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Playing for keeps: Air Force, Colorado State will meet Friday for the last time for the foreseeable future

By November 27, 2025 | updated 6 days ago

After a game in a snowstorm, the Air Force football team remains undefeated. Players lift the Ram-Falcon trophy over their heads and are 8-0 after their 30-13 win at Canvas Stadium on Saturday. (The Gazette FIle)

FORT COLLINS – Such finality. Such opportunity.

With no guarantee Air Force and Colorado State will ever play again, the winner of Friday’s football game will not only finish a disappointing season by hoisting a trophy but then keep it indefinitely.

And for the Falcons, it’s a chance to make perhaps a final exit from Fort Collins having never lost within their in-state rival’s Canvas Stadium.

Air Force is 4-0 at the on-campus stadium at CSU.

“Oh man, you don’t want to be the team to mess that up,” said Falcons junior linebacker Brody Bujnoch. “It just adds a little more fuel to the fire, and it’s something that makes you look forward to this game a little bit more, especially if this could be the last time we meet in conference as conference rivals. Being able to say we haven’t lost to them at their stadium would be something to take with you forever.”

There’s no reason to think this rivalry will resume anytime soon as CSU heads off to the Pac-12 following this season while Air Force remains in the Mountain West.

The Falcons have four nonconference games each season. Two are reserved for Army and Navy. Another has been given annually to open against an FCS team.

That leaves one flexible date on the schedule. The Falcons have agreements in place for those games in all but one season (2030) through 2032.

One possibility is dropping the FCS team—unlikely, as the Falcons routinely draw a huge crowd on Parents’ Weekend and get a near-automatic victory. Another would be capitalizing on a rule that allows for a 13-game schedule in years that include travel to Hawaii, which will now be an every-other-year staple. But that would mean sacrificing a bye week, and coach Troy Calhoun said he doesn’t feel that’s fair to the cadet-athletes on his team.

So, this rivalry will be put in the deep freeze. Calhoun seems fine with that, as the programs operate differently in this era of the transfer portal and NIL.

“I’ll say this, if there was a way where you had a bunch of 22- or 23-year-olds, and they did too, yeah, now you’re talking a little more apples to apples,” said Calhoun, whose team has won seven of the past eight meetings in the series. “I think that might change your mindset a little bit.”

This year has brought disappointment for both programs. Colorado State (2-9, 1-6 Mountain West) needed some good fortune to get past FCS Northern Colorado on Sept. 6, fired coach Jay Norvell on Oct. 19, and will need to top Air Force to avoid its first 10-loss season since 1988.

Air Force (3-8, 2-5) played great offense but leaky defense during a 1-5 start to the season. It has now improved defensively, but is now struggling on offense.

This game won’t change all that came before, but it will leave a lasting impression of this rivalry, which has been played every year since 1974 (except for 2020), but will now be taken away … perhaps for good.

“If we can finish out the year with a good rivalry win that would be very important to us,” Falcons offensive tackle Trevor Tate said, “and very memorable.”

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Brent Briggeman

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