One perfect choice to coach CU
Who should be the next football coach at Colorado? The answer is obvious, if athletic director Rick George is honest with himself.
Are the Buffaloes one coach away from competing for a national championship, as George believes? Or was Mike Macintyre all that stood between this football program and abysmal, as he whined on his way out the door?
The truth is somewhere in the middle. Just because George declares “There’s not a better job in America than here in Colorado” doesn’t mean it’s anywhere close to reality. There is, however, an attractive opportunity in Boulder bigger than the beauty of the Flatirons: The Pac-12 Conference is the weakest among the Power Five, and it’s ripe for the taking for a coach that knows his stuff.
In the search for the next CU football coach, let’s start with the truth: George should have subtly
encouraged Macintyre to walk two years ago, after the Buffs won 10 games and advanced to the conference championship game. The program would be in far better shape now if George had the nerve to allow Macintyre to leave.
Second-guessing? Absolutely not. I was adamantly opposed to giving Macintyre a contract extension long before the afterglow of “The Rise” began to fade.
Macintyre was never George’s guy, and I’m willing to bet if CU’S AD had trusted his gut in late 2016, he could have hired a new coach when this job was more appealing than it is right now, saving money and a halfdozen defeats during the past two seasons.
Die-hard Colorado boosters, bless their hearts, are hopelessly stuck in the nostalgia of 1990, when an evangelical coach who preached anything was possible, a fifth down and future NFL talent from Alfred Williams to Mike Pritchard combined to make the Buffs No. 1 in the country.
But CU never truly leveraged that national-championship success. Why? It’s not really the Buffs’ fault.
There simply is no deep-seated love for college football in this state’s culture. Here’s the proof: During the final home game of the 1990 season, Folsom Field rocked with 51,136 raucous fans as the Buffs destroyed Kansas State. In the ensuing 28 years, the population of Colorado has exploded from 3.3 million to an estimated 5.7 million.
Yet the Buffs still play in a stadium whose seating capacity in 2018 remains a quaint little joke to Ohio State, Alabama or any university that takes its football seriously. CU failed to expand its audience.
So while CU boosters dream of luring somebody like West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen, he already has a better-paying job at a more-prestigious program than what George has to offer. If George could somehow convince Holgorsen otherwise, more power to him.
But what Colorado needs is a coach who understands the territory, feels at home in the Rocky Mountains and views a beautifully quirky college campus that’s ambivalent about football as a challenge rather than a reason to complain (see: Neuheisel, Rick).
There are many fine candidates to consider at the secondtier of college football, from Matt Wells of Utah State to Neal Brown of Troy. Haven’t the Buffaloes already gone this route, though? This ain’t intramurals, brother. Dan Hawkins and Macintyre were never quite good enough to make CU a perennial top-25 contender.
If George truly believes he has the facilities, the talent and the offensive mind-set in place to win the Pac-12 South in 2019, the choice is obvious. Give the job to Jim Leavitt, currently the defensive coordinator at Oregon.
Leavitt was the coaching mastermind behind Colorado’s 10-4 season in 2016. Yes, he was once dismissed as coach at South Florida after school officials determined Leavitt was less than truthful about a physical altercation with a player. It was a bad mistake. Leavitt, however, has paid the price and reaffirmed all the reasons he once was considered to lead the Alabama program.
While his 62nd birthday is around the corner, Leavitt has the energy of a man half his age. If George likes the work of current CU quarterbacks coach Kurt Roper and views Darrin Chiaverini as head coaching material down the line, there’s all the more reason to hire Leavitt with the hope that he would retain both top assistants.
I do believe George likes the trajectory of the CU football program. So what if I’m wrong, and George actually sees the Buffs in need of a major culture change?
Go hire a relatively young coordinator from a big-time program. It’s a move that would be reminiscent of how Bill Mccartney came from the Big Ten to Boulder a generation ago. The best candidates to fit this mold are Jimmy Lake, Washington’s hotshot co-defensive coordinator last seen shutting down Washington State in the snow, and Ryan Day, the Ohio State offensive coordinator who just dropped 62 points on Michigan.
The Buffs, however, could do far worse than hiring a man that already knows what it takes to win in Boulder. Get Leavitt and get busy with the business of winning.