In a year of scant movement in the head coaching ranks, the Colorado football job is the top vacancy in Division I-A. Some might think San Diego State would be at the top, with weather and rich recruiting in its backyard.
If anyone weighs the two jobs, current CU and former San Diego State athletic director Mike Bohn can tell a candidate he left a 70-degree day in April for a spring snowstorm in Colorado.
For the bigger picture, CU’s program – 15 years removed from a national championship and just four years from a BCS bowl berth – is the plum job.
“A gold mine,” Gary Barnett said as he exited CU’s coaching position Thursday.
College football observers contacted Thursday unanimously agreed, because of the attraction of the state, school and campus, as well as its football history and high academic reputation.
Former San Francisco 49ers coach Dennis Erickson, who won a national championship at an established Miami power and turned around one-time Pac-10 doormat Oregon State, said: “Recruiting is No. 1, and the avenue to get players is facilities and then tradition.”
Erickson took Washington State (1987) and Miami (1993) teams to Boulder.
“The job is very attractive,” Erickson said from his home in San Jose, Calif. “It’s always been a beautiful area, and it’s a great school.”
And, yes, he’s interested.
“There’s no question Colorado can be very attractive for whoever the new coach is,” said Jeremy Crabtree, national and Big 12 analyst for online recruiting site Rivals.com. “Boulder has some of the best scenery in the world, and when you compare it to the rest of the Big 12, nothing beats Boulder.”
Yet with the Buffs’ late collapse this season and uncertainty over Barnett’s status, CU ranks last in the Big 12 in early commitments, Crabtree said.
And, for all the talk of CU not having the facilities to compete for recruits, many forget the Dal Ward Center was called the “Taj Mahal” of athletic facilities when it opened. Former athletic director Bill Marolt regularly took visitors from other schools on a guided tour.
But, like any model home circa early 1990s, it has been trumped by bigger and newer facilities. The lack of an indoor practice facility is a big negative.
“One thing I’ve heard kids say when they visit CU is, ‘What happens when it snows?”‘ Crabtree said.
Bohn said Thursday he is committed to getting an indoor facility built, though he offered no timetable or funding solution. Even schools from smaller conferences, such as Utah, BYU and Wyoming of the Mountain West, have built or are in the process of building indoor practice facilities.
“CU doesn’t have to have the best facilities to win,” Crabtree said. “It has the best academic reputation in the Big 12, along with Texas. It’s a great atmosphere in Boulder and attractive to young college kids.”
Montbello High School coach Oliver Lucas established a reputation as one of Bill McCartney’s top recruiters 20 years ago. He brought the likes of Eric Bieniemy and Darian Hagan to Boulder.
Lucas recalled bringing some Los Angeles and Houston recruits in with the weather as frigid as this week’s.
“I had to convince them the weather was not that cold,” Lucas said. “I was walking around in nothing but a shirt. I was freezing to death, but after a while, they said it wasn’t that cold.”
He added: “The job can still be one of the best in the country. A lot of things built with Mac (McCartney) have been devalued. Look at USC and Oklahoma. They failed for a while, but now they are back up. The USCs don’t take but a minute to jump back. If you take a program like CU and let it fall, it’s really a difficult job to resurrect it.”
Lucas doesn’t buy into talk that CU’s and Boulder’s small minority population makes it difficult to attract black athletes.
“CU has gotten away from those things about being a school of opportunity and a school of chance,” he said. “Kids have met the (academic) standards. The bar has been set. For some reason, CU lost a stronghold on cities.”
Natalie Meisler can be reached at 303-820-1295 or nmeisler@denverpost.com.
