The sun's rays shot out from behind the silhouette of the Flatirons, providing the last light of the evening sky above Farrand Field. The temperature dropped a few degrees as the field slid into the shadows.

"OK, let's do it again. Look and see where you're going -- here we go -- 16 counts," Dana Biggs, assistant band director at the University of Colorado, said into his megaphone.

It was 10 til 6 last Monday, and Biggs was squeezing every last minute out of the Golden Buffaloes' two-hour practice. "Again," he said. "Again."

There were more than 200 students on the field, and they were moving in a choreographed chaos. From the hips down, the marchers were gliding, their feet pointing the way. But from the waist up, their shoulders and horns stayed fixed on the sideline while they moved into a shape that was not at all clear from the field.

It's not supposed to be; it's all about what the fans will see, squeezed on the bleachers at Folsom Field.

This year marks a century of the CU marching band bringing music -- and school spirit -- to the football field. Since 1908, when the first group of students came together with drums, flutes and horns in hand, the band has changed a lot: Its marching style is different. Membership has bloomed. Women are allowed. And uniform designs have been altered at least a half-dozen times.

At the same time, it seems some things never change. Band members today still form a dedicated family that practices long hours and has an acutely developed sense of CU pride.

"I think the biggest thing people need to know is that we are students too," said Brian Little, a saxophone player and physics major. "When we are practicing on Farrand, we know it's perfect nap time, we would like to be sleeping too. ... We practice so we can look and sound good at games, and that takes time. We can't just show up and be as good as we are."

The last week took particular dedication, as band members spent extra hours memorizing fresh music and learning new steps for this Homecoming weekend, when band alumni stretching back five decades tuned up their instruments and, for an afternoon, joined the band again.

Birth of the band

As far back as 1891, when a handful of lonely buildings on the edge of the barren plains were still known as the U of C, musical students came together to try to form a band.

It didn't stick then, or in 1904, or even in 1906, according to Walter Blankenship, the self-appointed and well-versed CU band historian.

Finally, in 1908, with the help of a crew of enthusiastic and tuneful students just accepted en masse from the high school in Golden, the band reached a critical mass.

"The first student meeting took place in late September or early October," said Blankenship, who played the tuba in the band from 1985 to 1988 and holds a master's degree in history. "Twenty-six people showed up, and the band was known as the CU Brass Band."

Since then, the band has swollen and shrunk with the ebbs and flow of history, surviving two world wars and keeping recruits even during the anti-establishment years of the 1960s and 1970s. Women marched for the men in the 1940s, Rosie-the-Riveter style, before going back to the stands after World War II. They would wait nearly two decades to reclaim their spots on the field.

Having survived a century, the band has become its own institution -- and, in many ways, the keeper of CU tradition.

But being in the band is not just about watching touchdowns and playing the fight song to a roaring crowd.

Brotherhood of the band

Being in the band is work. With practices every Monday, Wednesday and Friday -- a schedule that stretches back at least 50 years -- football games on Saturday and a sprinkling of parades, pep bands and special university events, band members are busy, not to mention coordinated.

Marchers have to form and un-form myriad shapes on the field, while belting out memorized music, sometimes with frozen instruments and icy fingers. And the whole time, they're struggling to keep it in tune. The marchers are, it seems, the ultimate multi-taskers.

And what makes it worth it? According to band alumni from the last five decades, motivation comes in two flavors: a love for CU and a big family of insta-friends.

"There was great camaraderie," said Mark Masters, who was in the band from 1975-79. "Even as a freshman, after three or four days of what we call band camp in the fall before school, all of a sudden you had 30 friends, and they'd be dropping by your room."

"We stuck together," agreed Brian Ernster, who played from 1985-87. "That was our social life -- the band -- we had practice every day."

And alumnus Keith Simpson said it was the same, even in the 1950s.

