After nearly two decades of consistent mediocrity or worse, Colorado Buffaloes football is once again on the rise. Head coach Deion “Coach Prime” Sanders has led the Boulder team from the basement of college football to a 9-3 record, with a bowl game in late December on the way.
While Buffs nation has been enjoying one of the most successful and exciting seasons in CU history, it means a little bit extra to one special fan: 100-year-old superfan Peggy Coppom.
Coppom, affectionately known as “Miss Peggy” among CU fans, has been through thick and thin with the Buffaloes. CU’s most iconic fan, who turned 100 on November 19, has been a staple of Colorado athletics for nearly eight decades.
“[Coppom] is the epitome of the CU Buffs,” Sanders said. “She is the epitome of Buffs Nation. She is the rock that holds us all together and I’m thankful to know her.”
From the outset of the season, Sanders has made the team’s goal very clear: make a bowl game for Miss Peggy. Only eight games into their season, the Buffs officially reached their mission of getting Miss Peggy to a bowl game with a win over the Cincinnati Bearcats on October 26. As soon as the final whistle sounded, a graphic popped up on CU’s brand-new gigantic 4,600-foot jumbotron that read, “Peggy’s going bowling.”
“I don’t know that I can explain what [this season] has meant,” Coppom said. “It’s been unbelievable to me, and [Sanders] has given our whole community and the university all this attention because of him. He’s a very, very honorable man and I am just grateful for it.”
Since Sanders’ arrival in Boulder two years ago, he’s built a special relationship with Coppom . They met when Sanders first accepted the job and visited Coppom’s house to meet her. After that, their friendship blossomed into the unlikely duo Colorado fans didn’t know they needed.
“You know how many decades we were apart?” asked Sanders. “But we still found one another. I thank God for that.”
Coppom and her twin sister Betty Hoover have attended Colorado athletic events since the 1940s, wearing matching yellow CU sweaters. After being seen together at so many Colorado football and basketball games, Coppom and Hoover quickly became local celebrities, known within the fanbase as the “CU Twins.”
In August 2020, Hoover passed away from an illness, which crushed Coppom. Coppom feared that Colorado fans wouldn’t recognize her without her twin sister at her side. She couldn’t have been more wrong. The Colorado fanbase embraced Coppom even more, championing her as the face of Buffaloes football.
“I just wish my twin sister were here to see this,” Coppom said. “I can’t deny that we’ve been loyal fans. To get all this attention for just having a good time has been unbelievable.”
In the fourth quarter of CU’s 49-34 win over the Utah Utes on November 16, Buffs fans got the opportunity to express just how much Coppom means to the fanbase and Boulder community. The nearly 60,000 fans in attendance sang Coppom happy birthday, who had just turned 100 only days prior.
“I haven’t even comprehended it yet,” said Coppom after the happy birthday serenade at Folsom Field. “I cried and I just thank God for all my friends and everything that’s happened to me.”
Coppom has proved to be a catalyst for Sanders and his Buffaloes team, fighting to get Miss Peggy to a bowl game week in and week out. To Sanders, Coppom is more than just a Colorado superfan. She represents hope and resilience—qualities he wants to see reflected in his team on the field.
“Miss Peggy, in her own tremendous, loving way, gives all of us hope,” Sanders said. “She gives all of us that unspeakable joy, that love, that respect.”
When asked what Coppom means to him, he replied with only one word:
“Everything.”
Now with the Buffaloes officially going bowling, Coppom will travel to Colorado for the first bowl game in four seasons in style. Sanders said that he’d be chartering a private jet to get Coppom to either San Diego or San Antonio, the two options for CU’s bowl game location. Coppom doesn’t have a preference between the two; she’s just happy to see the Buffaloes play postseason football.
“I’ll take any [bowl game] they give us,” Coppom joked to the media during a press conference she attended with Sanders on her birthday this year.
Regardless of the result of Colorado’s upcoming postseason game, Coppom will still provide the Buffaloes with fuel going forward. Sanders has higher aspirations for the Buffs and Coppom. He doesn’t just want her to go to a run-off-the-mill bowl game in the future; he wants her to witness Colorado’s first national championship since 1990 when the Buffaloes defeated Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl.
“We were not trying to get [Miss Peggy] to the bowl game now,” Sanders said. “We’re trying to get her to THE game.”
For now, though, Sanders and his team will take things one step at a time. With the bowl game approaching in less than a month, they can rest assured that their biggest cheerleader will be there to support them.
“It’s amazing that God can find two people from two different walks of life, two different generations, and bring them together as he has,” Sanders said. “[Coppom] has always greeted me with love, compassion, support, stability, and hope. I’m thankful to know her.”
