Bobby Anderson photographically reflects on his Colorado days: 1966-1969

Few figures in Colorado football program history are as revered as Bobby Anderson, who started at quarterback and later tailback for the Buffaloes from 1967-1969.

Anderson, one of four players to have their numbers retired by the University of Colorado, was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2006.

A two-time All-Big Eight Conference selection, Anderson additionally earned All-American honors as a senior in 1969, having led Colorado to an 8-3 record and victory over Bear Bryant’s Alabama Crimson Tide in that year’s Liberty Bowl.

Anderson’s career at Colorado propelled him into position for the 1970 NFL Draft, where he was selected 11th overall by the Denver Broncos.

Over 50 years have passed since Anderson last put on a Colorado uniform, but a half century has done little to blunt the memories of his college career and the experiences he shared with his teammates.

“Each game holds a bit of a memory for me and I look at some of the old scores, the old schedules and some of the old (game) programs and it just brings back wonderful memories,” he said. “I was very blessed and very fortunate to have wonderful teammates and coaches and being in Boulder at that time was really a special time. I’m very fortunate and very grateful for those times.”

But as late as the spring of 1966, Anderson was on track to embark on a collegiate sports career that would have taken him far away from Boulder.

By the time Anderson was a senior at Boulder High School, he was a highly regarded multi-sport athlete, excelling at football, basketball and baseball.

His older brother, Dick, was a junior defensive back for the Buffaloes and would soon be en route to becoming Colorado’s all-time leading tackler, a feat he accomplished following his senior campaign in 1967, Bobby’s first year playing at the varsity level with the Buffs.

Although he grew up in Boulder, could see Folsom Field from his house in North Boulder and went to high school a stone’s throw away from CU’s campus, Bobby Anderson’s decision to play football for Eddie Crowder at Colorado was far from a foregone conclusion by the end of his senior year in 1966.

Anderson took official recruiting visits to Kansas, Texas Christian, Stanford and Arizona State. In making his way to Lawrence, Anderson admitted he mostly did it to take advantage of a free visit. Plus, it was an opportunity to get on a plane for the first time in his life.

“The guys from Kansas were after me and I just thought I’d experience a recruiting trip,” he said. “I didn’t really have any intentions of going there because I wasn’t going to play in the Big Eight against my brother and some of the great teammates he had like (OL) Kirk Tracy from Lakewood High School, (DL) Mike Schnitker and some of those guys that I’d end up playing with (at Colorado).”

Pressure from who would turn out eventually to be a familiar face for Anderson during his NFL career greased the wheels in his consideration of playing for the Cardinal.

“John Ralston (head coach at Stanford from 1963-1971, later the Denver Broncos from 1972-1976) recruited me for Stanford, so I took a trip out to Stanford, which is a beautiful campus, so I really enjoyed that,” he said.

Ultimately, the scholarship offer from Florida caught his eye, as did the warm weather and opportunity to also play baseball in college.

“My grandparents were down in Sarasota, Florida, and I really had a desire to play college baseball, so I took a trip to Gainesville and went to Florida,” Anderson said.

Even 54 years after the fact, Anderson recalled that the Gators didn’t exactly recruit him by the book. In fact, Florida bent some NCAA recruiting rules in order to capitalize on Anderson’s grandparents living in-state.

“I was illegally recruited there,” he said. “(Visiting recruits were) not supposed to go outside of a 50-mile radius (of campus) but they put me on a private plane and flew me to Sarasota (181 miles southwest from the University of Florida) to have dinner with my grandparents and then flew me back to Gainesville.”

Recruiting violations aside, Anderson left the Sunshine State feeling confident about where he wanted to spend the next four years of his life.

“I was really impressed with the warm weather and the opportunity to play baseball, and they seemed like a classy outfit, so I signed a letter of intent to go to Florida,” he said.

Anderson heading to Florida was such a sure bet that his Boulder High School classmates who signed his senior yearbook all left him notes like ‘have a great time in Florida!’

