It’s not easy for a legend to step down. But Sonny Lubick’s retirement after 15 years as head football coach at Colorado State University was as classy as his performances on the field.
It was no secret that Lubick, who scored a 108-74 record with the Rams, wanted to coach at least another year. But after four straight losing seasons, athletic director Paul Kowalczyk pressured Lubick, 70, to step aside while possibly remaining with CSU as a senior associate athletic director — essentially a fundraiser and goodwill ambassador for the school.
At an emotional news conference Tuesday, Lubick said he had not yet had time to decide if he wants to stay on in that role at CSU. It was typical of Lubick that he spent the three days after Friday’s 36-28 victory over arch-rival Wyoming not haggling over his own future prospects but assuring fair treatment for his assistant coaches, who will receive compensation for the next three months or until they secure another job.
Lubick’s farewell touched often on a word that sounds old-fashioned in today’s world of big-time sports: loyalty.
“How can you not be loyal to guys who’ve lived their whole life for you?” Lubick said of his aides. Detailing how one assistant rebuffed a good job at another school to stay with him, Lubick’s voice broke and he had to be comforted by his wife, Carol Jo.
The coach who always tried to prepare his student athletes for life after football had special praise for the faculty of CSU and proudly confided that he had never asked them to pass a player who was doing poor classroom work — urging them instead to flunk athletes who neglected their studies.
Alluding to the awkward efforts to ease him out, he simply said, “This episode over the past few days hasn’t changed my feeling for CSU and the community. It was a perfect fit. The wins and losses come and go. The relationships will not — the real, genuine relationships will be here forever. I’ll be a Ram to the end of time.”
Indeed you will, Sonny. You were classy on the field, and classy in retirement. It’s too bad CSU officials couldn’t have handled the situation the same way.
