The 2016 CU Buffalos will go down in history as one of the greatest …
Welcome to 2017, a time in American history where divorce rates are up past 50 percent and one-night stands begin on speed dating app's. We’ve managed to craft an ADD society lately, which demands instant satisfaction while lacking any sort of patience or commitment.
But not all hope is lost. In rare fashion, the 2016 Colorado Buffaloes was a football team that went against the grain and embodied the lost practice of endurance, persistence, and determination in route to achieving long awaited success. It's a lesson in patience everyone can learn from.
The Division 1 Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) has long adopted the win-now-or-get-fired philosophy. After the 2015 season, 28 FBS head coaches were out of work. Seeing that there are 128 FBS football programs, that meant 1 out of 5 coaches were let go in a single calendar year. Additionally, the average coaching tenure has been reduced by 40 percent since 1980 — down from 4.61 to 2.75 seasons.
Current ESPN football Analyst Herman Edwards has commented on the coaching occupancies by saying, "There's definitely an 'instant gratification' (mindset) now, but I think that most guys understand that, at least the newer coaches. Everybody wants to win now. If you don't, they’re going to find someone else who can get it done, that's just a fact of life."
For the Buffs, it was once a proud football program that over the past decade had found itself as college football’s basement dweller. An unending butt of every college football joke.
To understand how far this team had fallen, the last time CU had made a bowl game was in 2007. Yes, the same 2007 in which George W. Bush was still president and the iPhone was only the 11th bestselling cellular device.
In order to get back to respectability, CU took an old school approach. It had no other choice. There wasn’t going to be a fast-pass to the front of the line, so the progression would be made through incremental wins. After 7 years and 2 unsuccessful coaching regimes from Dan Hawkins & Jon Embree (.373 combined record), the Buffaloes turned to Mike MacIntyre to steer the ship around.
After 3 rocky seasons and a 2-25 record against the Pac-12, Coach Mac was on the hot seat. It would have been easy for CU’s Athletic Director, Rick George, to cut lies with MacIntyre, as the fans would have understood the firing despite seeing those small, incremental progresses year over year.
But Rick George pledged his loyalty with Coach Mac, and his patience eventually paid off. Through relentless coaching and a push-forward attitude, Coach Mac developed his rookie recruiting class into a veteran force that could hang with the big boys. This year’s roster, led by 10 starting seniors, finally broke through and triumphed to win 10 games. The team was crowned Pac-12 South champions.
The organization's secret sauce wasn’t paying recruits or to have big wallet boosters pick up the tab on car leases. It started with a patient coach selling young men on a vision to leave a legacy by being the recruiting class that would turn the program around … with time.
He recruited high character individuals who came in with chips on their shoulders after being overlooked by many other D1 schools. The gritty, blue collar class of recruits vowed to leave the program in a better state than they have found it through persistence and focus. There was no cutting corners or overnight miracles.
Mission accomplished.
These seniors ended things on a high note by putting together one of the best turnarounds in college football history. They became part of only the 9th Power-5 team since 1972 to jump from four or fewer wins one year up to 10 or more wins the next. Also, Coach Mac was recently awarded the Walter Camp trophy for College Coach of the Year.
And although college football’s Cinderella story ended at midnight with a pumpkin carriage in the form of a bad Pac 12 title loss to Washington, and an even worse Alamo Bowl loss to Oklahoma State, the 2016 Colorado Buffaloes will always be a team its fans will remember. Not only did it accomplish 'The Rise' and restore much needed faith back into the program, it was a team society can all learn something from.
Overcoming dissension isn’t always cured by a seductive, quick-fix pill that completely ignores the problem by offering a temporarily relief. Often, deep-rooted problems demand a mature, well-planned solution. That takes years of perseverance and hard work to achieve. The Buffs are a living example of this, and prove that doing things the old school way can make the eventual outcomes that much more satisfactory.
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