Colorado Buffaloes soccer deserves our attention

The best team within Colorado Buffaloes athletics isn’t the football, or the basketball team, or even the legendary cross country team. No, the best team is the women’s soccer team, who are 9-0-1 and rampaging their way into conference play.

The Buffs made quick work of their non-conference as they went undefeated (and virtually unchallenged) against a schedule that included Missouri, Michigan State, Iowa State and Denver. Now in their first Pac-12 game on Friday night, the Buffs destroyed Oregon State 6-0 in Corvallis; even more impressively, they went up 3-0 in the first 13 minutes of the match and coasted from there.

RPI rankings would say that Missouri is the only quality team they have played thus far, but even if you ain’t played nobody, it’s damn good to have a +29 goal differential in just 10 games. If you scroll through the Buffs’ schedule, you can see 3-0 game after 3-0 game, and for every close 2-1 match, there are as many 6-0 scores. I personally haven’t been able to cover the soccer team or see them in person — I’m in Morocco — but the stats and overall reports show evidence that they’re great.

The Buffs are somehow only #23 in the NCAA rankings, and though they will likely rise after their dismantling of OSU, that’s far too low for a team this good. They will plenty of chances to make noise throughout the rest of the Pac-12 season. The Conference of Champions isn’t as stacked in soccer as they are in virtually every other women’s sport, but they’re still loaded with quality teams, including #1 Stanford. The Buffs aren’t as good as the Cardinal — no one is — but if they keep this up, they could challenge Stanford and make a name for themselves as one the nation’s elite teams.

If you’re just now hearing about the Buffs’ dominance on the pitch, you can partially blame us (among other CU media) for not covering them. Colorado women’s athletics are superb at every sport, but because of the click economy of online journalism, it can be difficult to cover a match when posting about the football team’s uniforms will get 75 times the attention. So this is my plea to you, the reader, to follow this team as best as you can and check out a match or two on East Campus. It’s also my plea to our (short-handed) staff to cover women’s sports more, even if it means fewer clicks. The Colorado soccer team is more than worth our attention.