conference opponents the following season) #7 CU knocks off the Aggies 29-21 before a new Folsom Field record crowd of 53,849. 
• November 16, 1996 vs. #9 Kansas State – a snowy, defensive matchup of top ten teams which is still the last such occurrence in Folsom Field history. CU prevailed 12-0. It was the final win of an eight year stretch where CU lost a total of one conference game to anyone other than Nebraska. 
• September 6, 1997 vs. #24 Colorado State – the only Rocky Mountain Showdown in which both teams were ranked. #8 CU got the better of a very good CSU team 31-21. 
• November 26, 1999 vs. #3 Nebraska – the only loss to be nominated. Trailing 27-3 entering the fourth quarter, CU came within inches of winning the game in regulation. The final few minutes must be seen to be believed. The Huskers ultimately prevailed in overtime 33-30. 

Special thanks to Stuart Whitehair of CUatTheGame.com for providing the images used in this chapter’s cover photo.