On April 20, 1925, Governor Clarence Morley and Lieutenant Governor Sterling Lacy signed Senate Bill 262, founding Grand Junction Junior College. That same year the college established its colors of maroon and white to signify loyalty and purity. The new junior college formed a football team immediately with the first game played on October 24, 1925 against Fruita Union High School. Cecil Cannel, former captain of the Grand Junction High School Tigers, served as the first captain of the junior college football team. The team finished the season with a 4-1 record in spite of having only four players who had played football before and several who had never participated in any high school athletics.

Two years later the junior college founded the men’s basketball team, which was part of the city basketball league. The league included churches, businesses, the Ross Business College (later purchased by Mesa College during World War II), and teams from the surrounding communities. The junior college’s athletic teams were known as the Collegians for the first four years. Efforts to develop a less generic name for the teams resulted in suggestions such as the Slopers, Terrors, Westerners, and even the Peaches. In 1929, the junior college dubbed its athletes the Mavericks, and the football team played its first intercollegiate game against the Brigham Young University Frosh team. In 1936, the football team played in its first full college schedule with no games against high school teams. The Mavericks went 6-0 and surrendered only 13 points during the season.

In 1937 the Colorado Legislature passed a bill allowing the establishment of a local taxing district for a junior college if local voters approved. On June 13, 1937, Mesa County voters approved a three-quarter mill levy in a landslide vote, creating the Mesa County Junior College District, and Grand Junction Junior College became Mesa County Junior College. The athletics program continued to expand, adding men’s track and men’s wrestling in 1939, with the first track team becoming Intermountain Junior College Conference Champion. In 1940, the college’s name changed once more to Mesa College, the first purpose-built building opened (now Houston Hall), and boxing and wrestling were combined into a single sport and started competition. The various athletic teams continued to win championships, and Mesa College founded the baseball program in 1946 with the team starting its conference-championship-winning streak in 1952.

As the college continued to grow, it added tennis and golf. In 1972, Governor John Love signed the bill making Mesa College a baccalaureate-degree-granting institution effective in the fall of 1974. The Mesa Junior College District dissolved with all assets transferring to the state. The Mavericks continued to win conference championships in all available sports. 1976 served as a significant year for athletics at Mesa College. That year marked the first full season in the Rocky Mountain Athletics Conference (RMAC) as part of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) with Wayne Nelson as the Director of Athletics. In addition, with the passage of Title IX, part of the Education Amendments of 1972, colleges receiving federal financial assistance were required to provide equal opportunities for women. Its initial interpretation focused heavily on the lack of women’s athletic opportunities in colleges and universities across the United States, and Mesa College added women’s basketball and tennis in 1976, and softball the following year, to begin to address the imbalance. Throughout the 1980s and 90s, the college added more women’s athletic teams, including volleyball, tennis, cross country, golf, and soccer.

In 1988 Mesa College became Mesa State College, and four years later the Mavericks became part of the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) Division II along with the rest of the RMAC. The Mesa State Hall of Honor inducted its first group of awardees in 1996 that included Bus Bergman, Terry Gugat, Wayne Nelson, and Jay Tolman. A little more than a decade after adding its first graduate program in 1997, the college became Colorado Mesa University in 2011. The roster of available intercollegiate varsity sports at the university continues to change, with wrestling having the most upheaval in the course of its history at the university. 21st century additions include swimming and diving, lacrosse, beach volleyball, and triathlon.