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Are DiStefano and Benson f'in geniuses?

El Gringo

Something witty and clever
Club Member
A post over on rivals about both coach and AD having clean slates got me thinking. Dangerous, I know. But here goes.

Was letting Bohn fire Embree and hire Mike Mac, then replacing Bohn with George the smartest move one could make here?

Embo had to be canned. If you fire the AD, then let the new AD fire him, George immediately has a target on his back by Klatt and his ilk. More importantly, it took several months to get George in place, and that was fast by CU's and most others' standards. So if you fire Bohn first, Embo finishes this year's recruiting class, then gets fired after they've all signed their LOIs. Piss off those players and their families, and show future recruits the really ugly under-taint of college football. CU becomes the poster boy for all that is wrong with big time college recruiting.

Second scenario: Bohn and Embo are both fired in November. You have to fill the two biggest positions in the department. It would take twice as long to fill the coaching staff, and the 2013 signing period is closed. We'd be lucky to a single D2 quality recruit.

So what do you do if you're Benson/DiStefano, and you know you have to get rid of both Embree and Bohn to have a truly fresh start, to have the two most important positions in the AD start with clean slates?

You let the old AD make a hire that most people appear to support, then replace him with, at least based on first impressions and on paper, what appears to be an upgrade. A gamble to be sure, but one worth taking given the alternatives.

I'm not trying to defend anyone per se, but offering some food for thought.
 
The Waldo is strong with this one...


Actually, the timing does seem to make a lot more sense now than it did when they first fired Bohn. George doesn't have to worry about supporting MM, but can benefit from any success MM may enjoy. MM is no safer now than he was before because he still hasn't coached a single game. Plus, George wouldn't have somebody who is "his guy" at this point anyway.

As much as it hurts to say it, based on the level of sh*t we've thrown at Phil, they really appear to have pulled this off well.
 
No Benson/Dr. Phil aren't geniuses -- solid hire in George but nothing exactly out-of-the-box. They get credit for getting the #1 guy, let's see if it works. Bohn got his #1 guy with Hawk too.
 
A. DiStephano isn't that smart.
B. If he were that smart he doesn't care about winning enough to bother with the extra effort.
C. See A.
D. Benson may have finally just got tired enough af the whole situation to step in and take an active role, he isn't the type to bother with something this convoluted as well.
E. See A. and B.
 
What will really blow your mind is that their master plan will include CU winning the NC in basketball and football this coming year while announcing the new $1 Billion dollar facilities!!
 
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Maybe diabolical geniuses.

The doubling salary for the AD and FB HC, increasing pay for Boyle and Lappe is driving cost to historically high levels.

Maybe their real goal is to bury the AD in insurmountable salary based debt that triggers outrage which leads to their ultimate end-game...to be like the University of Chicago; free from the administrative burden of sports fans throwing poop on their ivory towers. "We gave the fans what they wanted...its up to them to fund this enterprise."

If the donations don't double to cover these athletic expenses, then leadership has no choice but to reverse course and let the axe fall.

The ball is in George's court to make revenues materialize from Buff fans to cover payroll.

George must be successful disproving the reputation of CU supporters being cheap. If the revenue doesn't come in as we hope, then I don't think we've truly hit rock bottom...err the mastermind's desired end game.
 
Duistefano and Benson look like geniuses because they have spent so much time stepping on their own dicks, if they do something of reasonable intelligence they look like geniuses in comparison.
 
Maybe diabolical geniuses.

The doubling salary for the AD and FB HC, increasing pay for Boyle and Lappe is driving cost to historically high levels.

Maybe their real goal is to bury the AD in insurmountable salary based debt that triggers outrage which leads to their ultimate end-game...to be like the University of Chicago; free from the administrative burden of sports fans throwing poop on their ivory towers. "We gave the fans what they wanted...its up to them to fund this enterprise."

If the donations don't double to cover these athletic expenses, then leadership has no choice but to reverse course and let the axe fall.

The ball is in George's court to make revenues materialize from Buff fans to cover payroll.

George must be successful disproving the reputation of CU supporters being cheap. If the revenue doesn't come in as we hope, then I don't think we've truly hit rock bottom...err the mastermind's desired end game.

Who would actually want to go to CU if they cut D1 athletics? And the comparsion to the University of Chicago isn't valid...that school has like just 5,000 students.
 
Stepping on dicks? DeSteph? YES! Benson? NO!

