FORT COLLINS, Colo. — Assuming all goes to plan, Colorado State football is set to play its first game of the season on Thursday night against the Fresno State Bulldogs.
Despite originally being slated to host Fresno State (0-1) in 2020, due to some shuffling of the schedule, the Rams (0-0) will travel to Bulldog Stadium for a second straight year.
When the two teams faced off in 2019, CSU was able to secure a 41-31 win over their Mountain West foes. In that game, the Rams were led by then-junior running back Marcus McElroy as he finished with a career-high 117 rushing yards on 18 carries and found the end zone twice.
Now a senior and the team’s number one running back on the depth chart, McElroy is aiming to have another strong showing against Fresno State. According to McElroy, there is nothing special that he needs to do in order to replicate that success though — he simply needs to go into the game with the mindset that he will succeed.
“I think I just came in with a little more confidence,” McElroy said of the 2019 Fresno State game.
McElroy explained how over the course of the 2019 season, things were pretty up and down for him as he tried to get healthy while still contributing as one of the team’s primary backs. In the Fresno State game, though, everything just felt right for the former Mullen High School standout.
“I finally got off of my injury a little bit, so I started to feel a little good. And the coaches had a lot more confidence in me — so I think going into that one I just felt a little more confident with a lot of things going on scheme-wise. And then just health-wise as well,” McElroy said.
“I’m really excited to play this game. Fresno, for me, a lot of my family is from California, so I think it just gives me somewhat of an ‘at-home’ feeling.”
While the opponent and location will be familiar for McElroy, unfortunately, one of the major aspects that will be significantly different is not being able to see his relatives on the trip.
“It’s tough,” McElroy said. “As a student-athlete it kinda sucks not being able to see your family.”
McElroy continued, explaining how 2020 has already been weird from a family standpoint because he has not gotten to spend much time with his relatives since the country started to shut down last spring. At one point, McElroy even said that he even went four or five months without seeing his own parents.
“That was kinda tough,” McElroy said. “You just realize that you’ve got to try and stay in the best contact that you can. Text and call — use the opportunities that you do have — and just sort of get used to it.”
But even if McElroy is more or less used to the new normal, the senior running back admitted that it’s still tough to grasp with the thought of looking up at the stands and not seeing his family members sitting there, or visiting with them postgame like he would in a traditional season.
“It’s definitely going to be a different sort of aspect for us as a team — just because we did build a family bond,” McElroy said. “A lot of players have met other people’s families and so I just think it’ll be a different kind of vibe going out there.”
The silver lining of it all, according to McElroy, is that while it is disappointing to not be able to see relatives on the trip, he feels this process should only bring everyone on the team closer together as they navigate this wonky situation.
“I think it will be better for us as a team because we’ll be able to sort of build a family of our own — just because we won’t really have one to go to afterwards,” McElroy said.
CSU fans, of course, will hope that a stronger bond pays off in the form of a Rams victory. It’s been north of 300 days since the Ram faithful last got to cheer on the boys in green and gold, and they’re chomping at the bit to release some of that Ram pride.