However, at the 11th hour, fate — with some help from Eddie Crowder — intervened.

“When I came home from my last day of school, I had a letter from (Florida football coach) Ray Graves that said they had made a mistake and were sorry that they’d over-allotted their scholarships so they had to withdraw mine,” Anderson said. “I knew Eddie Crowder and Chet Franklin, the coaches up at CU, called (Graves) on it and said ‘you better back off of him.’”

“I always wanted to go to CU. I got caught up in the events of recruiting and kind of got wowed by the southern hospitality of Florida, but I ended up where I was supposed to be.”

Before 1972, freshmen were not permitted by the NCAA to play at the varsity level. Thus, when Anderson arrived on campus at CU in the summer of 1966, he was assigned to the Buffs’ freshman squad, coached by Dan Stavely.

“We were primarily cannon fodder and did preparation for the varsity team — my brother was a junior on that team,” he said. “There was really no development for us to get ready a game plan for a freshman game, because we ran everything for the varsity teams. We primarily ran the (scout) teams for varsity to get them ready for their games.”

Anderson and his fellow freshmen played a four-game schedule that fall, going undefeated against McCook (Neb.) Junior College, Wyoming and Air Force, as well as an interesting international opponent.

“We played the University of Mexico — Eddie had a relationship with the coach from the University of Mexico out of Mexico City. Their snap count was ‘uno, dos, tres’ — they weren’t well-schooled in football, so we beat them,” Anderson said.

The Boulder Daily Camera dubbed Anderson and his fellow freshmen the “Baby Buffs.” Admission on the afternoon of Oct. 14, 1966, at Folsom Field to watch CU’s freshmen face the University of Mexico was $2.

Anderson rushed for two touchdowns in the 35-6 victory.

In 1967, Anderson’s sophomore year at Colorado and his first playing at the varsity level, the Buffaloes went 9-2, finished the year ranked as the No. 14 team in the nation and defeated Miami in the Bluebonnet Bowl in Houston.

Anderson earned the starting quarterback gig — where he’d continue to start for Colorado until early in the 1969 season — in the spring and quickly led the Buffs to four straight wins to open up the year.

The Buffs whooped Baylor, 27-7, in the season opener and then won a close one, 17-13, on the road at Oregon on Sept. 23 — the last time a Colorado team would win a game in Eugene until the 2016 Pac-12 South-winning Buffaloes.

After convincing wins in the ensuing weeks against Iowa State and No. 17 Missouri, the 4-0 Buffaloes, at the time ranked No. 4 in the nation, won a tight game in Lincoln against Nebraska, 21-16, on Oct. 21.

The victory snapped a five-year losing streak versus the Huskers that saw Colorado lose by an average of 21 points per contest.

Colorado moved to No. 3 in the rankings and the win also would turn out to be the last time a Buffaloes team defeated Nebraska until Bill McCartney’s 1986 squad managed to end the 19-year losing streak.

Luckily for Anderson that day, Colorado’s defense turned in a stout performance, registering a pair of interceptions — including one via Dick Anderson — to help offset a litany of injury-induced struggles on offense.

“Our defense really won the game because (the Huskers) were mauling us,” Anderson said. “Their defense really stuffed us in the second half as guys were getting hurt...different guys went out at different times and so, the defense saved us.”

While the Buffs’ victory over Nebraska kept them perfect on the year, it came at a steep price: nearly two-thirds of Colorado’s starting offense suffered injuries during the game and were thus unavailable for an Oct. 28 showdown in Boulder against the lowly Oklahoma State Cowboys, who at that point in the season were 1-2-1 and had managed to score just 22 points in their four games.

“It was a heck of a game but (Nebraska) beat us up, I’ve got to tell you,” Anderson recalled. “They actually injured seven of our offensive starters that were out the next week at Homecoming against Oklahoma State — those guys had to heal up and we lost two weeks in a row to the Oklahoma schools…(sophomore) Mike Pruett was out at tight end, (junior) Mike Montler, our offensive tackle — I mean, seven offensive starters (were out)."

