Mac tries to build better CU team with book club
Will the real Mike MacIntyre please stand up? To tell the truth, we don’t know if Colorado’s football program has the right coach to return the Buffaloes to glory. Is MacIntyre coach-of-the-year material, as we saw in 2016? Or is he the guy who has gone 15-34 during his other four years on the CU sideline?
The difference between the Buffs’ giddy rise and harsh return to reality, when their victory total dropped from 10 to five within the span of 12 months, was the math problem that consumed MacIntyre as he prepared for his sixth year on the job at CU.
“I gained a lot, introspectively, looking at things I could’ve done better,” MacIntyre said Thursday.
Instead of building a bigger weight room or buying whizbang video technology, know what MacIntyre changed? He went old school. The coach started a book club for the Buffaloes. A few minutes of story time with Mac, if you will.
The Buffs didn’t have twice the talent on the roster in 2016, when they finished 17th in the final Associated Press poll. And MacIntyre didn’t suddenly become half as smart last year, when CU finished last in its division of the Pac-12 Conference.
The games that sent Colorado in a downward spiral in 2017 were a 27-23 defeat at UCLA and a 45-42 setback to Arizona on
back-to-back weekends.
“We lost a super-close game to UCLA that we really could’ve won. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. Arizona game, could’ve won,” MacIntyre said. “If we would’ve won those two, on a play here or there, we’re 6-1 and we’re rolling.”
The setbacks to the Bruins and Wildcats, by a total of seven points, didn’t cause the CU locker room to splinter, insisted MacIntyre. But those defeats were a lost opportunity to reassemble all the ingredients to recreate the magic potion that carried the Buffs to the Pac-12 championship game a year earlier.
“We didn’t find that missing glue,” MacIntyre said.
Rather than incessantly rewinding video of gutwrenching losses to UCLA and Arizona, MacIntyre chose to focus on the underlying causes of why some teams thrive while others fold under pressure.
“You can’t really be close if you don’t know the guy, and if you don’t know his hopes and dreams and his passions and what he’s come from,” MacIntyre said.
This offseason, CU teammates unfamiliar with each other broke bread at meals. The Buffs made music videos together. Nothing too unusual there. MacIntyre didn’t try to reinvent the wheel of teambuilding.
What was a little different: The book club, in which players and coaches studied the philosophies of Navy SEAL commander Jocko Willink of Task Unit Bruiser, the mostdecorated U.S. military outfit in the Iraq War. The book was “Extreme Ownership,” a bestseller published in 2015.
And how should we measure the Buffs’ reading comprehension?
“If things are kind of unraveling in a game, which is going to happen … there’s not bickering and fighting and this and that,” MacIntyre said. Instead of pointing fingers of blame for a blown coverage or a missed block, MacIntyre wants to see his players not only pick a fallen teammate off the turf, but coach each other up.
How successful can “Extreme Ownership” be in establishing a foothold fostering long-term football success? The first grade on MacIntyre’s work will be issued before most of his student athletes take their first test of the semester in the classroom.
The Buffaloes open the season with games against Colorado State and Nebraska within a span of eight days. Beat their little football brother and that big-red rival from their old stomping grounds, and the Buffs can shout their rise in 2016 was indeed real.
It’s a big opportunity for CU. As with any big opportunity, however, there’s an element of risk a 0-2 start could bring.
Is all the coach-of-the-year hardware won by MacIntyre two years ago worth anything now?
It won’t take long to find out.