Image via WikipediaColorado State University Pueblo hadn’t had a football team since 1984, a casualty of a campuswide financial cut. The Thunderwolves are back on the gridiron playing football again at the Division II level and there is a noticeable change on the campus. The student body is more energized and there is much more campus pride that is apparent not only on campus but in the surrounding community as well. That is the power and the energy that college football can bring to a campus.

Of course you don’t have to take our word for it. Afterall, we are not in Colorado.  But how about the words of a former CSU Pueblo student who is now the Sports Information Director at his Alama Mater? We recently contacted Anthony Sandstrom and asked him a few questions about how bringing back football at CSU Pueblo has changed and benefited the university as a whole. Here is his response:

The return of football [to CSU Pueblo] has given the campus a rebirth, no doubt about it.  It has helped to raise enrollment (we jumped from 4,100 last year to over 4,600 this year), created a sense of student life that was certainly lacking (for the first time, we had homecoming, pep rallies that people actually attended) and an interest in our campus from the community, at probably the highest level it had ever been since we became a 4-year institution in 1963.  In our community, the campus lies east of the city, so the fact that the community has taken interest in us when we are kind of cut off from them physically is a great thing.  And there’s a buzz among the students, that’s for sure. They are way more interested in what we are doing on campus now.

But more than anything, we had a big donor to bring the program back.  Without community donations in excess of $13 million (in a drive that wasn’t even undertaken by us, but more by interested alums), it would not have been possible.  We had tried to bring football back in 2001, but it was determined that the money wasn’t there.  That is the most important element – the community participation in the project.  We’re just administrators here, and they put football on the table for it, and now we’re the caretakers…but we’re hardly the parents.

– Anthony Sandstrom, CSU Pueblo Sports Information Director

So there you have it. Bring back Titan Football and it will increase enrollment, raise student spirit and participation on campus and motivate the community at large. In the coming weeks we plan to provide more first hand accounts as to why football is essential to any college athletic department.