"When we opened up against Oklahoma State at home in Boulder — we’ve got seven new guys on the offensive starting team. That kind of plagued us.”

The injuries took their toll indeed, as Colorado fell, 10-7, the following week against the Cowboys. Still banged up, the Buffaloes were soundly dispatched on Nov. 4 by No. 15 Oklahoma, 23-0, which that year captured a Big Eight title and went on to win the Orange Bowl over Tennessee.

The back-to-back losses removed Colorado from the nation’s top 25 teams, but once healthy again, the Buffs won their final three games against Kansas, Kansas State and Air Force before defeating Miami in the Bluebonnet Bowl, 31-21.

Anderson earned MVP honors for the game, rushing for 108 yards and a pair of touchdowns while also throwing for an additional 49 yards.

The nine games won by the Buffs in 1967 marked a new high for the team under Crowder and the 31-21 victory over Miami in the Bluebonnet Bowl was Crowder’s first postseason triumph.

Despite the team’s accomplishments, Anderson still can’t help but wonder what Colorado’s senior-heavy team could have accomplished if not for that brutal, injury-filled game in Lincoln on Oct. 21.

“The ‘67 team was such a senior-laden team with great experience and great players,” he said. “It was a senior team that had great leadership and I was just fortunate enough to step in as a sophomore and have the advantage of all that experience in front of me. That’s the thing that marked the ‘67 team, which could have been even more recognizable nationally, had we not had all those guys hurt against Nebraska.”

“I think we would have given Oklahoma a much better game because we were seven guys short when we played (them).”

As a junior in 1968, Anderson earned All-Big Eight honors in his second season at quarterback, rushing for 788 yards and throwing for 1,341 while scoring 16 total touchdowns. But the Buffs took more than a step backward that year, finishing with a 4-6 record, good for a fourth place finish in the Big Eight.

Things had started out on a promising note, though, and a midseason 41-27 victory over last year’s Orange Bowl-winning Oklahoma Sooners had CU at 4-2 six weeks into the season.

“We opened up the season beating Oregon in Boulder and we actually beat Oklahoma, too,” Anderson said. “Oklahoma comes to Boulder — they’d been the returning Big Eight champions — and we beat them in a heck of a game in Boulder.”

However, the next week, the No. 3 Kansas Jayhawks awaited Colorado in Lawrence.

“We played against a real good Kansas team with the Riggins brothers (notably two-time All-Big Eight RB John Riggins, later a Super Bowl XVII MVP and champion with Washington who was a NFL HOF inductee, Class of 1992), the Shanklin brothers (WR Donnie Shanklin was the MVP of the 1969 Orange Bowl) — they had a heck of a team.”

The Buffs’ 27-14 loss at the hands of Kansas put the team on a slippery slope, one that would lead to two more consecutive losses.

"We got beat in Boulder by Nebraska, we got beat by Missouri on the road — they had a big, tough team — and at this point, we’re thinking we could (end the season) at 5-5.”

Hopes of a 5-5 finish to the year quickly went out the window when the Air Force Academy came to Boulder for a Nov. 23, season-ending matchup.

Colorado’s 58-35 loss to the Falcons tied the most points the Buffaloes had allowed since 1962, when Oklahoma beat the Buffs in Boulder on Nov. 3.

Air Force’s 58 points scored against CU in 1967 would not be eclipsed by an opponent until Oct. 4, 1980, when Oklahoma defeated the Buffs, 82-42, in Boulder.

“We scored a bunch of points but they really ran it up on us,” Anderson said.

The 1968 season was Anderson’s first without his brother on the team.

Dick Anderson had graduated earlier that spring and was selected in the third round of the 1968 NFL Draft by Miami.

He played his entire 10-year career with the Dolphins, and finished his career with two Super Bowl rings (VII, VIII). Anderson furthermore was named NFL Defensive Player of the Year in 1973 while leading the league in interceptions.

