"What's behind the turn around?"
The front, I think.
The front, I think.
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What's behind the recruiting turn around?
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CULifer
Well-Known Member
Love the recruiting results that the coaches and facilities are having--it's all coming together for us fans too. The whole program's psyche needs to shift from last season's mentality of 'we know we're capable of winning 6-8 games' to a new mentality this season of 'we expect to win 6-8 games' (or more). Really, we should go into every game this season expecting to win. And we should be utterly pissed if we lose any game. That should be the program's mentality from the top down. The destiny so eloquently proposed above will only be ours when the herd starts playing with a ****ing massive-a** chip on their shoulder, shoulder-to-shoulder. And we need to start playing a little bit more creatively and dangerously. We need to take a few more controlled risks that have potential for a bigger pay-off. I will be disappointed if we don't win at least 6-7 games this season. But I'll be more disappointed if we don't go into every game (including Michigan, Oregon and Stanford) expecting to win.
you have to have the right tools to do the job. we have everything except the record now. imagine when we start winning again. we'll be unstoppable.
i've been to every pac 12 venue but oregon state and washington state. i can say without hesitation that any kid who wants to play in the p12 would be hard-pressed to find a better setting than boulder. we have the academics, the history, the facilities, etc. if we start to win again, we will be unstoppable.
i've been to every pac 12 venue but oregon state and washington state. i can say without hesitation that any kid who wants to play in the p12 would be hard-pressed to find a better setting than boulder. we have the academics, the history, the facilities, etc. if we start to win again, we will be unstoppable.
Joe Theismann's Leg
Well-Known Member
I don't know if HCMM is getting enough credit. I mean, sure it's only just happening and he's been in charge for a while, but he's been building relationships since day 1 and some of those are paying off. He's also got an exciting new recruiter who used to play for CU and he's got world class facilities.
Any time you see a turnaround like this, it's due to a combination of factors. The convergence of new facilities and a more cohesive recruiting strategy combined with the addition of a few very dynamic recruiters is landing us solid 3* and a few 4* players. Start winning some games, and those turn into 5* players.
I agree. He took a lot of blame when things weren't going well. He deserves some of the credit for see what needed to be changed and making those changes. Almost every kid that commits mentions the relationship with the coaches a big factor. Have to think Mac is one of the coaches they are talking about.
He deserves some credit for sure, but not in the way your post is giving him credit. The relationships he has been building are mostly a non-factor in the current success IMO.
I actually give him credit for scrapping a failed recruiting strategy and making changes to his staff. Filling out most of a class from satellite camps does not work at this level. The new staff members are the ones building upon their existing relationships, which is what you should expect out of assistant coaches.
Correctomundo.
This is on point.
M2 and Co. came in with a recruiting strategy. To put it kindly, it didn't work. It may have worked at SJSU but it didn't work in the PAC12.
I don't know how much was his decision vs. how much he was pushed but he did replace some coaches with guys who can and are recruiting. They also dropped the idea of trying to find the hidden gems and have waded out into the stream going after the guys that everyone else is going after.
We do need to keep something in mind though. We are all excited because we finally are starting to recruit players on par with most of our conference competition, compared to the past few years this is a huge step up.
All it does though is bring us into the mix in terms of talent level. The other teams are recruiting this kind of player as well and have been for years. A big part of our roster this year and the next couple years will be composed of guys who had little or no P5 interest coming out of high school.
Arguably this should have been done at least a couple years ago but don't expect miracles. We have gotten much better but we will still have some key players on he field who might have a hard time breaking the two deep at more than a couple other PAC12 schools.
I still maintain that the strategy being employed now wouldn't have worked in 2013. He employed the only strategy that was realistically available to him at the time.
To illustrate the point: no way in Hell do we ever get Tyler Lytle in 2013. It Would have been a waste of time and resources to even try.
To illustrate the point: no way in Hell do we ever get Tyler Lytle in 2013. It Would have been a waste of time and resources to even try.
So much this. Mac basically had zero to sell to recruits in his first year. Less than zero. Worst facilities in the P5. Historically poor performance by recent teams. His name wasn't a big selling point. The coach he replaced was basically accusing the AD of racism. Colorado is no recruiting hotbed. Am I missing anything?
At the time of the hire, many here knew that CU was years away from being competitive again. It was all about baby steps, and we have seen that happen. Facilites completed. Leavitt hire. Chev hire. More competitive on the field each year. (Yes, despite the win-loss record, recruits will notice when your team is in more conference games than not, even without the wins.) Can anyone honestly say that the outlook for CU football has not gotten better in each year since Mac took the job?
Next step(s) would be finding six damn wins and/or a signature win against a major opponent. Either one of those things allows the program to maintain their current recruiting momentum and move the program forward.
good post.
Don't disagree.
