Outside of the conference, the Rams play in-state rival Colorado in the Rocky Mountain Showdown, which was hosted at Empower Field at Mile High through 2019 before the series returned to on-campus stadiums.

Colorado State also has a conference rivalry with Wyoming (the Border War), with the winner of the annual football game receiving the Bronze Boot.

Colorado State football goes back 115 seasons, and experienced its most successful run under head coach Sonny Lubick.

Lubick won nearly 75% of home games in the stadium that would later bear his name, leading the team to six conference titles and an overall record of 108–74.

[2] On November 27, 2007, following significant drops in attendance and a 17–30 record over the past 4 seasons, including 3–9 in 2007,[7] CSU made the difficult and controversial decision to relieve Lubick of his head coaching duties.

[8] After going 7–6 in his first season and leading CSU to a win in the New Mexico Bowl over Fresno State in 2008, Fairchild's Rams fell back to mediocrity.

On December 13, 2011, Colorado State hired Alabama offensive coordinator Jim McElwain to take over as head coach.

[9] After leading the Rams to their best season since 2003, with a record of 10–2, McElwain won the 2014 Mountain West Conference Coach of the Year honors.

[10] In 2004, the Rams women's volleyball team made it to the Sweet Sixteen round of the NCAA tournament.

[11] The team has won the Mountain West Conference regular season 6 of the past 8 years, and 4 of 8 MWC tournaments.

Williams coached CSU for 26 seasons beginning in 1955, winning 352 games and taking the team to 4 NCAA tournaments, including the quarterfinals in 1969.

[18] Smith's early departure, along with several legal issues and transfers, left the program with just two remaining scholarship players when CSU hired North Dakota State's Tim Miles in March 2007.

Under Miles the program gradually improved, culminating with the Rams' first at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament in more than two decades in 2012.

[20] The Rams made it to the Sweet Sixteen in 1999, the culmination of a successful 4-year run behind team leaders Becky Hammon and Katie Cronin.

They compete in the Mountain Collegiate Triathlon Conference (MCTC) along with schools from Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico region.

The Rams are led by head coach Justin Mort, and play their home matches at the CSU Intramural Fields.

The team competes in the ACUI Clay Targets league, with different competitions held in Las Vegas NV, Nashville TN, and the national championships in San Antonio TX.

Every year, the Shotgun Sports team hosts their home competition in Brighton, Colorado, called RamVitational, where local universities face off and compete for different awards.

Swimmer Amy Van Dyken, six-time Olympic gold medalist, was an NCAA champion and All-American at CSU.

[26] Glenn Morris, a track and football standout at Colorado A&M in 1935, won gold in the decathlon at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

Bill Green, the school's first consensus All-American in basketball in 1962 and 1963, was later a first round draft pick by the Boston Celtics.

During her four years at CSU in the 1990s, basketball star Becky Hammon scored more points than any male or female player in school history.