He was selected to three straight Pro Bowls between 1972 and 1974 and later was named to the NFL 1970s All-Decade Team as well as the Miami Dolphins Honor Roll.

Ultimately, changes to the coaching staff, despite a talented roster, contributed mightily to the Buffs’ regression in 1968.

“We had some great players,” Anderson said. “Mike Montler was an All-American right tackle, but we kind of flip flopped the offense a little bit. We ran as much as we possibly could. We scored a lot of points and ran up a lot of yardage but I think the thing with that season had a lot to do with coaching transitions.”

“Off the 9-2 Bluebonnet team from ‘67, Rudy Feldman, the defensive coordinator, he goes down and takes the head job at New Mexico. Joe Harper was an offensive line coach and he left for another head job for a small college in California — we lost about four or five of Eddie’s offensive staff.”

“From what I understand, the guys on defense were really frustrated because they just weren’t all communicating the way that they thought they should. They were trying to learn the new defense and work under new coaches and it was kind of a scattered season.”

The 24.4 points per game allowed by Colorado was the most the Buffs had allowed since 1963, Crowder’s first year at the helm in Boulder.

“It was just kind of a down year, but we recommitted in ‘69 and turned it back around again,” Anderson said.

In 1969, Anderson had high hopes for his senior season and looked forward to reversing the Buffs’ fortunes after a disappointing campaign the year prior.

After a commanding season-opening victory against Tulsa in Boulder, the Buffs travelled across the country for a Sept. 27 showdown with Joe Paterno’s No. 2-ranked Penn State Nittany Lions.

During the game, which Penn State won handily, starting tailback Steve Engel exited the game with a knee injury. With a lack of experienced depth behind Engel, the Buffs’ triple option offensive attack was blunted and they fell to the Nittany Lions, 27-3.

Early the next week, as the Buffs were practicing in preparation for an Oct. 4 home game versus Indiana, Crowder came to Anderson to suggest a change of plans.

“On Monday night, I was throwing the ball in (Balch) Fieldhouse like two hours after practice, trying to really get my passing down because I’d had a really disappointing day at Penn State,” Anderson said. “The next morning, (Crowder) calls me in and says ‘we’re thinking about making a change. With Steve (Engel) being hurt, we’ve got some good athletes at quarterback with Jim Bratten and Paul Arendt — we’re thinking about moving you to tailback and really want to make this move.’”

“I said, ‘Coach, it’s a different vision for (me) but I’m telling you — if you want me to play defensive tackle, I’ll do that.’”

From that point, Anderson made the position switch from quarterback to tailback, a move he found to be far from taxing.

“I just went with it — it was really easy,” he said. “In reality, from a mental standpoint, I think I probably felt a little less pressure on me at the tailback position. As a quarterback, I really learned every position on the offensive line and the offensive backfield — what everybody was doing. Knowing what the tailback was supposed to do was very easy. It was an easy transition for me and I suppose it lifted a little mental pressure off of me. I ran the ball a lot at quarterback anyhow, so it was mainly running the ball from a different position.”

Crowder, ever suspicious of prying eyes who might discover Colorado’s significant change in offensive structure, closely hid the fact that Anderson would start at tailback versus Indiana, even up through the Buffs’ pregame workouts before facing the Hoosiers.

“I practiced all week at tailback,” Anderson said. “When we made the change, (Crowder) covered up the gates at the practice field — I think they put tarps along the (gates) — they didn’t want anybody to know. A few boosters he let onto that (the position change) was going to take place, but even before the game, I warmed up at quarterback in the team drills. I was under center in the pregame drills and pregame warmups. It was only the first (play) of the game that I dropped into tailback.”

Indiana had maintained something of the nucleus from its 1967 Big Ten title-winning team that appeared in that season’s Rose Bowl and was led by team captain and quarterback Harry Gonso.

But when it was all said and done, the Buffs won by a 23-point margin with a helping hand from Mother Nature while Anderson, in his first start at tailback, spearheaded Colorado’s ground attack that racked up 281 yards and found the end zone four times.

