LOS ANGELES — Hopefully, first-year Colorado coach Jon Embree cleared this with his wife, Natalyn, beforehand.
Embree watched movies all summer without her — burying himself in his office to study game film of opposing Pac-12 Conference teams, hours upon hours each day.
Vacation? Let’s see. There was that three-day getaway with Natalyn to the mountains.
“But two of those three days were the weekend; so I missed only one day,” Embree said with a sheepish grin Tuesday during the Pac-12 football media day at Fox Studios.
There’s much work to be done in preparing for Colorado’s debut in the conference this fall, as evidenced by the Buffaloes being picked to finish last in the South Division by the media covering the league. Embree assigned his assistant coaches to evaluate game film of CU’s future Pac-12 foes, but he also wanted to study film himself. Alone.
“I didn’t want everybody to know I was at work, so I didn’t park in my regular parking spot,” Embree said. “I learned that real quick.”
The synopsis of his film critique? The Pac-12 will be quite a challenge.
“There is so much diversity in this league offensively and defensively,” Embree said. “You can’t go in with a cookie cutter kind of mentality and say, ‘If we just do this, we’ll be prepared for everybody in our conference.’
“Because of that, you have to have great flexibility and adaptability. If you play Oregon, you’re going to play fast-break football. And next week, if you’re playing Stanford, it’s power football. You have to have tons of flexibility, and you have to be very creative. That’s what’s so great about this conference.”
In evaluating his roster, Embree knows he needs more size, speed and depth, on both sides of the ball. Colorado will play 13 regular-season games.
The elongated schedule might be fun for Buffs fans, but there will be no bye week for players to heal.
A rash of injuries could force Colorado’s lineup to get young real quick.
“You know, that’s one of the things about me coming from the NFL. . . . I think last year in Washington, we didn’t get our bye until I think we played nine or 10 straight,” said Embree, who was an NFL assistant with the Kansas City Chiefs and the Redskins. “So, when you factor that in with preseason and all of that, you get used to it. We’ll just have to be smart how we practice toward the end of the season.
“But what it really does is it creates a lot of opportunity for our young players because, to give us a chance, we’re going to have to play everybody that we can that’s not redshirting.”
UCLA coach Rick Neuheisel, who was Embree’s boss at CU for four seasons in the 1990s, has some advice. Colorado isn’t in Kansas anymore.
“The wind is a big factor in the Big 12,” Neuheisel said. “You have to be able to run the ball. You have to be able to deal with wind. That’s not as much a deal in this conference.”
Second, recruit as much speed as possible, because that’s what other Pac-12 teams do.
“All you have to look at the state track meet finals,” Neuheisel said. “You look to see who won the state 100 (meters) in Wyoming and Kansas. Then you look at the times in California. Usually there’s a marked difference. Here, there are just kids that grow up running all the time. And there’s a population difference. This is a huge state.”
Thirdly, don’t expect fans here to panic when their team loses; they can still find a nice restaurant overlooking the beach.
“In the Big 12, there are places where (college football) is part of your life,” Neuheisel said. “When you get divorced, you take the kids after you decide who gets the tickets. . . . I don’t know that we’re as zany about it in the Pac-12.”
Tom Kensler: 303-954-1280 or tkensler@denverpost.com
