Counting down to National Letter of Intent Day (February 3rd) and the upcoming Spring football practices, college football fans from Boulder and around the country are starting to get excited. Every team is undefeated, and hope springs eternal.
For the top 25 level teams from last season, there is hope that 2016 will be the season that their team will be one of the final four playing for a National Championship. For those playing in a lower tier bowl, there is hope for a better bowl this year. For those sitting on the outside looking in when the bowl season rolled around, there is hope that their team might make one of the 41 bowl games which now follow the regular season. In fact, there are so many bowl games these days that some teams that were not even officially "bowl eligible" (6 wins) were able to go to bowl games last season despite only winning five games.
Of all the teams in the Power Five Conferences (Pac-12, Big 10, Big 12, SEC, and the ACC), no team has gone longer without going to a bowl than Colorado. The Buffs last went to a bowl way back in 2007. Only Kansas and Kentucky join Colorado as Big Five teams that have not been to a bowl game in more than five years.
Buff fans who have suffered through nearly a decade of futility are aching to get off the list of teams going through a bowl drought. The same goes for Buff players and coaches. Bowl games are a reward for the hard work of the season. It also allows a team to have a more practice time on the field.
Contrary to what many fans think, bowl practices are NOT limited to 15 days, like Spring practices are. That means having a trip to a bowl game allows a team to have TWO springs for coaches to work directly with the players. That's a reward for teams getting bowl berths, for sure, but it also widens the gap between teams that are bowl eligible and those who are not.
Coaching in Division 1 is always a tough business, and every coach not named Saban knows that a bad year or two could lead to a loss of their job. In some places, even coaches who have won national championships have hot seats (see Les Miles) because their fans and schools expect top 10 finishes every year.
Coaches like Colorado's Mike MacIntyre who have never been to a bowl game as a head coach face harsh and sometimes creepy criticism as fans demand that heads roll. Many fans seem to forget that Colorado was by far the worst Power 5 team in the country when MacIntyre was hired. In fact, some say the Buffs were the very worst team in Division 1.
The cupboard was bare when Mac got to Boulder and the Colorado was still paying off a sizable number of ex coaches who were fired. That put them in no mood to spend money on quality coaches. Jon Embree was the lowest paid coach in the Big 12, and then the Pac-12, before he was let go. Good coaches are a rare commodity, and they earned, on average, more than $2 Million a year. Embree was paid significantly less than half of what his fellow conference coaches earned. It showed. Colorado also has state laws which severely limit the number of staffers which can have multi-year contracts. It makes it hard to attract top coaching talent when you can only offer a one year contract.
Despite the obstacles, Colorado went out and got a home-run hire for Athletic Director in Rick George. He has been a fundraising machine and finally got the money together so Colorado could build facilities that are among the very best in the entire country, college or pro. MacIntyre has taken a team that used to give up 60+ points a game (and was usually playing against the 3rd string by the 3rd quarter) to a team that has put overtime scares into some very good opponents.
The players have gotten bigger, faster and stronger, but they were so far behind that they are only now getting to the point that they are not pushed around every time they step on the field. They are competing, but they have not yet started to win consistently. Fans hope that 2016 is the year that the bowl drought ends and the joy of playing in the postseason brings smiles to the faces of fans and players alike.
It's January now, though, and hope springs eternal. New players will be signing on to play for the Buffs, and spring practice is just around the corner. And right now, the Buffs and every other team are undefeated.
