Two thirds of the way through this 2022 CU Football season, all our questions have been answered. Perhaps not the answers we want, but we indeed know who we are and who we are not. A poor coaching hire and the loss of over twenty players to the transfer portal have left its mark. Coming into the season we all had our suspicions, but we gave the benefit of the doubt to the words our coaching staff were saying. The idea of seeing “seeing a different product” from what we were used to, was a welcomed and easy message to accept. We now know that was wishful thinking at best and vaporware at worst.
While the bloom of the fantastic OT win over Cal a couple of weeks ago has been washed away with yet another blow-out loss last week to drop CU to a lowly 1-6 on the season, there is STILL hope. This Saturday evening our (still) beloved CU Buffs will take on the Arizona State Sun Devils under the lights of Folsom field.
With the hardest part of the schedule still to come, ASU represents the best chance for one more victory. Tomorrow night at Folsom field, the Buffs will make a stand against all that has gone wrong this season, and will fight for four quarters (and OT if necessary) to come away with their second victory in three weeks. I like our interim Coach Sanford. He brings energy, hope and enthusiasm which I believe the players will parlay with the aid of a (near) sold out frenzied homecoming crowd, into a high energy, low scoring, down to the wire Buffs victory.
“There was once a dream that was Rome, you could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish.”
Marcus Aurelius, ‘The Gladiator.’
As thousands of white clad CU fans poured onto Folsom this past Saturday to celebrate the Buffs 20-13 OT victory over the Cal Bears, there was indeed a hint of what was possible, a faint whisper of good things to come. Akin to getting “a hold” of a monster golf shot keeps one coming back for more, last week’s victory lent some much-needed oxygen to a Buff Nation on life support. With a victory in hand, a new coach at the helm, and an inspired defense, a new hope emerged for Buff Nation.
One victory, even against a below average team like Cal, gets the Buffs out of the penalty box. A second victory, this time on the road against a legit Oregon State squad won’t be as easy. If our upstart OC turned interim HC Mike Sanford can somehow pull another victory out of his hat this Saturday, the Buffs will return to Folsom for a sold-out homecoming Saturday (10/29) evening nationally televised game against a very beatable Arizona State squad. Win that game and there will be talk about dropping the “interim” from the coach’s title. Coach Sanford at that point would be 3-0 and have earned the right to stand at mid-field asking Buff Nation one simple question.
I do not think about CU Football too much these days. It’s not worth it. The program has successfully sucked out any enthusiasm I may harbor for the success of the 2022 Buff season. It’s not their record (0-3) but the way they repeatedly fail to come prepared to play four quarters, compete or seemingly have a plan they are executing against. It’s shameful and hurtful, and my Darwinian instinct tells me to avoid hurt, thus I must let my emotional attachment to CU go. I’ll still go to the games, and I’ll still renew my season tickets (don’t worry Rick), but that’s more of a personal character flaw than a reflection on the quality of the CU product. Like Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, until further notice, CU only gets my minimum attention. They do not deserve more than that.
Not to pile on (we should all be upstanders), I did have to scratch my head when I saw Rick George’s letter to Buff Nation. Trying to address the difficult question of what changes are going to be made to right the CU ship, Rick pulled a Pinocchio from Shrek using a lot of words to say nothing, and effectively avoided answering the question.
So, with all that said, CU opens Pac-12 play against the UCLA Bruins tomorrow at noon at Folsom Field (still the best venue to see a college football game). A win is highly improbable, but how satisfying it would be to give annoying Chip Kelly and that wanna be USC program a “L” before they leave for greener pastures. For our part, we will be tailgating before, during and after the game at Lot 380. Come by for a beer and ribs. All your friends will be there. We promise to give you our full attention if you show up. You deserve it.
In his 2005 best-selling book, The World is Flat, author Thomas Friedman put forth the idea that the convergence of technology has allowed the explosion of wealth in the middle class, effectively “flattening” the playing field between the haves and have nots, in turn putting pressure on the haves to run faster, just to stay in the same place. While Friedman was talking about the burgeoning middle classes of China and India and how their emergence puts pressure on the United States to remain a global power, he might as well have been talking about the College Football landscape.
Last Saturday afternoon, around the same time our Colorado Buffaloes coach was trying to explain away why the Buffs remain winless on the season and how they explicitly lost by 31 to Air Force, a coach on the other side of the country, was explaining how his team effectively harnessed the use of technology to close the performance gap between his team and their opponent. The Marshall Thundering Herd (cool name) despite being a 21-point underdog, had just beaten #8 Notre Dame, a team literally not even in the thier same class (FCS vs FBS).
“When we hit the transfer portal this offseason, we were getting some guys that played considerable snaps in places,” Huff said. “We weren’t just getting a guy that went to some SEC school and never played. We were getting and recruiting guys that were either rotational guys or starters and had lost their jobs or whatever it was. “We put the roster together, and you’re like, ‘Guys, we’ve got a Power 5 roster if we just count the starters.'” Marshal effectively used the transfer portal to close the gap between them and their opponents.
As I sat rained soaked watching CU lose ground to Air Force (pictures attached), I pondered in part how can we be so below average for so long, while other schools seemingly have figured it out? A few hours later, as I read about Marshall win over Notre Dame, it became obvious, it’s not our coach (in total), it’s not the QB play (in total), it’s the Transfer Portal stupid. CU needs to do a better job of getting talent. Players that can play at a high enough level to beat top ten programs on any given Saturday should be coming to CU, not Marshall (no disrespect). Power 5 conference, Boulder setting, attractive schedule, Folsom field. This should be enough to bring and keep the talent. The CU coaching staff, and the CU administration need to do a better job of selling the CU story and make player transfer accommodations. No one likes to sit in the rain and watch their team lose by 31. Players make plays. Players win games. Right now, we don’t really have either.
Sir Isaac Newton’s third law of motion states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Perhaps Newton should have written a fourth law of motion stating that the refusal to act will often result in an exponential and opposite reaction. We are told that when we are on our deathbed, it’s not the things we have done in life which we will regret, but the things we didn’t do. Our kids are taught to be “upstanders” not “bystanders” when they see wrong. In baseball you can’t steal second by keeping your foot on first.
Last Friday night, on a stage which was filled with electricity of both the literal (45-minute lightning delay) and figurative kind (amped up Buff Nation crowd – first photo), it was not the action taken by the Buffs which has drawn the ire of a frustrated and impatient Buff Nation, but the failure to take action which caused those watching to scratch their heads and leave in frustration (second photo).
On a night when Buff Nation was willing to allow bygones to be bygones (it’s been a long drought), Coach Karl Dorrell and the Colorado Buffaloes failed to act. After a relatively strong first half, the “upgraded” Buff coaching staff got out coached in every phase of the game by a TCU team, which many would argue is a bottom half Big Twelve program and certainly a tertiary Texas football team.
Refusing to start QB JT Shrout in the second half, failing to go for a fourth and five on the TCU 45 with the game slipping away, and failing to make any meaningful adjustments over the course of two quarter of play feels to me like someone is asleep at the wheel or perhaps quite comfortable being a middling team.
The good news is we are early in the season. The Buff faithful need to hold strong for their team (no one else is going to do it). Tomorrow the Buffs travel down I-25 to Colorado Springs to take on a particularly good Air Force team. No way Coach KD doesn’t start JT Shrout. The Buffs need to play with reckless abandon and JT is the type of gunslinger QB capable of leading the Buffs to victory. If that is not enough, well at least we struck out swinging and didn’t fail because we violated Newton’s fourth law of motion.
