Get the red out.
Georgia no longer on his mind, new CSU coach busy trying to make opponents green with envy
CSU coach Mike Bobo redoes his wardrobe after leaving Georgia.
fort collins» Since he was a teenager, Mike Bobo wore red. He wore the red of the Thomasville (Ga.) High School Bulldogs and then the red of the Georgia Bulldogs as a quarterback and then while on the coaching staff for 16 years, in two stints. Even during his only year away from the Georgia program, for the 2000 season, he was the quarterbacks coach for Jacksonville (Ala.) State, where the Gamecocks’ major color is ... yes, red.
So this spring, not only is Bobo in his first year as a head coach at Colorado State, he is getting accustomed to wearing the Rams’ green and gold as he settles into a workplace outside the talent-rich Southeastern Conference. Plus, becoming used to Cam the Ram as opposed to Uga the Bulldog. Culture shock? “At the end of the day, we’re playing football and we’re trying to execute offensively, defensively and special teams,” Bobo, who turned 41 on April 9, said as the Rams’ spring drills wound down.
“And you’re trying to reach 18- to 22-year-olds and getting them to buy into a system. The difference would be I’m used to doing that on one side of the ball, and now I’m (with) the whole team. It’s been a little bit of an adjustment and I have to learn that I have to cheer for the defense a little bit. I feel good when the defense stops the offense. I feel good when we stop the run.”
When Bobo speaks, it’s easy to infer that he’s from the South — and that doesn’t mean Trinidad. There is so much more new to this for Bobo than simply becoming a first-time head coach. With his wife and five young children still in Athens, Ga., until the end of the school year, and with several of his assistant coaches also awaiting the arrival of their families, Bobo temporarily is sharing a house with four members of his staff — Tyson Summers (defensive coordinator), Will Friend (offensive coordinator/line), Ronnie Letson (quarterbacks) and Ricky Logo (defensive line).
The silver lining of the families still not being in Fort Collins is that this new staff — which includes three holdovers from the Jim McElwain staff (Marty English, Alvis Whitted and Jeff Hammerschmidt) — is going through a bit of an indoctrinational boot camp and bonding experience.
“There’s no doubt,” Bobo said. “You want a close group on your staff, guys who are obviously loyal to each other. There are going to be different personalities, but you have to learn to work with each other. In essence, we’re living together now, but in the season, you do too because there are a lot of hours. You have arguments and fights like families do, but the next day you have to wake up and put differences aside and go to work. So it’s been good. There is some continuity with the guys who knew each other before they got here, but guys who didn’t know each other too.”
Bobo noted that at a “normal” spring practice, coaches often leave the offices right after workouts “because you have the whole next day to watch film. Now, we have nowhere to go. So we sit up there and watch film, order food, eat candy.”
Logo, the defensive line coach, most recently was on the University of Houston staff.
“It all starts with Coach Bobo,” Logo said. “He has hired not just good coaches, but good men. Personalities, we’re all different, but we all have the same common goals. We’re all family men. We’re competitive.”
Cornerbacks coach Terry Fair played six seasons in the NFL and was a defensive quality control assistant at the University of Tennessee the past two years.
“You look at this coaching staff and the makeup of it, you have some guys who have been in bigtime places and been involved in some big-time games, called some big-time games,” Fair said. “I think this staff is meshing really well and will continue to mesh really well. It’s a great bunch of guys, not just coaches but men off the field, family men. It’s been great to be around them. A lot of our families aren’t here right now, so we spend a lot of time together, so it’s been like a family amongst us here.”
Do they ever get away from it and play pool?
“I wish we were playing pool,” Fair said with a laugh. “But we’ve been grinding and putting in a lot of time. We want to be successful here at Colorado State and we understand that to take that step, we have to put in the time as well. We’ve been grinding and we have a great time together.”