he was a good coach. he was forced out because he couldn't beat nebraska and oklahoma, even though his teams were usually bowl teams. it was felt by some influential boosters that we needed a big time coach to beat the fuskers and ou. so, they got mallory canned and fronted a huge amount (at the time) of money to lure fairbanks from being the hc of the new england patriots. fairbanks announced he was leaving new england at the halftime of a playoff game or maybe right before the playoffs.
things got off to a pretty horrible start and not just on the field. the university was beset with financial troubles in the athletic department at the time. a lot of it was due to the implementation of title ix. CU was forced to cut a whole bunch of men's sports, including baseball. the outcry was as bad as you can imagine. meanwhile, fairbanks spent many thousands remodeling his office so the optics of that in the face of budget cuts were horrible.
the backlash was pretty extreme. the students deserted the program and became actively anti-big time sports. big boosters stayed away. and CU was playing literally the very worst football it had ever played, including two losses to drake. fairbanks and friends tried to dress things up and changed the colors to blue and gold (nearly identical to ucla). more backlash from long time fans ensued.
mallory serves as an example that the grass is not always greener. and, there are still remnants of the damage that came after his termination. "we need a coach who understands the special uniqueness of CU" is one of the lasting vestiges of the damage done in the aftermath of mallory's firing.
rip, coach mallory.