In some ways M2 would have been better off if the entire program had been shut down for a year and he could start fresh. He wasn't just starting with maybe the worst team at the BCS level in the country. He not only had to deal with a lack of talent but with an ingrained losing attitude but also with an image of a laughingstock program and questionable support from the school. Just getting us to the point where we aren't an embarrassment on the field against other PAC12 schools is huge progress.
I would have liked to see him make some of the changes he has made earlier but no they wouldn't have worked out of the gate. Those who claim that progress hasn't been made because we aren't winning more games are ignoring what is happening on the field.
Yes the ultimate measure of a program is in wins and losses and eventually those have to come. For those calling for the firing of the current staff I have two questions. Who could we have hired who would have done better? And who could we hire now who would give us better results?
I am failing to see a good answer to either of those questions. Sure a Sabin or a Miles, or a Meyers or a Harbaugh would have gotten faster results but they weren't coming to this disaster zone even if we had the money to pay them at the time. I suspect that a lot of Butch Jones bailing out at the last minute had to do with him seeing the size of the mountain he faced.
If we were to fire M2 at this point as some have advocated I think that not only would we lose much of this class but would set back recruiting in future years as well. I also think that prospective hires would be very leery of a program that doesn't give adequate time and support to a guy who has essentially rebuilt the entire program from the ground up.
Joe Theismann's Leg
Well-Known Member
That's the thing I don't understand. I mean, to my mind HCMM is exactly who the Buffs needed when he was hired. Someone who is likeable, patient and able to build a positive, winning attitude. I mean last season it was a big deal that the team had a "why not us" attitude. It literally took two years just to get the team to think they had a chance in every game.
Now we've got a much more motivated, much more athletic team with a positive locker room culture. I think HCMM deserves a ton of credit for that. Without him laying the foundation there's no way we have this kind of recruiting success.
Now we've got a much more motivated, much more athletic team with a positive locker room culture. I think HCMM deserves a ton of credit for that. Without him laying the foundation there's no way we have this kind of recruiting success.
HCMM has earned a lot of credit for what he has done off the field. He has also earned a lot of criticism for what he hasn't done on the field. Have to be able to have success in both areas.
This will be a big year for him as a coach. He has the pieces, now he needs to prove he can win with those pieces.
This will be a big year for him as a coach. He has the pieces, now he needs to prove he can win with those pieces.
Some revisionist history in this thread IMO. He was able to hire Jim Leavitt after two historically awful years on defense. Arguing the DC job was all that much better in 2014 than when MacIntyre took over is a reach. MacIntyre has to own his initial just was not good enough. Not really hindsight either, many people were saying it at the time.
Sure, but your customer base will be entirely different as well.
Yep. The one thing we don't know is how much of that was MacIntyre loyalty to the coaches who had helped him make it happen at SJSU... and how much of it was Bohn making sure he wouldn't get burnt twice by hiring a G5 coach and not getting his coordinators and most other assistants to come with him. I think it's a little bit of both of those factors that were at play.
The only complaint I really have about Mac so far is he takes too long to make crucial decisions probably out of loyalty. It's clear to me he knows what needs to be changed before it actually happens (see Forman after his second season) but he doesn't act on those instincts fast enough. Seemed like he knows Bernardi needs to be replaced but he is going to wait a year to do it if he has the chance along with Lindgren.
I get what you are saying but I wonder how much of Leavitt coming had to do with him seeing a situation with hope. Also his relationship with M2 played into it and he wasn't available when M2 took over the job.
I would think it's a lot easier to get an assistant to say 'yes' to CU when he comes in and meets with Lance Carl & Rick George versus coming in and meeting with Mike Bohn. I know I'd have a lot more confidence now in the administrative support and direction of the program with the current AD. It would make a huge difference to me when looking at a job within a rebuilding situation.
I'm not sure about that. Mac's early recruiting and staffing decisions were a failure - to his credit he has begun to address them, but not having a greater emphasis and clear strategy for recruiting early on was a mistake.
You're probably right that we still wouldn't have attracted a Tyler Lytle type player in 2013, but even if we had been able to attract marginally better talent we might not be so concerned about just making a bowl in year 4.
The pressure is really on this year (Mac and Lindgren particularly) - we need to make a bowl game to give credence to the "Rise", otherwise we run the risk of this looking like a Hawk/snake oil situation.
Yeah, there was a lot of hope on defense after the 2014 season. Come on.
Mostly coaching.
Your brick was important.
But the general donations we've made over the years, part of which have helped to buyout ****ty coaches and pay for the current coaches are probably more important.
That's only because there wasn't a Coaching AND Facilities answer to choose from... which is the correct answer.
There wasn't much talent but the program had stabilized, a new success focused AD was in office, facilities improvements were under way. A much different situation than that found the days that M2 took over from the Embree era.
dyemeduke
Well-Known Member
?!?! I had always thought it was HCMM's loyalty to his assistants and never thought of this angle. Are you just shooting from the hip/thinking out loud, or are there rumors with legitimate smoke to this statement? If so, **** Bohn even more than I already dislike him...