FORT COLLINS — As Colorado State kept winning on the field, interim athletic director John Morris decided he had better develop a list of potential candidates for a head coach in case Jim McElwain was sought by another school.
“I can say with a straight face, Mike Bobo was on that list,” Morris said Tuesday. “And it wasn’t a long list.”
Morris was familiar with the success of University of Georgia football, and the explosive Bulldogs offense that had been directed by Bobo the past eight years. However, Morris had not met the 40-year-old former star at Thomasville (Ga.) H.S. until last week.
“I didn’t know Mike,” Morris said. “It was just things I’d heard from other people in the industry. He was someone we pursued.”
Interviews with six finalists were conducted Sunday in Las Vegas. For preliminary screening, Morris and other CSU representatives flew across the country to four undisclosed locations to meet with a dozen candidates.
“I think John spent 10 consecutive days on the road doing interviews,” CSU president Tony Frank said. “The last time I did that when my kids were his kids’ ages, they wanted to put my picture on the side of a milk cartoon. To be organized enough to see that many candidates is impressive.”
Bobo stood out from the beginning, Morris said.
“We talked to exceptional candidates, and there was something about the mixture of what Mike brought,” Morris said.
“What I was looking for in a head coach were a few things. I wanted a coach with a fire in his belly to win football games. But I also wanted a fire that burned just as brightly to develop young men. I wanted someone who truly cared about his players and to see them become the total student-athlete.”
Morris added: “I wanted a good football mind, and he’s one of the brilliant offensive minds in the country. But I also wanted someone of character that our fans, our donors, our students could connect to — a real, genuine person. Mike Bobo is all of those things.”
Frank, who participated in the final round of interviews, said he saw those same qualities.
“I had a series of questions,” Frank said, “and it’s like when I was teaching and wondering if the student had the key. He said what I wanted to hear.”
Historically, the states of Colorado, California and Texas have been a focus of CSU recruiting. Bobo does not have experience in those geographic areas, but Morris believes he will catch up.
“We asked Mike about those things during the interview process,” Morris said. “But I already knew the answer. I knew what I was going to hear — that if you have a person of character, a person to whom relationships are important, (recruiting) is just a matter of meeting people.
“Mike is not going to bring in nine (assistant) coaches from Georgia who have never recruited anywhere. He’s smart enough to know, like any head coach, that he needs to have a wide range of coaches on his staff that have recruiting connections around the country.”
On the surface, it might appear that Colorado State set out to find McElwain’s successor with a blueprint in mind — considering that McElwain (Alabama) and Bobo were offensive coordinators from a Southeastern Conference football power looking to become a first time head coach.
That was not the case, Morris said.
“We wanted the best person for this job,” Morris said. “We talked to head coaches. We talked to coordinators. We talked to coaches that were not coordinators. We had coaches with NFL experience in the pool. We talked to a wide variety.
“It’s coincidence that we ended up with an offensive coordinator from the SEC. That’s a formula that worked for us. But there were a lot of formulas that could have worked. We did not want to have a predisposition of any profile for our coach. Mike felt like the right fit. He felt like a Ram.”
Tom Kensler: tkensler@denverpost.com or
