The Colorado State football team has a lot to look forward to next season. They are opening a new stadium, they have exciting matchups against to teams like Alabama and in-state rival Colorado. Still, they cannot lose focus of the here and now.

“It’s easy for me, I know it’s easy for the players, but it’s easy for a coach, it’s easy for anybody to start looking ahead, thinking about the stadium and playing Oregon State on Aug. 26, and playing in the Rocky Mountain Showdown and going to Tuscaloosa and having Boise State come here on campus; but we’ve got to focus on today,” Rams head coach Mike Bobo told Benny Bash, Joe Williams and Kent Erickson during the Big Show on Mile High Sports Radio. “So you’ve got to constantly keep pounding the message of what we’ve got to do on a daily basis to improve, just get a little bit better every day.”

If the Rams are unable to improve, they might be in trouble. They have a challenging schedule. The play a perpetual national title contender in the Crimson Tide. Even the improved Buffaloes are a monumental challenge.

“We just keep talking about the challenge that we have,” Bobo said. “If you want to be great, you don’t back down from any challenge and you accept all challenges. Our schedule is a challenging football schedule, with the non-conference schedule that we have, the in-conference schedule, the side that we’re on is very challenging. We talk about that on a daily basis. The responsibility that we have in the program to be ready and put our best foot forward. We don’t want to look back and say we didn’t do what we needed to do to be ready.”

The next step in terms of preparation for the Rams is Saturday’s Green and Gold spring game. Bobo discussed what he hopes to see from his team in the scrimmage.

“You hope nobody gets hurt, first of all, that’s No. 1,” he said. “I want to see offensively, our guys continue to execute…That’s what offense is: execution.”

Bobo has been impressed by the offense all spring. While that will be showcased on Saturday, don’t expect the Rams to tip their hand entirely.

“We’re not going to do everything we’ve done all spring, because it will be streamed on the Mountain West Network,” he said. “We’ll be a little bit basic, and some of the new wrinkles that we’ve done, we won’t do. But at the same time, we ought to be able to execute our base package.”

As for the defense, spring has not always been kind to the unit. Bobo would just like to see the group continue to get better.

“It been a tough spring for our defense,” he said. “I thought this last week, I saw some improvement. We’re starting to play our assignments a little better, our zone coverages, doing a better job of not giving up the big play, keeping things in front of us, rallying down and tackling or whatever it is we’re doing in that drill. I’d like to see another step defensively.

“I don’t know if we’ve, in any of our live situations so far this spring, has our No. 1 defense caused a turnover. That’s great for our No. 1 offense. In every live situation, there’s zero fumbles and zero interceptions. That’s awesome. You’ve got to win the turnover battle, but at the same time, you’ve got to create some turnovers.”

Both units will be on display on Saturday. Kickoff is set for 1 p.m. MT.

Listen to the full interview with Mike Bobo, including his thoughts on the Rocky Mountain Showdown, in the podcast below.

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Catch The Big Show with Kent Erickson and Benny Bash featuring Irv Brown and Joe Williams every Monday-Friday from 12-2PM on Mile High Sports Radio AM 1340 | FM 104.7 or stream live any time for the best local coverage of Colorado sports from Denver’s biggest sports talk lineup.