Memorable Moments: A Trip Back in Time to 1926

Ag Day is a great and special tradition at Colorado State University, first implemented by the legendary Fum McGraw in the 1980s and has grown to celebrate the great and wonderful agricultural heritage of this university. Over the past 20 years, Ag Day has turned into "Orange Out Day", with fans and the stadium representing the original secondary color of the Aggie football days. Canvas Stadium will look like Empower Field with 30,000-plus fans wearing orange everywhere, tailgating and enjoying a day on the CSU campus before the game.

In honor of Ag Day, let's get into our time machine and travel back to the 1926 Colorado Agricultural College football season and attend a typical game at Colorado Field. The first thing that is different from today is that the football season was shorter and did not kick off until October 2^nd against Regis College. The Aggies only played nine games in 1926, four of them at home.

For our time travel today, we will go back to October 23, 1926, and we start our adventure in what is now known as Old Town. On the same day the communist party in the Soviet Union ousted Leon Trotsky, a light snow fell in Colorado with temperatures only reaching a high of 39 degrees. That weather did not hold fans back from attending a game with the 1925 defending champions taking on one of their biggest rivals, the Colorado College Tigers.

The festivities began somewhere near the intersection of College Avenue and Mountain Avenue, where fans would eat lunch, mingle around town and possibly shop. With a 2 p.m., kickoff time, fans started to make their way to Colorado Field at 1 to today's site of the Jack Christiansen Track. The 1926 season was the first in which fans could not park cars on the east sideline, so most fans left their vehicles, if they had one, at home.

From College and Mountain, the group of Aggie rooters, all dressed in white clothes and ringing their cow bells, would march down College Avenue toward the stadium. The college band would play, and the Fort Collins businesses all closed as the fans headed to the game. Students, already on the campus would find their way to Colorado Field, entering at a gate located on College Avenue and across from the now long demolished Agricultural Hall. Many fans would likely slow down just before those gates to look at the new gym and field house on College Avenue, nearing completion after months of construction.

Once fans made their way into the stadium and paid between $0.25 and $2.50 for seats -- $4.54 and $45.43 when calculating for inflation today -- they would all cheer and sing with the students before the Aggies took the field. Students got in for free thanks to the athletic fees they paid in their tuition. Led by the "Howling 60", the first cheerleaders for the Aggies who had been established that season, the group of 60 men, dressed in green and orange would start the cheers or songs all fans and students knew at the time.

There was no public address system to play loud music at Colorado Field in 1926, it took a group of men with megaphones leading the cheers that might sound like, "Boom Chicka Boom!" The main song, an unofficial school fight song called "Come on Aggies" sung to the melody of "On Wisconsin" would be the last song sung before the team entered the field from the north, where the locker room was located.

Harry Hughes, the legendary coach of the Aggies, was in his 16^th season and had five conference championships under his belt, hoping for his sixth despite calling 1926 a rebuilding season. He had a talented group of players who ran onto the field wearing dark yellow football pants, medium green colored jerseys with dark yellow numerals on their backs. The helmets, obviously leather, were either orange or gold in color and no facemasks.

The game started out very lackluster, but fans would continue to cheer pre-written cheers at time when the Howling 60 told them to. Students were expected to know all of these cheers and songs thanks to what was called the Freshman Bible, a small book all students received with songs, cheers and events they needed to know throughout the year.

At halftime, a group of students formed on the field in the shape of the letter "A." The goal for these students was to form the letter at the north endzone, then walk across the field to the south endzone to the tune of "Come on Aggies" without breaking up the formation of the "A." This tradition, started in the 1910s and ended in the late 1930s, was reported in newspapers and yearbooks on a regular and frequent basis. It stands as a long-lost CSU tradition from the Aggie era.

In the second half, the Aggies finally scored and scored often. As Rollie Caldwell crossed over the goal line for the first of his three touchdowns, the Aggie cannon fired its report from the back of a large military truck. Three times the cannon fired for three touchdowns, an Aggie tradition since 1920.

At the conclusion of the game, fans still ringing their cowbells and cheering from the guidance of the Howling 60, marched back into Fort Collins (Keep in mind, the campus was on the outskirts of the town) to build a bonfire once again at the intersection of College and Mountain. The Old Main bell was gone until it was returned in 2017, did not ring all night but fans would dance and party long after the 19-6 victory and 12^th consecutive conference win dating back to November of 1924. It remains the longest conference win streak in school history.

The Rocky Mountain Collegian published its paper on October 26^th with the headline, "Farmers Bury Bengal Jinx on Colorado Field." The lineup published in all newspapers and a detailed account of the game far more that today's games, allowed fans to know exactly what happened through the newspaper whether they had attended the game or not.

The Aggies would play only one more game at Colorado Field in 1926, a homecoming loss to the Utah Aggies. While they beat all schools from Colorado, giving them the rare "State Championship" achievement, the 1926 team finished third in the conference.

It would have been a much different day at Colorado Field 100 years ago, but the goal remains the same: "Come on Aggies!"

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