Mandel gives MacIntyre hire an "A"

[14er]

People who go to Fairview would give the hiring an F.

They actually chanted "We want Embree" whenever Jay Mac would get the ball. Are they CSU fans haha? Or just really bad at trying to get inside a players head.

They really did that?! Nice job, well I'm glad they got beat.

 

[MtnBuff]

i thought the Embree hire was amazingly desperate. we went back to the past once with Barney. twice?

Hawkins a mistake for us but it was the right hire at the time for an AD...turns out it wasn't a GOOD hire. we were one of the first hiring programs in the market when not many BCS Conference teams were hiring and Hawkins was going to get a top job.

this is not a defense of Bohn. i have a lot mixed feelings about MB. i do like the Mac hire...though i was panicking for a bit

The Entire situation with keeping Hawk the additional year and then hiring Embree was emblematic of a university administration that had no interest in having a competitive football program. It was clear the year before he was fired that Hawk was done. His second to last class was for the most part leftovers and desperation shots. Then he went into another dissapointing and losing season. At the end of the year the rumors were flying. From all indications Bohn was ready to fire him and had the finances arrainged to pay for it. At the last minute Dr. Phil and Benson stepped in and stopped it meaning we had another year with Hawk.

The closest I can figure out why this happened was that we were dealing with an election year in which state budget deficits were the single biggest issue on the table with huge cuts to public schools and virtually everything else. Benson did not want to deal with the argument that CU didn't need any state money if they could afford to pay a football coach $3 million to not coach after paying the last one a similar amount to not coach.

We then had the disaster of Hawks last recruiting class followed by his last abreviated season. Revenues were down, seats were empty, and we had the millions of dollars involved with the conference change and the gap in TV revenue. Rather than invest some future dollars in a real coaching search they found somebody they could hire cheap in Embree. The bonus was that because of his ties to the glory days most casual fans would overlook his complete lack of qualifications for the job including zero experience as a HC or coordinator and the fact that as a pro position coach he was out of touch with the intricacies of the college game such as how much information college players could absorb and master effectively. It also meant he had virtually zero establish recruiting ties to build on while taking over a team that was devoid of talent, had a losing attitude, and was off the radar of almost every decent recruit.

The Hawkins hire, as you say, is hard to criticize. He was the hot guy at the time. He had won and won big at Boise and had a personality that appealed to a lot of people. Had CU not hired him somebody else in a major conference would have. The problem with Hawkins was not the hire but failing to recognize that it wasn't going to work earlier and making the change before the full damage had been done.

 

[alec10burks]

They really did that?! Nice job, well I'm glad they got beat.

Yes sir.

They tried to get in Jay MacIntyre's head by chanting overrated and "We want Embree" but it didn't work out too well for them. Right after they started chanting overrated he drained a deep 3 in the defenders face.

Needless to say I was very impressed by him.

 

[Mick Ronson]

The Entire situation with keeping Hawk the additional year and then hiring Embree was emblematic of a university administration that had no interest in having a competitive football program. It was clear the year before he was fired that Hawk was done. His second to last class was for the most part leftovers and desperation shots. Then he went into another dissapointing and losing season. At the end of the year the rumors were flying. From all indications Bohn was ready to fire him and had the finances arrainged to pay for it. At the last minute Dr. Phil and Benson stepped in and stopped it meaning we had another year with Hawk.

The closest I can figure out why this happened was that we were dealing with an election year in which state budget deficits were the single biggest issue on the table with huge cuts to public schools and virtually everything else. Benson did not want to deal with the argument that CU didn't need any state money if they could afford to pay a football coach $3 million to not coach after paying the last one a similar amount to not coach.

We then had the disaster of Hawks last recruiting class followed by his last abreviated season. Revenues were down, seats were empty, and we had the millions of dollars involved with the conference change and the gap in TV revenue. Rather than invest some future dollars in a real coaching search they found somebody they could hire cheap in Embree. The bonus was that because of his ties to the glory days most casual fans would overlook his complete lack of qualifications for the job including zero experience as a HC or coordinator and the fact that as a pro position coach he was out of touch with the intricacies of the college game such as how much information college players could absorb and master effectively. It also meant he had virtually zero establish recruiting ties to build on while taking over a team that was devoid of talent, had a losing attitude, and was off the radar of almost every decent recruit.

