Bobo-coached Rams mired in mediocrity

FORT COLLINS» Mike Bobo sat at the podium in the wee hours of Sunday morning looking defeated.

I’m not talking about his Colorado State team, which just blew a 25-point lead against Boise State, including a 14-point advantage in the final 1 minute, 15 seconds, to lose its third consecutive game.

Bobo the man looked defeated. Of the 32,000-plus who witnessed the most inexplicable loss in the Rams’ post-Sonny Lubick era, no one, not even the redshirt freshman running back who fumbled in overtime, could have been more miserable than Bobo. During a 12minute postgame news conference, Bobo’s expression remained unchanged. Emotionless. He answered every question that questioned his coaching ability without a hint of anger.

When the CSU media relations staff tried to cut off the last question and usher him away, Bobo didn’t want it to end.

“I’ll answer it; go ahead. I ain’t in no hurry,” he said. “You don’t have to protect me.”

The 59-52 loss was on him, and he was accepting the heat.

Whether it’s fair to pin this particular outcome on the offensivefocused head coach whose team just scored 50-plus points for the third time this season — and the fifth in the past 13 games — is irrelevant. Bobo has said the onus of whatever his program does ultimately falls on him, and that includes the past three Saturdays when his team was in a great position to win, but lost.

“Like I told the team, it wasn’t one play. I mean, there might have been 50 plays tonight, you know?” Bobo said. “You make one play, it could be the difference in the game. We can’t seem to find the ability to make that play to get us over that hump. It’s disappointing. Coaches, too; myself included.”

It wasn’t only Rashaad Boddie’s fumble in overtime that cost CSU the game, or Shun Johnson’s questionable taunting penalty that set up Boise State with first-and-10 from the Rams’ 13-yard line with less than two minutes to play to cut CSU’s lead to seven points. Or the inability to recover the Broncos’ perfect onside kick. Or the decision in the fourth quarter on fourth-and-goal at the 1-yard line to kick a field goal to go up by seven instead of by 11.

And it wasn’t only the poor decision to punt late at Wyoming the previous weekend, down by three, and never get the ball back that cost the Rams their shot at winning the Mountain West. Nor was it the nearly identical situation a week prior against Air Force.

It’s many things that fall at Bobo’s feet.

While Craig Bohl’s Wyoming Cowboys have turned a 1-2 start into a realistic shot at a 10-win season and Bryan Harsin’s Broncos have reeled off six consecutive wins in the aftermath of a blowout loss at home to Virginia, Bobo’s Rams have gone the other direction. In their last five games, they barely escaped bad Nevada and New Mexico teams before this three-game slide. Of the Mountain West’s five bowleligible teams, CSU is the only one that has clearly regressed as the season has progressed.

For a program that hit rock bottom six years ago and rapidly ascended, CSU has now descended into mediocrity. The Rams will be playing in a bowl game for a fifth consecutive season, and a decade ago, that may have been something to celebrate. But during this stretch under Bobo and Jim McElwain before him, CSU has never finished better than third in a Group of Five conference that falls further into irrelevance every year.