"It's almost a family," he said. "Playing in the band -- as soon as you went to the first band rehearsal, the next day you'd be walking across the campus and you'd recognize people. It didn't seem like you were in a huge university anymore."

Simpson and his bandmates took their bond seriously. In 1957, when Simpson was playing clarinet in the band, the CU football team went to the Orange Bowl. And when the band found themselves in south Florida, they realized that, well, they weren't in Colorado anymore.

"At the motel that we stayed at, in Hollywood, Fla., the manager said our black members would have to eat in the kitchen," Simpson said. "So when the first meal came, we all picked up the trays and our plates and you name it, and headed toward the kitchen. They couldn't operate -- there were a hundred of us."

The motel manger folded, and everyone, regardless of color, ate in the dining room.

"We band people, we thought of the black members of the band simply as a trumpet player or a clarinet player," he said. "We never thought of them as being different from anyone else."

Musical cheerleaders

Other times were less sober, and the band brothers -- and sisters -- liked to play as hard then as they do now. Rowdy traditions and rambunctious band antics have become the spirit of the student body at football games, sticking the fans together with black-and-gold glue.

And while some band stories are the stuff of press releases, others should be carefully weighed before they see the light of day. For Mark Masters, however, some of his best stories from the late '70s happened right in front of the crowd.

"We did a show, back in the day, where we spelled out Bud and Oly, and then the band got a kegger -- that's true, you can quote me on that," said Masters, who played clarinet and saxophone before having a stint as a drum major. "We were much rowdier. The students these days, they work harder; it's just the way it is."

Remember, Masters says, this was the '70s, so you've got to keep it in context -- the drinking age was 18 -- but apparently, the band had a deal with a local beer distributor, and if they spelled out a brand name, they'd get a free keg.

The band today may well work harder -- they certainly have more rigorous marching routines -- but they're still a bit mischievous: The current sax section eats a little bit of grass from Ralphie's painted horn on the 50-yard-line after every game the Buffs win.

For most of the band's tenure, marchers played the fight song and the alma mater, but it wasn't until the 1980s that the band began to take on the role of musical cheerleaders, playing a whole smorgasbord of pep tunes and leading cheers to the rhythm of beating drums.

"I think in those years, it was the start of the band cheers in the student section," said Brian Ernster who, in the late 1980s, played the trombone in the band before becoming a cheerleader and a handler for Ralphie. "The student section was bigger and louder than they've ever been."

Ernster had the dubious privilege of wearing the band's now-infamous skyblues, a cowboy-style uniform with plenty of fringe that the band got when the football team adopted blue as its uniform color for a few years.

"Really, I'm kind of nostalgic for the fringe," he said. "We were always running around, and the fringe made it like a fuzzy picture."

These days, it's hard to picture a home game without the built-in CU pride section, aka the Golden Buffaloes.

"We love the buffaloes"

Current band director Matthew Roeder and assistant Dana Biggs finally showed mercy and called Monday's practice to an end just a few minutes before 6 p.m. They asked everyone to gather around the podium.

A percussionist with baggy jeans who's been arching his back to balance his enormous bass drum for hours finally caught a break and put the monster down on the grass. The pom squad was chatty, the trumpets looked ravenous and the trombones seemed a little cold. But they listened.

"Good work," Roeder said. "You might be realizing that this is a time when we're freaking out a little."

They noticed.

"We have a ton of work to do in a short amount of time," Roeder said, before reminding everyone about Wednesday's and Friday's practices, the pep rally, the Homecoming parade, the pre-game show and the half-time extravaganza. "You can't be late. You can't be late."

It was clearly going to be a long week -- and no one felt the weight more than the band's three student drum majors: Leslie Stokes, Chris Klekamp and Ben Link, whose main purpose is to make sure their peers get it all done, and well.

"The people here are the people who want to be here," said Link, a senior majoring in engineering and computer science.

And one thing non-band members should know, according to the drum majors:

"We love the buffaloes," Klekamp said. "We love the buffaloes."