Evidence of Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich’s time at Colorado State remains at both CSU and Colorado.
CSU’s McGraw Center is the direct result of Jurich asking students for a bond issue to fund an athletic complex. CU athletic director Mike Bohn’s approach to developing fan and donor relations was cloned by serving as an assistant to Jurich at CSU.
The Louisville AD hired CSU volleyball coach Tom Hilbert, who has created an NCAA power. The annual Denver showdown between CU-CSU in football was the result of a deal Jurich hammered out with former CU athletic director Dick Tharp.
Jurich is back this week in an official capacity with the No. 4 seed Cardinals in the Southwest Regional. He’s been gone since the fall of 1997, but can’t move a few feet without running into an old friend.
“Colorado is my favorite place on earth. The people in Louisville know that,” he said. He spends much of his free time at his condo in Steamboat Springs.
There are 7,000 people on the season-ticket waiting list for Louisville’s new 22,000-seat Yum Center for basketball. He’s working on a similar list for football and believes Charlie Strong will become the best football coach he has worked with since Sonny Lubick.
“Sonny set the bar,” Jurich said of the former Rams coach.
Each of the 24 sports at Louisville has had a new facility during Jurich’s tenure.
There’s just one sad sentiment brought back by the trip to Denver. He had many memories of trips to Coors Field as the guest of Keli McGregor, the Rockies vice president and former CSU football star who died suddenly last spring.
