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worst CU football head coach in the last 50 years?

worst CU football head coach in the last 50 year?

  • dan hawkins

    Votes: 29 20.6%

  • jon embree

    Votes: 87 61.7%

  • chuck fairbanks

    Votes: 25 17.7%

  • other (if you pick this one, be prepared to defend your answer)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    141
There's any easy Top 3 for sure.

I picked Embree simply because Danny boy won a couple of decent games (OU being the best). That said, there is a whole lot of terrible coaching in that poll.
 
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I gotta go with D2 since he excelled at it for a long time and really engineered the destruction of CU football (together with the administration). Jon Embree comes in a fairly close second for me as he set the bar for individual season futility. I'm only 35, so I can't go back all 50 years for this question.
 
they all sucked in their own special and magical ways. and, they didn't just suck. they sucked in new and profoundly painful ways.

i thought no one could top chucky. then we got dan. and i thought no one could top danny. and then we got embree. this one is a conundrum.
 
I was seriously torn between Embree and Chairbanks. (How bad is it when Danny Boy is only the third worst coach on the list?)

Went with Chairbanks because he took over a reasonably good program and got it to the same depths Embree did in an amazingly short period of time. Hawk and Embo needed twice as much time between them to achieve similar wreckage...
 
Embree simply wasn't qualified for the job. The ONLY reason he got the job is because of his ties to CU.
 
I think it is easy. Embree hands down. While others contributed to our downfall noone looked more inept and did virtually nothing good for our program or embarrassed us more than Embree & Co. We were near the worst in every statistical category last year, the worst team in CU history and one of the worst in BCS history (especially for a program with a top 25 winning %).
 
Being the first CU coach since Folsom was built to go a full season without winning a home game automatically vaults Embree to the top of the list.
 
Definitely Embree. Not only did he produce the worst product on the field imaginable, but he threw CU under the bus when he was fired.
 
i think it is a pretty close call between the 3. fairbanks took down a successful program. neither hawkins or embree inherited a great starting point. embree was only on the job 2 years, so is he the worst ever? i mean, maybe he would have improved? (doubtful, probably impossible, i admit). hawkins actually had flashes of almost goodness, but they were very rare. and he sucked worse every year for 5 years. i'm torn. out of the 3, i personally liked fairbanks the least. by far. not even close. embree set historically bad records-- i've never seen anything like that. hmmmmm.

tough one, i think.
 
Really a two man race between Fairbanks and Embree.

Fairbanks: CU had gone to the Orange Bowl just a couple of years before a drunken Chuckie showed up and he ran the program into the ground very quickly producing two three win seasons, and a 1 win season. I think the TWO losses to Drake speak for themselves. However, can you call him a bad coach if he wasn't even trying? Also, he produced two 11-1 seasons at OU and several good years as HC with the Pats.

Embree: Inherited a mess from Hawkins. Over a very brief stint, produced a 3 wins with a senior laden team, then went 1-10 with a division 2 loss, a CSU loss, and an epic beatdown from mighty Fresno State. He gets to defer some blame on Hawkins, and his two inept coordinators, one of whom called the infamous 1st down QB sneak.

Going with Embree, mostly because it's more recent. Unlike Fairbanks, Embree gave a damn, so I'm an a-hole for selecting him.
 
Had to go D2 since I am not old enough to remember much of Fairbanks (thank god) and Embree was just put in a no win situation, and did exactly that.

D2 destroyed this program in every way imaginable. He had a few lucky games but those were definitely negated by some embarrassing games.
 
Fairbanks, because he just didn't care. Embree was the most inept, but that was because he was in WAY over his head.
 
Embree imo. At least Hawk had us in games, only to **** it up, but at least we were in them. Embree made every team out to be Missouri under Chase Daniel.

Not old enough for Fairbanks.
 
Yeah, the stats speak for them self. But my order is based upon not coaching, but commitment.

Embree - buffs4life. Shoulder2Shoulder. Colorado HS. Mac the Promise Keeper says he's the real deal. Just needed more time. :bronzecup:

Hawkins - Son was a great Buff. Beat OU and aNUs in same season. Exited with modicum of grace and humility :silvercup:

Fairbanks - Bastard brought down baseball and wrestling in addition to football. Total greedy carpetbagger didn't give a damn. :goldcup:
 
I voted Embree because the ineptitude was so massive. D2 was at least competitive in a lot of games. The Kansas game itself is almost enough to make him my number one though. Too young for Fairbanks.
 
Chuck Fairbanks by a nose. If you picked Dan Hawkins, then you are dead wrong. That is not opinion, it is fact. I can't stand the man, but he presided over one of the top 5 program wins of all time against OU, beat Nebraska and got us to a bowl. His teams were usually at least competitive in most games and while his recruits didn't pan out, he did get a top 15 class and brought in some athletes. I also think that even though he is a douche, his lack of success was more due to incompetence then not caring. Jon Embree only beats out Chuck because he is a Buff and bleeds black and gold. I believe that he truly tried to succeed here. However his record is absolutely horrific and his teams were outclassed in nearly every game regardless of the competition. Chuck also had some of the worst teams in history, but his true sin is that he simply didn't give a ****. He came to Colorado and basically made it a vacation stop so he could spend the AD into near oblivion and soak up the easy money. That I can't forgive.
 
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buffedup said:
Chuck Fairbanks by a nose. If you picked Dan Hawkins, then you are dead wrong. That is not opinion, it is fact. I can't stand the man, but he presided over one of the top 5 program wins of all time against OU, beat Nebraska and got us to a bowl. His teams were usually at least competitive in most games and while his recruits didn't pan out, he did get a top 15 class and brought in some athletes. I also think that even though he is a douche, his lack of success was more due to incompetence then not caring. Jon Embree only beats out Chuck because he is a Buff and bleeds black and gold. I believe that he truly tried to succeed here. However his record is absolutely horrific and his teams were outclassed in nearly every game regardless of the competition. Chuck also had some of the worst teams in history, but his true sin is that he simply didn't give a ****. He came to Colorado and basically made it a vacation stop so he could spend the AD into near oblivion and soak up the easy money. That I can't forgive.
Click to expand...

I will agree with this. Plus...powder blue unies. Hawk wanted to do good. Not having the common sense to not bring his kid here meant he could get any other better QBs. That killed him. You had the feelung that he wanted to do well so bad, and was totally clueless as to why his success priciples didn't work here.

Jon, now Jon would have about died to bring CU back to the top. I know it has to eat at him every day. But CU admin put a man that loved CU and bled black and gold into a no win situation. They wanted EB too, so even though he had no head coordinator experience, he also ended up with two coordinators that also had no head coordinator experience. It was a recipe for disaster.

Chuck was the honey badger. He just didn't give a ****.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk 2
 
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JE's performance can be explained, he had literally no business being placed in that position at that stage of his career and he had two coordinators with no experience. Hawk was just a mystery wrapped in an enigma.
 
I was really torn between Fairbanks and Embree and went with Embree.

By all accounts Fairbanks sucked and destroyed the program because he was simply cashing a paycheck and didn't even care about the team. Embree was actually trying and was a total failure. I blame DII for this entire mess but as others said at least he won a few games and there was a stretch early into his contract where it looked like CU might be improving.
 
Oh come on! Fairbanks by a mile! At least Embo cared. Plus, his legacy is still here. I'm actually incensed that anyon would choose Embo ove Fairbanks. Just a stupid choice.
 
Doesn't the fact Embree actually cared and was still terrible count against him?
 
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