College football season has nearly arrived; the kickoff of the 2017 season is just a mere four days away, when Oregon State will travel to Fort Collins to play CSU in the brand-new on-campus stadium. To celebrate the upcoming season, Reviews.org recently posted an article ranking every college football team, state by state, by all-time winning percentage. In Colorado, the top team is surprisingly CSU-Pueblo (.632), followed by CU (.582) and Air Force (.547) rounding out the top three. The Colorado State Rams (.477) come in seventh out of the 10 qualifying teams.
While Colorado or Colorado State are the Centennial State’s most well-known programs, CSU-Pueblo has been among the most dominant teams in Division II football. In seven seasons under head coach John Wristen, the ThunderWolves have gone 68-16 (.810), winning their conference five times and the national championship once (2014). The ThunderWolves’ recent success is even more impressive considering that CSU-Pueblo didn’t have a football team from 1985-2007. The rankings do not consider the division in which a program plays, but authors Zoë Meeken and Craig Hanks note that it’s rare for a large, BCS school to top its state’s rankings:
“Big FBS schools in states with a lot of NCAA football teams have a lot of competition, and thus an inherent disadvantage trying to top their rankings,” they explain. “The ten teams that pull off the feat are Alabama, USC, Florida State, Notre Dame, LSU, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Penn State, and Tennessee.”
Before reviving the program under Wristen, CSU-Pubelo had successful runs when the school was known as University of Southern Colorado (1975-2002) and Southern Colorado State College (1961-74), and as Pueblo Junior College (1937-60) before that. The school has fielded a football team since 1938, with gaps from 1943-45 (due to WWII) and 1985-2007.