“It snowed about four feet that day,” Anderson recalled. “We trashed the field — we played on a layer of sand (at Folsom Field) the rest of the year, pretty much — and (in 1971) they put in artificial turf. But we beat a good Indiana team. They had (quarterback, Indiana team captain and 1967 team MVP) Harry Gonso, (1968 and 1969 All-Big Ten WR) Jade Butcher — in ‘67, that Indiana team went to the Rose Bowl. They had a great team.”

“We beat them 30-7 in a four-foot snowfall. They came out of Bloomington, Indiana, (where it was) 70 degrees and they hit Boulder, Colorado. They wanted no part of our weather and playing us in that snowfall. But it was fun for us — we had a great time.”

Anderson’s position change worked out well for him individually as well as for the Buffs in general. He ended the 1969 regular season with 954 rushing yards and 18 touchdowns, both of which, in addition to his 219 attempts, ranked third in the Big Eight Conference.

For his senior season efforts, he earned first team All-Big Eight honors and was named a first team All-American.

Colorado went 7-3 for the regular season, with its losses coming at the hands of No. 2 Penn State, No. 12 Oklahoma and Nebraska, which finished the year ranked No. 14 nationally.

In late November, the Buffs accepted an invitation to face Bear Bryant and the Alabama Crimson Tide in the Liberty Bowl, slated for Dec. 13 in Memphis, Tenn.

In the weeks leading up to facing Alabama in the 1969 Liberty Bowl, Anderson admitted that he personally was focused on preparing for the Crimson Tide.

However, for the Buffs’ seven Black players, their attention undoubtedly was at least partially focused on stepping into a hornet’s nest in Memphis, which in 1968 had proved to be ground zero for a wave of race riots that spread to numerous cities across the U.S.

Alabama to that point never had a Black player on its roster, nor had the Crimson Tide faced Black opponents.

“We kind of just focused on playing football (but) I think our Black players probably had some senses,” Anderson said. “(Memphis) was the location in which a year and eight months prior, Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated. I’m sure it was on those guys’ minds, whether they wanted to be going down there.”

If Colorado’s contingent of Black players anticipated downright brutal treatment at the hands of the 50,000-plus fans who piled into Memphis Memorial Stadium on Dec. 13, those expectations were quickly met.

In 2007, many of Colorado’s former players from the 1969 team spoke to the Denver Post and recalled their experiences from the Liberty Bowl as the Buffs and Crimson Tide were set to meet in the postseason once more in that year’s Independence Bowl.

The players quoted all rang a consistent bell: fans and Alabama’s players were far from pleased at the reality of watching and facing an integrated team for the first time and they let the Buffs know it.

“A lot of them had not ever seen a Black football player,” recalled defensive tackle Bill Collins, a senior tri-captain for the Liberty Bowl. “Others were even more vicious. There was a lot of name-calling. The ‘N’ word was coming from everywhere. I was 20, and I never heard stuff like that in a stadium.”

Herb Orvis, College Football Hall of Fame Class of 2016 and a sophomore defensive end at the time who later enjoyed an NFL career with the Detroit Lions and Baltimore Colts from 1972-1981, had a similar recollection.

“(Alabama fans) spit on us,” he told the Post. “They treated us like dirt before and during the game. They were screaming racial remarks totally out of line — it was all because we had Black players on our team.”

As a rebuttal to the racially charged heckling and harassment, Anderson and fellow captain Mike Pruett, a senior tight end, decided to respond to show both the Crimson Tide and their fans that they were unafraid and united with their Black teammates.

As Anderson and Pruett walked out with Collins to shake hands with the game’s officials and Alabama’s captains, they tasked Collins with being the Buffs’ sole representative at the pregame coin toss.

“We step out and we tell Bill: ‘We want to make a statement. We’re going to stop about five yards short of going out to the referee and you take the middle, represent us and flip the coin. You can greet Alabama,’” Anderson said.

