School: Buffalo
Nickname: Bison
Colors: gold and black
Stadium: Bison Bowl
State championships: 1979, 1983, 1996, 2004 and 2005
Times worth remembering: The Bison have had plenty of success, but nothing compares to the 27-game winning streak they produced in 2004-06. Led by a core of athletes that included five Super 25 honorees, the Bison put together back-to-back 11-0 championship seasons in 2004 and 2005, teams that many considered the best in the state regardless of classification.
Times worth forgetting: After a loss in the state championship game in 1961, the Bison hit some hard times, going 1-8 in 1962 and 1-7-1 in 1963. Both years, the only team Buffalo beat was Midwest. But, as usual for Buffalo, the streak didn’t last too long — the 1964 team went 6-2-1, and since then the Bison haven’t had a season with fewer than two victories.
Best team: The Bison team of 2005 might have been the best assembly of talent ever seen not only in Buffalo, but in any current Class 3A program. Led by the backfield of Chris Prosinski, John Camino, Kyle Cummings and Josh Smith, Buffalo was rarely challenged. The Bison’s closest regular-season win was a 25-point victory over Lander, and after rolling past Douglas and Powell in the playoffs, the Bison beat Star Valley in Afton 17-14 in the championship.
Biggest win: After losing to Mountain View in the 2A championship game in 1995, Buffalo’s only loss in a 9-1 season, the Bison earned a chance for revenge in the semifinals one year later. In what basically amounted to the state championship game, the Bison edged out the Buffaloes 9-6 in a hard-fought game at the Bison Bowl. The next week, the Bison won an anticlimactic 33-6 title game over Thermopolis, a team the Bison had beaten 35-18 earlier in the season…. But it was all set up by the win over Mountain View. It capped an 18-2 run over two years and set up the Bison’s only championship of the 1990s.
Heartbreaker: Robert Allen is a name Bison fans aren’t likely to forget. After all, it was Allen that scored all four touchdowns for Star Valley in Buffalo’s 27-22 loss to the Braves in the 1980 Class A championship, including a 90-yard kick return to open the game and the game-winning 68-yard touchdown run with about 10 minutes to go. Buffalo scored all 22 of its points in the first half and led 22-21 at halftime, but couldn’t hold off Allen and the Braves one last time.