The University of Colorado Buffaloes brought their fall camp to the Colorado Springs region recently, and a series of informal cross-program exchanges left both coaching staffs and players discussing what college football could look like if the NCAA allowed something more structured.
Colorado set up fall camp in the Colorado Springs area, using Fountain-Fort Carson High School as its base, and the team visited the Air Force Academy on two separate occasions during that stretch. The visits grew out of Air Force's offer to make its indoor facility available should August weather drive practices inside, and the dialogue eventually led CU to schedule actual practice time on the academy's grounds.
NCAA regulations prevented the two schools from conducting a formal joint practice, though their schedules overlapped enough that players from both rosters were able to mix. Both Calhoun and Colorado's Deion Sanders addressed the assembled players; the groups then split off by position to talk and took part in a combined Q&A session. Calhoun framed the whole arrangement in terms of the sport's broader health, saying, "We're all about growing the game."
For at least one Falcon, the time alongside a Power Four program produced concrete benefits: Air Force sophomore Alex Perez came away with lessons from Colorado defensive backs that he has already begun applying in his film work. Perez said the CU players showed him a great deal about reading receivers and quarterbacks, crediting them with teaching him "a lot."
The encounter also put a spotlight on how much — and how little — separates the two programs. Air Force linebacker Vinnie Canosa called the two schools "completely different sides of the spectrum," pointing out that academy players do not collect NIL money or enjoy the same perks — private chefs, cars, upscale housing — that their CU counterparts might, yet said that when those topics came up, the players discovered they "really weren't" all that different from one another.
The gathering also suggested that whatever bad feeling once existed between the programs has largely faded; the schools had gone 46 years without facing each other before a 2019 matchup, a gap rooted partly in friction that developed between the two campuses during the politically charged final years of the Vietnam War era.
The NFL routinely features joint practices and preseason games at this point in the summer, and it is common for high school programs to scrimmage opposing schools before the season — but college football has no equivalent outlet. Because Air Force is locked into eight conference contests plus annual games against Army and Navy, its schedule offers almost no room for additional opponents, making any future meeting with Colorado likely to require a non-regular-season format.
Calhoun said he hopes a moment comes when programs can go up against each other in a spring game or August scrimmage setting, expressing hope that "maybe there can be a breakthrough in that regard down the road."
Whether the NCAA will reconsider its rules on preseason inter-program contact — and whether Air Force and Colorado could build on this summer's informal sessions — remains an open question heading into the season.