Second in a series of interviews with Front Range football coaches during fall camp. Today, The Denver Post’s CSU beat writer, Natalie Meisler, talks with coach Sonny Lubick.
DP: This is your 15th preseason camp at CSU. Is there anything different about it this year?
Lubick: Actually, it’s about my 45th overall. I haven’t barbecued a hamburger on Labor Day in 45 years. Every year has anticipation and excitement. All the years are the same. If you win a bunch of games the year before, maybe something creeps in and you think you’re pretty smart. Now you don’t win a lot of games and you don’t think you’re too smart and you have a little more of an ax to grind. When you think you have it made, you don’t have it made. We’re back to grinding – with a smile.
DP: When will you come out with the first two-deep?
Lubick: Two days before the CU game.
DP: Do you see any single key to the season, whether a certain game, or getting through the Texas travel in late September? Is there one thing that has to go right for you this year?
Lubick: Winning games always helps. Players are pretty sharp, especially the upperclassmen. You get ready for your first game, then get ready for the second game. You hope you’re strong enough as a coach and as a team. Every team is going to have adversity.
Twenty-five or 30 years ago, if you beat CU and lost the rest of your games, that’s OK. That’s not the case. It’s certainly not the case with them.
DP: Has the early practice weather been humid enough to get ready for those September trips to Houston and TCU?
Lubick: I don’t think so, but we’ve never had problems with those things.
DP: What’s it like to have Dave Lay back as co-offensive coordinator?
Lubick: He fits perfectly. The coaches came to me and said, “He’s the guy we need.” Fifteen years ago, when I got the job, the first guy I called was Dave Lay, and he said, “I’ll come if you let me run the football.” I said, “It’s your deal.” He didn’t say that this time. He’s a guy who grows on you. He’s not a flash in the pan. He’s going to give everything he has to the football team and his players. Some like flashier people. With Dave, you get a football coach.
DP: At this time last year, (your son) Marc was just finishing chemotherapy. You look at him now and you wouldn’t know what he went through. How is he?
Lubick: Last year at this time, getting into football was the best thing we did but you never had 100 percent concentration. Marc was just taking his last treatment. Danny’s situation (offensive coordinator Dan Hammerschmidt had just lost his wife, Karen, to cancer) was weighing on everyone, so it was hard. You’re on the field, you forget your troubles. That’s the best thing about football for the players and the coaches. For two hours, you can get lost in your own world. When you come off the field, those things can creep back in your mind. It was not what you say a real happy feeling. It was a heavy heart. Marc is doing well now. All his tests have been fine.
DP: That interview you did on the radio with (talk show host) Alfred Williams. … he was saying he admired you because you don’t throw players under the bus. We know better. Which is worse, the bus or the Sonny Lubick/J’Sharlon Jones Memorial Doghouse?
Lubick: The doghouse. It’s up to us as coaches, we have to take responsibility and accountability. If things go wrong or a kid doesn’t perform well, first we have to look at ourselves. Then we get mad at ourselves, then we get mad at (the player) and no one has to know about it. If you’re in the doghouse, it might take a while to get out of it, but they do get out of it.
Staff writer Natalie Meisler can be reached at 303-954-1295 or nmeisler@denverpost.com.