The Hawkins hire, as you say, is hard to criticize. He was the hot guy at the time. He had won and won big at Boise and had a personality that appealed to a lot of people. Had CU not hired him somebody else in a major conference would have. The problem with Hawkins was not the hire but failing to recognize that it wasn't going to work earlier and making the change before the full damage had been done.

i think Hawk could be successful somewhere in some fantasy world maybe but it was clear the guy had no idea what made Boise good. the whole problem with Dan was he needed some experienced people on his coaching staff who had BCS experience. particularly in the Big XII. coordinators (same with Embo). it was pretty obvious there was no such thing as "the Boise Playbook" pretty early on. or that if there was one, Dan wasn't it's master caretaker as the TE coach.

and good gawd i hated those uniforms.

this time (and sure i may regret saying this....down the road if being a CU fan is any kind of recurring lesson lately...)....feels like we hired a football coach instead of a personality or symbolic thing to appease the old boy network and keep admin jobs.

shoulder to shoulder

 

[MtnBuff]

i think Hawk could be successful somewhere in some fantasy world maybe but it was clear the guy had no idea what made Boise good. the whole problem with Dan was he needed some experienced people on his coaching staff who had BCS experience. particularly in the Big XII. coordinators (same with Embo). it was pretty obvious there was no such thing as "the Boise Playbook" pretty early on. or that if there was one, Dan wasn't it's master caretaker as the TE coach.

and good gawd i hated those uniforms.

this time (and sure i may regret saying this....down the road if being a CU fan is any kind of recurring lesson lately...)....feels like we hired a football coach instead of a personality or symbolic thing to appease the old boy network and keep admin jobs.

shoulder to shoulder

Your point about a lack of BCS level coordinators is spot on. Hawk was lost and had nobody to help him find his way.

The other problem is that Hawk had no clue how to build a program. When he took over Boise the entire system was already in place, the recruiting structure, the talent pipeline, player development, and most importantly the team identity and attitudes. Hawk just guided the plane after it had taken off and was in flight. When he got to Boulder he found a whole batch of problems he had no solutions for and no idea how to figure out.

 

[Mick Ronson]

Your point about a lack of BCS level coordinators is spot on. Hawk was lost and had nobody to help him find his way.

The other problem is that Hawk had no clue how to build a program. When he took over Boise the entire system was already in place, the recruiting structure, the talent pipeline, player development, and most importantly the team identity and attitudes. Hawk just guided the plane after it had taken off and was in flight. When he got to Boulder he found a whole batch of problems he had no solutions for and no idea how to figure out.

when Dan started talking about "doing things the right way" instead of how he came in talking about "destiny" and "a national championship at CU". academics instead of wins....we knew we were screwed.

people blame it on the admins....or CU's lack of commitment but i worked at CU for 10 years and went to grad school....the CU commitment to sports is way more than it was then OR when i was growing up.

we made bad decisions and we've paid for it. we suck right now because of it...it's not some nefarious conspiracy or asymmetrical. we aren't Texas but we aren't a have not either.

my opinion is Hawkins should have hired a recruiting coordinator with a lot of experience in either California or Texas. when he didn't do that, we should have seen that the asshat was trying to reinvent the wheel on a Big West/Sky type level. it's football, not astrophysics. punt the ball, trust your D to make a stop (when they haven't given up a single point and you are up 2 scores) at ISU. the week after you beat Oklahoma.

i'm not bitter

 

[MtnBuff]

Mick,

Everything you say is correct. The fact that they hired Hawkins shows that they had at least a reasonable level of commitment. At that time he was the hot candidate, he had options, and CU showed him enough to get him to Boulder instead of him going elsewhere.

We (and everyone else) only found out later that he wasn't up to the job. Our failing was not in hiring Hawkins, it was in keeping him long after it became obvious that he wasn't going to do the job.

 

[sackman]

People who go to Fairview would give the hiring an F.

They actually chanted "We want Embree" whenever Jay Mac would get the ball. Are they CSU fans haha? Or just really bad at trying to get inside a players head.

Fairview is the CSU of high schools in Boulder. They have an inferiority complex that stretches back 40 years.

 

[DenverBuff77]

Fairview is the CSU of high schools in Boulder. They have an inferiority complex that stretches back 40 years.

This is true. I had the unfortunate experience of having to attend that underground cesspool. I begged my parents to let me go to Boulder, but we lived in South Boulder and they weren't about to drive me to school across town everyday.