Greet Alabama Collins did. In an attempt to intimidate him, the vast majority of Alabama’s dressed players moved out to midfield and stood across from him.

“I went out to midfield by myself, and suddenly every player on the Alabama team came out to midfield,” Collins remembered. “I’ve never felt more alone in my life.”

After the coin toss, Anderson, Collins and Pruett returned to their sideline and prepared for battle.

When the clocks read all zeroes at the end of the fourth quarter, the Buffs had racked up 563 yards of total offense against the Crimson Tide en route to a 47-33 victory.

Colorado, amped up from the pregame intimidation attempt towards Collins, took a 10-0 lead after the first quarter that increased to 17-0 early into the second, when Anderson found the endzone on a 3-yard rush, scoring the first of his three touchdowns on the day.

The Crimson Tide had responded in the second quarter, however, and with 4:49 to go before halftime, the Buffs’ lead had been trimmed to four, with Alabama trailing 17-13.

After junior fullback Ward Walsh scored with 2:38 to go before halftime, Alabama quickly answered with a touchdown of its own, making the score 24-19 in favor of Colorado with 1:01 left in the second quarter.

On Alabama’s ensuing kickoff, the Buffs got some insurance courtesy of senior halfback Steve Engel, who returned the kick 91 yards for a touchdown, giving the Buffs a 31-19 lead at halftime.

By the time the Buffs retired for halftime and returned to their locker room, the constant heckling and racial slurs from fans had brought one of Colorado’s leaders to a boiling point.

“One thing I do remember — we get to halftime — (senior defensive end) Bill Brundige was an All-American and second round draft choice of the Washington Redskins (in 1970),” Anderson said. “He was a big guy — about 6’6’, 6’7. I’ve never seen Bill Brundige so mad and angry and riled up. He was screaming in the locker room: ‘Do you hear what they’re calling our brothers?! Are you hearing what they’re calling our teammates?!’ He was livid.”

The Buffs came out a bit flat in the third quarter, failing to score any points while allowing Alabama a pair of unanswered touchdowns. Entering the fourth quarter, the Crimson Tide had rallied and taken their first lead of the game, as the Buffs trailed, 33-31.

After Anderson scored early into the fourth on a 2-yard run, Colorado’s defense, led by Brundige, began to exert its will on Alabama’s offense. Brundige led the Buffs with 15 tackles and also was responsible for five of CU’s eight sacks on the day.

With the Buffs back in front, 38-33 and 2:48 remaining in the game, Alabama took possession of the ball deep in its own territory, hoping to mount a game-winning drive, but the Buffs swarmed Alabama signal caller Scott Hunter in the end zone and brought him down for a safety.

“Bill (Brundige), Herb Orvis and Bill Collins ended up sacking Scott Hunter in the end zone for a safety late in the game, which really sealed it for us,” Anderson remembered.

Now up 40-33, Anderson scored his third and final touchdown of the day for good measure and the Buffs, having shut out Alabama in the fourth quarter while scoring 16 points of their own, had silenced the Crimson Tide-friendly crowd and players themselves, with the final score reading 47-33 in the Buffaloes’ favor.

Anderson rushed 35 times in the game, gaining 254 yards and scoring three touchdowns. He capped his All-American senior campaign by winning Liberty Bowl MVP honors.

His 254-yard performance gave him 5,017 yards of total offense in his college career, making him the first Big Eight player in conference history to eclipse 5,000 yards.

Before celebrations could ensue, Colorado’s players stuck to the tradition Crowder had established as standard postgame operating procedure and headed to the end zone for a quick round of sprints, which the team referred to as “jingle jangles.”

“We were a team that ran jingle jangles after every game,” Anderson said. “Eddie Crowder told us about a team he’d been a part of that wanted to distinguish itself — it might have been one of the Oklahoma teams — and we were thinking that we wanted to be a team that distinguished itself, that people would remember. Eddie got this crazy idea that after every game, win or lose, we were going to go in the end zone and do three sets of jingle jangles. It’s where you start on the goal line, go to the end zone line, touch it, go the goal line, touch it, and down, back, down, back, down, back. The offense would do it and then the defense would do it.”

