BOULDER — Is Colorado big enough for both Mike MacIntyre and Mike Bobo to succeed? They both coach in a football-crazy state that frequently forgets the game is played on Saturday. How do you make the Buffaloes or Rams nationally relevant when you’re often ignored in your own backyard?
“We’re trying to kick the door down,” Bobo said. “Our slogan is ‘Never Satisfied.’ At Colorado State, we don’t ever want to be satisfied as a football team, an athletic department or a university. We want to grow.”
The football stadiums that MacIntyre and Bobo call home are separated by less than 50 miles but are divided by the growing chasm in college football between the haves and have-nots.
Bobo was hired from the mighty Southeastern Conference in December 2014 to lead Colorado State to bigger and better things, with a new $220 million, 36,000-seat facility that’s expected to open in 2017 clear evidence that the Rams dream of more prestige than life in the Mountain West will allow.
“The biggest challenge is recruiting. We have to show a young man that you can go to CSU, get a quality education and still reach all your football dreams of playing for a championship on Saturday and have a chance to go to the NFL. That’s a constant challenge. You might establish a strong relationship with a young man, and then all of a sudden a Power 5 team starts moving in on him in recruiting,” said Bobo, faced with the daunting task of matching the success of predecessor Jim McElwain, who bolted from Fort Collins to the Florida Gators after winning 10 games last season.
The cash is always greener in the big time, but so is the pressure. As a member of the Pac-12, MacIntyre works at a program entrenched in the Power 5, where all the fun and money in college football can be found, unless your record is 6-18 after two seasons and attendance at Folsom Field has dipped to its lowest point since 1985.
“In the Pac-12, every single game is an unbelievable battle,” MacIntyre told me after Colorado’s opening practice of training camp. “Six of the nine teams we play in conference this year are already ranked in the top 22 (of the USA Today preseason poll). The competition level is extremely high. This week is Stanford. And next week it’s USC. But, at the same time, that’s why we came here to Colorado. That’s why the players are here. That’s why the coaches are here. To play at that high level of competition. And not just play at it, but win at it.”
The Buffaloes have reason to believe they are on the verge of a return to respectability, after going winless in the Pac-12 a year ago but giving a scare to ranked foes UCLA and Utah in defeat.
While the rivalry between CU and CSU has long been overwrought with misplaced arrogance and petty jealousy, what’s tearing apart the Buffs and Rams are the economic factors faced by a CSU program trying to raise its profile with Denver-area alums and a CU program trying to run with the big dogs in the Power 5 without getting trampled.
Bobo and MacIntyre both are engaging personalities with bright football minds. But because the Broncos have a near monopoly on football passion in Colorado, MacIntyre and Bobo have two of the tougher jobs in college football.
“Every day, you’ve got to buckle up and go,” said MacIntyre, who coached at San Jose State before joining the Buffs. “Everywhere I’ve been, there have been challenges. There’s not a utopia anywhere.”
The Rams and Buffaloes are scheduled to play at Sports Authority Field at Mile High in Denver on Sept. 19. It’s a game that could make or break the hopes and dreams in 2015 for both Colorado and Colorado State.
But here’s the thing: For coaches with little margin for error in building a bowl résumé, the winner doesn’t have as much to gain as the defeated team figures to lose, no matter which side of the scoreboard MacIntyre or Bobo is on when time expires in the fourth quarter.
Victories are so precious for both CSU and CU that it has become harder to justify the game when one team suffers defeat. Above and beyond the heated rhetoric about whether the game should be played in Denver, the risks outweigh the rewards for two programs desperate to stake their turf on the college football map. And that’s the real reason this series between the Rams and Buffaloes is in danger of extinction.
Mark Kiszla: mkiszla@denverpost.com or
