Boulder
In Dan Hawkins’ first game as Colorado’s head coach, the Buffaloes might have fallen to the eventual national champions Saturday.
The Division I-AA champions.
Yes, one could argue that the Buffaloes’ collective packing-it-in performance in Gary Barnett’s final games last season rivaled the 19-10 loss to the Montana State Bobcats for on-field embarrassment.
But this was worse. It was worse because of what it likely foreshadowed. The 2006 season will be a lo-o-o-ng, ignominious, patience-testing and potentially demoralizing transitional trial in Boulder.
Drawing conclusions from one game about Hawkins’ ability to build a consistently elite program would be folly.
So would be isolating the blame on frequently flustered quarterback James Cox, who wasn’t very good, but had a lot of company.
What it did show was that Hawkins’ biggest challenge will be to mitigate the damages this season. The hole the CU program must climb out of will keep growing, and the only question is how much deeper it will be by Nov. 24.
The only thing worse than a loss to a Division I-AA program in CU’s modern era were the Buffaloes’ back-to-back losses to Drake in Boulder in 1979 and ’80. They came in the first two seasons of the disastrous reign of Chuck Fairbanks, who came to CU straight from the New England Patriots – and in Boulder had more interest in the size of his desk and changing the uniform colors to a hideous Columbine blue than he did in tending to the actual details of coaching.
The victories were so inspiring for Drake, the Iowa school later dropped football.
In the kickoff of the Hawkins era, the only fluke about the Buffs’ loss to Montana State was the score. It should have been worse. Even in the first game of a new coaching regime, when there always will be a few bugs still in the system, a I-AA opponent should be a patsy. Ominously, a program operating under a scholarship limit of 63 (compared to the big boys’ 85) didn’t win this on gimmicks, luck and turnovers.
The Bobcats won most of the battles, most notably in stuffing the CU offense to only 65 yards in the second half. If the Bobcats had been better in the red zone – CU had two second-
half goal-line stands that limited MSU to a single field goal – the underdogs would have coasted.
The Big Sky Conference program won one for all the other “byes” who were designated victims on the first full weekend of the season. Northern Illinois. Eastern Washington. Idaho. Montana. Missouri State. Western Kentucky. Louisiana-Lafayette. Perhaps Nicholls State, Nebraska’s upcoming opponent (perhaps because the Baldwin-
Wallace Yellow Jackets already were booked), can use this as inspiration in the next week.
How devastating was the loss?
Hawkins laughed wryly, and then said, “You know, I’ve been doing this for a long time and I’ve lost before. If you can’t understand how to deal with losing, you’re never going to win.
“To me, it’s only devastating if people make it devastating. We understand that most people are good to jump on when it’s rosy, but we all find out about ourselves when things aren’t so good. In some respects, it might be a blessing. We have to work a little harder, come together a little bit more, focus on things a little bit more.”
This CU senior class has been through bizarre swings of emotions in its four seasons, and now the challenge will be for the leaders to prevent this team from becoming completely demoralized as the transition is made to a roster of “Hawk’s Guys.”
“We have to fix what we did today,” said senior guard and co-captain Brian Daniels. “If we don’t, it will just continue down. We’re not going to let that happen, I guarantee you.”
Said CU linebacker Thaddaeus Washington, another co-captain: “We have to look forward. We can’t look back. This game’s over. We’ve got to flush it.”
If only it were that simple.
Staff writer Terry Frei can be reached at 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
