Boulder – Colorado football players scattered for spring break with one rule from their new coach: no couch potatoes.
If anyone comes back too sunburned to put on shoulder pads, or otherwise injured from the ski slopes or the Mexican surf, so be it. Let the NFL put restricted activities in player contracts. Dan Hawkins wants his CU players to enjoy life.
“They’ve got to get exercise, run around a little bit and lift weights a little bit,” he said. “I don’t want to use (the first day of practice) as a warm-up when they get back.”
Hawkins, whose offenses at Boise State played on the edge with a wide-open attack, lives life on the edge. By the time he returns to spin tales of his first sky diving mission over spring break, he will have become CU’s version of Michigan State coach and adventurer John L. Smith, best known for climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa. Smith also has run with the bulls in Spain and gone sky diving.
Hawkins admitted to being “way out of his comfort zone” with the sky diving event, but his daughters are pushing him.
“Hey, this is my Kilimanjaro – right here,” Hawkins said after Thursday’s scrimmage, indicating the hallways of the Dal Ward Center.
But he is one up on Smith. While most football coaches are convinced a water hazard is a small pond that devours golf balls, Hawkins spent spring break last year in a shark cage off the coast of South Africa admiring great white sharks.
He compared it to going to the zoo. The cage is safe as long as you don’t stick out an arm.
“I just want to say when it’s all said and done and I’m in the pine box I’m going, ‘Hey, I’ve lived the life.”‘
Hawkins has earned the right to get out more often. He describes himself as a homeless Dal Ward Center junkie, rarely leaving the Buffs’ athletic complex while his family remains in Boise, Idaho, to finish out the school year. One of the purposes of the trip to California is a family reunion.
Assuming he returns intact from his sky diving adventure, there’s plenty of work for the final two weeks of spring ball. As soon as the Buffs start to digest material, the coaching staff throws more playbook details at them. One purpose is getting the team ready for the weekly overhaul of the game plan in the fall.
“The attitude is good,” Hawkins said. “Guys are coming along. They are right with us mentally and buying in. They are not even in the same area code when it comes to execution, but that will come. I’m concerned about them handling a bunch of input every day.”
