Moby Arena at 60: the Whale-Shaped Home of Rams Basketball and Volleyball

It does not look like other arenas, and Colorado State would not have it any other way. Moby Arena, home of Rams men's and women's basketball and volleyball, opened in 1966 as the university's Auditorium-Gymnasium. A student newspaper comparison of its hump-backed profile to a beached whale stuck, the nickname 'Moby' followed, and the arena has carried the whale with pride ever since — formally adopting the Moby Arena name in the late 1980s.

The building seats a little over eight thousand for basketball, and its intimacy is its weapon: steep, close seating, a loud student presence and a home crowd that generations of visiting teams have learned to respect. Moby also hosts far more than games — graduations, Poudre School District events and other gatherings that make it one of Fort Collins' shared civic rooms as well as a gym.

Tradition is load-bearing at Colorado State, from the Aggie heritage the university carries from its agricultural-college roots — the painted 'A' on the foothills west of town among its most visible marks — to the ram's-horn designs worked into Moby's court. The arena's recent court designs have leaned into that identity, horns and all, a reminder that at CSU the past is not decoration; it is branding, memory and recruiting pitch in one.

Volleyball belongs in this story as much as basketball. Moby has long been a strong home venue for Rams volleyball, a program with a devoted local following, and the arena's calendar across the school year gives Fort Collins a hometown team to follow in nearly every season — autumn volleyball, winter basketball, and spring events between.

This sports desk will cover Moby the way it covers Canvas Stadium: as a place where the city's team plays in front of the city's people. No invented scores, no borrowed glory — just the Rams, at home, in the whale. It remains, nearly sixty years on, the most recognizable roofline in Fort Collins sports.