If new Colorado coach Jon Embree hires one more Buffalo, Ralphie will be seen next with a whistle around her neck and growling at the defensive line.
Embree will announce at least part of his staff today, and most of the names will be familiar to anyone who remembers Colorado football before it took up residence in the bowels of the Big 12.
Six former Colorado players are already on the football staff. No one knows how good next year’s team will be, but this staff could clock any other in the Pac-12 in flag football.
Besides Embree, a tight end from 1983-86, there is offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy (1987-90), the school’s all-time leading rusher and an All-American; linebackers coach Brian Cabral (1975-77), who played on the Chicago Bears’ 1985 Super Bowl championship team; Kanavis McGhee (1987-90), who played defensive end for five years in the NFL; Darian Hagan (1989-91), a two-time All-Big Eight quarterback, who will be the new recruiting director; and Jashon Sykes (1998-2001), a former all-Big 12 linebacker who is now director of football relations.
Embree, Bieniemy and McGhee are new. It’s no coincidence that Bieniemy, McGhee and Hagan were all members of Colorado’s 1990 national title team.
“You don’t know where you want to go if you don’t know where you’ve been,” Embree said in Monday’s introductory news conference repeatedly interrupted by applause. “Former players understand who we are, where we’re going and how we’re going to get there.”
Then add new defensive coordinator Greg Brown, in his third stint at Colorado, and defensive line coach Steve Marshall, in his second. Also under consideration is former Colorado cornerback Ronnie Bradford (1989-92), who played 10 years in the NFL, and Embree’s brother Sean, a former tight end with the Buffs (1991-93).
Embree has a staff that won’t need a teleprompter to tell recruits about Colorado tradition.
Winners in Boulder
That was part of the plan. Dan Hawkins arrived five years ago from Boise State knowing nothing much about Colorado tradition besides a wild animal running around the field before games.
Five losing seasons later, Embree is trying to restore a tradition and respect that have disappeared from Boulder, like a snow bank melting atop the Flatirons.
“The other critical piece of that is they’re not just alums but alums from a winning tradition,” said Cabral, a Colorado assistant for 21 years. “These guys have won here. They were part of it when we were winners. Yeah, it’s a tradition, but these guys have won a lot of games.”
You can look it up. Take out Embree’s first two years in 1983-84, Bill McCartney’s early rebuilding years, and this group compiled a record at Colorado of 92-51-2 (.641), 10 bowls, two conference titles and a national championship.
It’s a good bet Embree and his staff will remind recruits of this a time or two.
“I know when I played, I felt like we needed to live up to the standards,” said Joel Klatt, a quarterback on the 2004 North Division champion and now a radio sports talk-show host on 87.7 The Ticket. “How do you know what those standards are unless those guys are around?”
Recruiting success key
Keep in mind Embree isn’t basing his staff on his favorite golf foursomes. He and Bieniemy were among the chief recruiters who built UCLA into a 10-2 team in 2005. Hagan and Cabral have landed many of the few high-profile players on recent Colorado rosters, and McGhee coached two years in NFL Europe. As a high school coach in Houston, he has many recruiting ties in Texas.
And love for the school? In leading Colorado to a 2-1 record as interim coach last month, Cabral would tear up if you just said something like, “CU at lunch.”
“Part of it is what you’re selling and have you sold it,” Embree said Wednesday. “And the people I’m hiring who are alums are all good coaches.”
They also know what they’re getting into. Many alumni, whether they were players or accountants, talked of hiring coaches who knew the “CU culture.” That culture isn’t as foreign as Albania, but it does have its acquired tastes.
Hawkins bit his lip every time someone mentioned the subpar facilities or the dim prospects of signing a star junior college transfer. And don’t mention the state law making it nearly impossible to give more than month-to-month contracts to assistants.
Embree said, “You’ve got to have people who trust you” and it’s tough for an assistant to move across the country for so little stability. “But to this new staff, those flaws are no more bothersome than a couple of moles.”
“What we see is you look at it for what it’s worth,” Cabral said. “You look at it for what you had, and you didn’t have a lot when we accomplished all those things.”
Alumni clubs aren’t common on college football coaching staffs. An unscientific national survey showed only two programs in the country have similar makeups. Ironically, they’re Air Force and Colorado State.
Both have six alumni on their staffs, including head coaches Troy Calhoun at Air Force and Steve Fairchild at CSU. Air Force is an obvious incubator for alumni. The average high school prospect, not to mention college assistant, has no more idea about Air Force football than they do a jet engine.
“Here it is unique,” said Air Force running backs coach Jemal Singleton, a 1999 grad. “It’s different than the normal university. Life after the academy is different. Having that experience, having been there, done that, you can convey that message to young men.”
Fairchild said he looked for assistants who “had that extra passion for a place,” but this philosophy is no sure formula for success. When Sonny Lubick, a Montana native and Western Montana grad, left Miami for CSU in 1993, he remembers keeping one assistant who was an alum, and his sense of superiority caused a rift on his staff.
“Miami was the best example of having its own culture,” Lubick said. “When Coach (Dennis) Erickson went down there, that was against all the grain. We used to kid that it was a bunch of hay shakers coming down from the Northwest to Miami. Fans weren’t too excited.
“But what cures everything is winning.”
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
