BOULDER — This summer’s Qwest Rocky Mountain Showdown between the University of Colorado and Colorado State University has been moved back a day to Sunday, Aug. 31, to both accommodate a national television audience and provide some relief for emergency service personnel working the Democratic National Convention, officials at both schools announced Wednesday.

The 80th meeting between the two schools in football, coordinated by the Metro Denver Sports Commission, will still be played at Invesco Field at Mile High in Denver and will kickoff at 5:30 p.m., with the game to be broadcast nationally by Fox Sports Net.

Though a game time had not been set had it been played on Saturday, with upwards of 40,000 visitors expected in Denver for the DNC exiting the city and surrounding areas, moving the game back a day will provide additional time to help the security force and police and fire departments recover from a pressure-packed week, if not month leading up to the event.

FSN expressed interest in televising the game if the schools were willing to push the game back a day to Sunday; the game was likely not going to be selected by any of CU’s Big 12 Conference television partners had it remained on Saturday. That would have left only a potential pay-per-view telecast subject to approval by the networks and the Big 12.

Colorado leads the series by a 58-19-2 count and has won four of the last six; however, all six of those games have been decided by seven points or less and by a combined 25 points, including CU’s 31-28 overtime win at Invesco last September.  It has been one of the nation’s most closely contested rivalries this decade, perhaps matched only by LSU-Auburn, which has seen their last four games decided by 14 combined points.

This will be the 14th consecutive year the CU-CSU game will be televised on a national (10) or regional (four) basis.  The last two games televised by FSN have come down to the wire and beyond: in 2004, the Buffaloes held off the Rams with a late goal-line stand to win 27-24 in Boulder, and last year in Denver, CU tied the game with a late Kevin Eberhart field goal and then won the first overtime game ever played between the two on another Eberhart kick, 31-28.

Both schools play the following Saturday (Sept. 6) and in their respective home openers at that: Colorado hosts Eastern Washington at Folsom Field in Boulder, while CSU hosts Sacramento State at Sonny Lubick Field at Hughes Stadium in Fort Collins, with both kickoffs set for 1:30 p.m.