FORT COLLINS — Sonny Lubick is still the unofficial mayor of Fort Collins — a 71-year-old rock star who can’t walk a block without fan recognition. He’s just no longer the football coach at Colorado State.
For the first time since what he thinks was 1950, when he was in the eighth grade, Lubick has spent August on the outside of football looking in. The man who coaxed and cajoled a once lopsided series into a run of instant classics won’t be in Denver next Sunday for the Rams’ game against Colorado.
“I wouldn’t want to go and take the chance I’d be a distraction,” he said. “People saying, ‘There’s Sonny sitting over there.’ It would be embarrassing for me.”
Instead, he will spend Labor Day weekend in Arizona visiting his oldest son, Matt, who is the recruiting coordinator and also coaches safeties for Lubick’s friend Dennis Erickson at Arizona State. ASU opens its season Saturday against Northern Arizona.
Lubick said he doesn’t think he could sit in the stands for a CSU game; he still wishes he was on the sidelines with the upperclassmen he recruited.
“I’ve built up relationships with all those guys,” Lubick said. “That’s where it’s hard for me.”
But life is good these days for the man who ran CSU’s football fortunes for 15 seasons. He said he is thankful every day for his younger son Marc’s good health after cancer treatment two years ago.
Carol Jo Lubick, his wife of 38 years, insists she hasn’t gotten tired of her husband — a change from previously saying goodbye to him every August when practice started.
“It’s refreshing,” she said. “There’s more family time, yet he’s busier than we ever thought he’d be.
“There is life beyond football.”
Relaxed and enjoying his new position in community relations at a Fort Collins credit union, Lubick looks five years younger than he did when he was let go at the end of last season.
But that doesn’t mean he is finished with coaching.
“If something real good came up, the right thing. But I wanted to get this year under my belt,” he said.
Man about town
Go to lunch with Lubick and the reception has not changed in 15 years.
“Hey, Sonny!” or “Hi, Coach!” always draws a warm “How ya doing?” response. Last week, a young businessman who introduced himself as a former University of Colorado student body executive expressed his admiration. Lubick seemed to know everyone at almost every table at a Fort Collins restaurant, and the waitress told him he made the restaurant manager’s day.
“Every place I go, people stop me and say, ‘Thanks for all you’ve done for us,’ ” Lubick said.
He is still on the payroll at CSU through next season. The Lubicks are moving to a new neighborhood east of Fort Collins, but the move to the upscale golf community does not preclude going elsewhere for a coaching opportunity.
Although he talked to his former assistant and current Florida coach Urban Meyer about a mostly administrative role, the position wasn’t created and Lubick would rather be on the field.
He could have been doing ambassador work for CSU. That was the plan when he signed his last contract 2 1/2 years ago, which included a job with the university when he was finished coaching. But after being forced to step down as coach, he decided not to keep working at the university.
Four straight years without a winning record and declining attendance were cited by athletic director Paul Kowalczyk as the reason for the change. Kowalczyk said recently that season tickets this year aren’t on track to match last season’s estimated 8,500.
Lubick’s name is on the Hughes Stadium field, but no formal salute is planned.
“Not this year, but something will be done in the future,” Kowalczyk said recently.
Some day, Lubick said he would like to return to the campus as former athletic director Fum McGraw and basketball coach Jim Williams have done.
“Yes,” he said. “I love everything about CSU, the players, coaches. . . . The faculty was so kind and so good to me. I loved walking across campus with students.”
Life after CSU
Lubick’s new office, which is larger than his football office, is packed with CSU memorabilia, honors and signed photos of former players in NFL uniforms.
He keeps his favorite thank-you letter from a player, Matt Newton. There’s a photo of him with his two sentimental favorites, Jason and Justin Gallimore, former walk-ons who turned into starting playmakers.
Friends brought him into a partnership to open a steakhouse, which will bear his name. It will open this fall in Fort Collins’ Old Town area. He’s telling so many people to come in for a free drink, it might take some time to turn a profit.
Then there are the coaching clinics and speaking engagements. His entire family remains active with the RamStrong fundraising organization created for cancer research.
He will be featured on The Mtn.’s 10th anniversary special Monday night with fellow coaching legends LaVell Edwards and Fisher DeBerry. He has declined TV color commentary offers, not wanting to say anything that could be construed as negative toward CSU.
Lubick always wanted to step down quietly like Tom Osborne did at Nebraska. Lubick often said he did not want a “farewell tour” like the one given to Edwards at BYU. Getting fired wasn’t in the plans.
Football alive in his heart
For now, he savors his credit union post. After a few days away to visit his 93-year-old mother, Lubick was greeted at the credit union the way he was in the hallways at CSU.
Obviously, Lubick misses his players and coaches, but he was initially lost without administrative assistants Marcie Johnston and Linda Krier. Without them printing out his e-mails and without graduate assistants to navigate the Internet, Lubick finally joined the computer age. He is particularly fascinated by the coaching rumor websites his son Matt showed him.
“Everyone loves the fact that he’s here,” said financial service representative Lorie Meissner, who asked Lubick for six promotional autographed mini-footballs.
“The credit union has worked out better than he ever thought it would,” Matt Lubick said in a break from an Arizona State practice. “He got all his car dealers to go there. When I was home this summer, he was doing speaking engagements every day.”
Since cleaning out his CSU office, Lubick’s only campus trip was to accept a plaque from the student body.
Lubick hasn’t spoken to CSU president Larry Penley since the firing. When the coach was honored by Gov. Bill Ritter, former CSU president Al Yates and prominent boosters were there. Penley and Kowal- czyk were not invited.
Lubick doesn’t begrudge successor Steve Fairchild finally getting the two key items in his budget — a complete summer school outlay for offseason conditioning and five assistants making six figures. None of Lubick’s assistants topped $90,000.
He wasn’t surprised to see a report listing CSU at the bottom of the MWC in men’s recruiting budgets for the 2006-07 school year.
“Someone asked me some of the things we were really proud of — to have the success that we had and did it with one of the lowest budgets for a period of 10 years,” Lubick said. “We accomplished what we did without the resources and always at the bottom of the barrel.”
He links the meager budgets to the slide of the program: “You just can’t keep going running on empty.”
But football is in his blood. He said he plans to watch plenty of college football.
“To me, going to a game is not like it’s the end of the world. I never ever picked up a golf club in August, September or October,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind seeing what it’s like there.”
Matt Lubick says he is looking forward to having his father watch the Sun Devils.
“He always taught me whatever happens in life, whether you like it or not, you deal with it and go on.”
Natalie Meisler: 303-954-1295 or nmeisler@denverpost.com
