KISZLA: CAN MacINTYRE SAVE HIS BUFFS JOB?
Coach Mac battling, but game may be over
““The buffalo is the only animal that walks into the storm. All the rest of them run.” Mike MacIntyre, CU football coach
With the Colorado football team buried by an avalanche of losses so deep the coach’s job is at risk, what Mike MacIntyre needs most is a shovel. Instead, MacIntyre chose a different tool. He grabbed a photograph of a snow-covered buffalo stuck in a blizzard of trouble.
Say what?
“The buffalo is the only animal that walks into the storm. All the rest of them run,” MacIntyre said Tuesday, as whispers of his imminent demise as CU’s coach swirled.
To drive home his never-surrender point to journalists who pushed asparagus spears around plates during the coach’s weekly press luncheon, MacIntyre held up a framed photo of
a hairy, half-frozen beast that had been taken off a wall in his office.
“If you walk into the storm, you get through it faster,” he said.
OK, what to make of this little exercise in show-and-tell by MacIntyre?
When a football coach must resort to props to save his job, the game might already be over.
Especially when CU athletic director Rick George isn’t exactly going out of his way to support MacIntyre, whose 14-38 record in the Pac-12 during fiveplus seasons in Boulder gets worse by week. The Buffs have endured a five-game losing streak that has seen them tumble from No. 19 in The Associated Press poll to the depths of frustration and despair.
“I have made no decisions regarding the future of the football program,” said George, in the sort of statement hastily released when the boss has more important things to do.
What kind of things? Oh, I don’t pretend to know. But maybe things like asking Les Miles, who celebrated his 65th birthday the same day CU got thumped 31-7 by Washington State, if he would prefer a return to the grind of coaching rather than going to audition for his next role in a Hollywood movie.
Added George: “We continually evaluate all aspects of all of our 17 intercollegiate sports programs.”
Wouldn’t it have been quicker for George to just say “meh” when asked to endorse MacIntyre? If a burrito were that lukewarm, I would pop it back in the microwave for another 30 seconds.
What happens next?
In the Republic of Boulder, where a stampeding Ralphie will never resonate as loudly with locals as carbon footprints, George and CU boosters need to hold an honest discussion before cutting MacIntyre a check for nearly $10 million to get rid of him.
What is the true definition of football success at this university? Since Bill McCartney retired as coach in 1994, the Buffaloes have averaged 5.7 victories per season. That’s the definition of mediocrity.
And if CU aspires to be the biggest bully on the Pac-12 beach, would the smarter choice for the next coach be somebody as long in the tooth as Miles, who won a national championship at LSU way back in 2007, or an unproven, young hotshot like Buffs offensive coordinator Darrin Chiaverini?
Before forming a search committee to find his replacement, however, it only seemed fair for me to ask MacIntyre directly if he felt his job is in jeopardy.
“No, I don’t think my job’s in jeopardy,” MacIntyre replied. “But you’ve got to win games.”
Then a coach whose team has been trying unsuccessfully since Oct. 13 to earn that one last victory required to be bowl eligible in 2018 took the opportunity to sell his achievements with the Buffaloes, just in case George might be watching the live video feed of MacIntyre’s presser from a room elsewhere in the CU athletic complex.
“I do know this, when I came here a few years ago, this was the worst Power (Five) football program, a laughingstock of college football,” said MacIntyre, whose overall record at Colorado since 2013 is 30-43 after he went 16-21 in three seasons at San Jose State.
“When I went to San Jose, it was the worst football program in Division I, period. And we turned that around. We came here; the gold helmet is not tarnished anymore.”
MacIntyre made his case, citing the fine citizenship of Buffaloes off the field and young NFL prospects in the CU huddle. And MacIntyre sold it well, without a hint of irritation, other than referring to Denver7’s report, which cited unnamed sources claiming the coach’s fate is sealed, as “kind of gutless.”
The gold stars on MacIntyre’s résumé might not make any difference if the Buffs fail to beat 21st-ranked Utah on Saturday, when the emotional weather forecast is for storm clouds to gather over Folsom Field.
“I hope it’s snowing sideways,” said MacIntyre, running his feisty beast metaphor into the stormy ground.
As MacIntyre pitched his finest attributes, I wondered:
Was the coach campaigning to keep this job with the Buffaloes?
Or is MacIntyre already starting the campaign to find new employment when he is shoved out the gates of Folsom Field for the last time?