“A couple times after we got beat, people thought the coaches were punishing us, but we did it after all victories, too. After we beat Alabama, we did it one more time. We carried Eddie Crowder off the field to meet Bear Bryant and shake his hand. Then we went to the end zone for our jingle jangles.”

Despite the detestable behavior by Alabama’s fans and the clear discontent amongst the Crimson Tide in competing against Colorado’s Black players, Bryant was nothing short of humble and respectful after the game.

“He was really a classy guy,” Anderson remembered. “Bear Bryant comes into the locker room and he sought me out and shook my hand. In a deep, Southern syrupy voice, he says, ‘Son — you just made yourself a lot of money today.’ He was really gracious and really classy. We had a banquet after the game that the Liberty Bowl put on and handed out awards and so forth. Bear Bryant got on the stage and says, ‘Now, you big ol’ Colorado boys oughta be ashamed of yourselves, beating up on my little ol’ Alabama boys.’”

For Bryant and Alabama’s all-white football program, the clock was ticking. Soon, the Crimson Tide would begin to regularly recruit and play Black players.

It is widely recognized that a beatdown at the hands of USC in 1970 is what finally convinced Bryant and the Alabama football program to start recruiting Black athletes but ultimately, the Tide’s first defeat at the hands of a racially integrated program came from Colorado in the Liberty Bowl.

“It’s interesting. (People) talk about Sam Cunningham and Southern Cal going into Tuscaloosa the next year, and that’s when Bear Bryant made it known that he was going to start recruiting Black players after Cunningham ran all over him, but it was our ‘69 team that actually was their first experience playing against Black players — from Colorado — that also started that (process) for Alabama to change heart (and begin recruiting Black players),” Anderson said.

There are certainly a lot of individual accolades and achievements Bobby Anderson can look back on that defined his college career: a pair of bowl MVPs, two All-Big Eight Conference selections, All-American honors, the multi-generational admiration and love from Colorado fans — the list goes on.

Anderson went on to spend six seasons in the NFL with the Broncos, Patriots and Redskins from 1970-1975. Beginning in 1977, he joined KOA Radio, where he handled broadcasting duties for the Buffs for over 30 years before taking a step back to focus on a tax preparation business he founded in La Quinta, Calif. in 2009, which he continues to operate.

When Anderson reflects on his college days, he primarily remembers the entourage of teammates with whom he shared and accomplished so much.

“To me, it’s about relationships and people and the names that are just like brothers to me,” he said. “You go to war with those guys. All the way back from ‘67 — just one game after another. From Mike Schnitker to (DL) Ron Scott and the wonderful teammates I had, Kirk Tracy — nobody ever beat Kirk Tracy — he had 20-inch arms — and was one of the great players we got from Lakewood High School. I had a wonderful teammate named (ILB) Phil Irwin. Phil and I were together all the way from junior high, high school and college. We’re brothers.”

“I go back to Kirk Tracy — Bart Bortles from the West Coast, Bruce Heath, who was a walk-on from Pueblo, and Kirk Tracy — the guard, center, guard combination (in 1967) was great. We had two tackles — Mike Montler, who later became an All-American in ‘68 and Bill Csikos. Another great player was (slotback) John Farler; Wilmer Cooks was my blocking fullback.

“When I look at those teams, I (always think) about my teammates, the brotherhood, the names and the guys.”

In talking with Anderson, his play-by-play, game-by-game memory is nothing short of photographic. Through his vivid recollections of games and experiences, for Anderson, those memories may as well have been a day ago as opposed to more than half a century.

“We’re brothers,” he said. “I remember all of their numbers, I know what they looked like, I know what they smelled like — you go to war with those guys and (remember) the fun things we did and the camaraderie we had. We helped develop a pretty good tradition and that’s what I remember.”