At least Saturday wasn’t as bad as that infamous October day in 1980 when Colorado lost 82-42 to Oklahoma, Colorado State fell 69-0 to a mediocre Iowa State team, and Air Force lost 17-16 – to Yale.
But as the college season heads into the homestretch, Saturday’s oh-fer by the state’s three major programs was at least ignominious.
Colorado coach Dan Hawkins in many ways is worthy of a mulligan season because of the extraordinary mess he inherited – a mess for which I’ll again concede there is plenty of blame to go around, from the athletic department’s Dal Ward Center, to the State Capitol, to the district attorney’s office and to the media.
But when Hawkins does something as ridiculous as using a quarterback shuttle against the beatable Kansas Jayhawks in Lawrence, he deserves to be called on it. That move gave two ineffective quarterbacks even less chance of getting into a rhythm, and it also insulted Bernard Jackson, the starter for most of the season who at least has hung in there. Hawkins either needed to break it gently to Jackson while telling the junior quarterback he was being benched or stick with him in a lost season and hope that he could help the Buffs sneak in another win or two in the upcoming home games against Kansas State and ISU.
Running Jackson and James Cox in and out at Kansas was a joke, doomed to make matters even worse.
The CU staff is focusing more energetically and intently on recruiting than on day-to-day coaching this season, and that’s only prudent. All anyone could ask of Hawkins and his coaches this season was to make the most of what it had. But Hawkins and his staff owed the players and the program’s loyalists a wholehearted coaching effort on Saturdays.
In Fort Collins and at the Air Force Academy, the sad truth is that Colorado State’s Sonny Lubick and the Falcons’ Fisher DeBerry are in danger of tarnishing their legacies, and they should be thinking about passing on the torches – before the torches, and the right to anoint their own successors, are taken out of their hands.
They’re not suddenly in over their heads, not even after the Rams’ last-second loss to terrible New Mexico and the Falcons’ rout at the hands of Brigham Young.
Lubick and DeBerry are still vibrant, hard-working and astute.
They have done praiseworthy jobs in their long tenures, and Lubick, with a contract that runs through 2009, at least has a youth-laden team that could be good enough next season to threaten for the Mountain West title.
But that’s a maybe.
There shouldn’t be any groundswells to force out him or DeBerry.
It would be sad, though, if they stick around too long and let it come to that. They are not running programs that, like Florida State’s, can succeed on automatic pilot or with assistant coaches in control. There just comes a point where they should make it clear they are setting the rites of succession in motion, while they still have the power to be a major voice in the process.
I’m not saying that their retirements from the sidelines have to be next season or 2008. Yet they should be showing more serious signs that they will not stubbornly hang on and allow themselves to become pathetic figures, awkwardly forced out.
And what of the state’s Division I-AA program?
In Greeley, the University of Northern Colorado’s transition from Division II has been awash in disgrace. The murder charge against punter Mitch Cozad, while perhaps a legal reach, and the misbehavior of other football players led to a Sunday meeting of coaches and players with a displeased UNC president Kay Norton.
Granted, it’s risky to link the off-the-field conduct problems with the Bears’ move from Division II football to Division I-AA. Yet it remains unfortunate that Norton couldn’t turn the clocks back a few years in the athletic department Sunday morning and reverse the decision to be in Division I for all sports after NCAA rules forced schools to make a choice.
In football, where the Bears won consecutive Division II national championships in 1996 and 1997, the program still isn’t close to reaching the Division I-AA scholarship limit of 65, and UNC is the Big Sky Conference’s doormat. There is no reason to believe that can change anytime soon.
This is the season to forget.
Staff writer Terry Frei can be reached at 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