Anybody who knows Benson, gets that he's a crafty guy. You don't build a moderate fortune in the oil patch during a "mild" boom (and have a building on the Boulder campus named after you because you funded it!), without some real saavy, a good sense of timing and a good feel for personnel. (Unlike Solich, who made his jillions durng a major petro boom; a smart, driven detail-oriented guy, but a bit of the "right-place-at-the-right-time" feel to his outcome.)

Further, Benson's energies and focus have been on the CU Med Campus, which is a frigging phenomenon--drive down I-225 some time look at all the new facilities and the largest concentration of construction cranes in the Metro area! The boom there is well-functioning and its momentum tremendous, so Benson can now turn his focus toward the AD, knowing that Pac revenues will now start seriously flowing, enough to put the Dept. on solid footing, with the right leaders in place. Those who disparage or discount Benson, fail to understand all the dynamics involved.
 
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Man, tough crowd. Let me try again.

If the goal was to hit the reset button on the department, i.e. replace both the AD and the FB coach, there were three options: (1) fire them at the same time; (2) fire the AD first, then the coach; (3) fire the coach first, then the AD.

My original post was an attempt to explain why door number 3 was the best option. Whether they are a crafty bunch, or blind squirrels who found their nuts (who's going to hit that softball?), in hindsight, we are in the best position possible to move forward given where we are coming from. Any other option would have been suicide.
 
Man, ignorant crowd. Let me try again.

If the goal was to hit the reset button on the department, i.e. replace both the AD and the FB coach, there were three options: (1) fire them at the same time; (2) fire the AD first, then the coach; (3) fire the coach first, then the AD.

My original post was an attempt to explain why door number 3 was the best option. Whether they are a crafty bunch, or blind squirrels who found their nuts (who's going to hit that softball?), in hindsight, we are in the best position possible to move forward given where we are coming from. Any other option would have been suicide.

fify......you nailed it!
 
I refuse to give them any credit for timing or how they handled this or how they lucked into what appears to be a good FB coach and a good AD. Lets not forget that they were the ones that helped to put us in this position from years and years of neglect.

**** them.
 
Further, Benson's energies and focus have been on the CU Med Campus, which is a frigging phenomenon--drive down I-225 some time look at all the new facilities and the largest concentration of construction cranes in the Metro area! The boom there is well-functioning and its momentum tremendous, so Benson can now turn his focus toward the AD, knowing that Pac revenues will now start seriously flowing, enough to put the Dept. on solid footing, with the right leaders in place. Those who disparage or discount Benson, fail to understand all the dynamics involved.


First, the cranes are for the VA hospital and not for the CU hospital.

CU hospital is not as great as you think it is. The whole plan was short-sighted from the start and they seem to do best by throwing money at problems when it is always not the best solution. From their EHR implementation to stupid way of landing flight for life in the parking lot and then loading them in an ambulance to get across the street. Do you really thing that Colorado's flagship hospital should be in Aurora? Is that the best place to serve the front range?
 
I think the way this whole situation looks is benefiting from how bad past decisions were. We are so accustomed to horrifying ineptitude that these actually halfway decent looking moves (at least preliminarily...let's re-examine after a football season is done) seem like genius by comparison.

On paper...from where we stand/view things now though, both CoachMMac and George look like really good moves (and having both moves come during the same football off-season looks like we've installed a whole new set of leaders in key positions).

Looks great...didn't do something totally stupid for a change...and have people who can monitor OTHER people (ie. if Coach MMac is somehow a Hawkins-like bust, we have a George at the helm to deal with it effectively. Although, I must say, I really like the Mac hiring myself...).

So...finally not doing stupid things (seemingly) makes us look positively awesome by comparison. Certainly reason for optimism and certainly cause for expecting steady improvement (let's be realistic and patient though...rebuilding like this is gonna take some time...and may involve a backstep or two...)
 
Seven straight years of losing football. No, they are not effin geniuses, they are effin somethings, but not effin geniuses.
 
The main facts we have to go on at this point is that CU paid market based rates for George and MacIntyre.

The time to evaluate the hire is after they have, you know, actually done something in Boulder.
 
I'd guess we're a little above market rate for our AD pay

I think so too. I can only go off what I know for certain, but an AD who has served in the ACC in that role since 2001 and continuously has his school near the top of Director's Cup standings is making about 400k-500k
 
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I think so too. I can only go off what I know for certain, but an AD who has served in the ACC in that role since 2001 and continuously has his school near the top of Director's Cup standings is making about 400k

We're also only $13K behind UCLA's AD base pay as well and that's good enough for second in the conference among public schools.
 
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