Recently, Colorado women’s soccer coach Danny Sanchez was enjoying a moment of solitude driving through Boulder on a summer day.
Given the year-round cycle of recruiting and the constant challenges inherent with running a major college athletic program, quiet moments are few and far between for Sanchez and all his fellow Buffaloes coaches. It was in that moment, however, that Sanchez caught his first glimpse of a sight 10 years in the making.
Looming above Prentup Field was the first tower of what will be the new lights at Colorado’s soccer field. The upgrade is part of a massive overhaul of CU’s facilities at Prentup, neighboring Potts Field, and the lacrosse team’s Kittredge Field.
The project essentially puts a feather in the cap of athletic director Rick George’s 10 years at Colorado, a milestone George passed earlier this week. Arriving after a stint as the Chief Operating Officer of the Texas Rangers, George spoke with Sanchez almost immediately after beginning his run as CU’s AD about future upgrades Prentup and and the Buffs’ other Olympic sports venues.
According to Sanchez, George never offered hollow promises, even if it took 10 years for the vision to become reality. It is that focus on catering as best as possible to the student-athlete experience that has helped George oversee a remarkable run of facilities improvements while steering CU through an unprecedented era of upheaval in the longstanding practices of NCAA athletics.
“We understand that things can’t happen overnight. And itap not inexpensive to do things in Boulder,” Sanchez said. “Never once did we feel the administration wasn’t supporting us. It was just a matter of the right time and the right place. We knew it would happen. But I’d be lying to you if I didn’t say the first time I drove by and saw those lights going up, you get goose bumps. It just really shows the level of commitment to spend that money out there for our student-athletes. Itap fantastic.”
Named as CU’s sixth full-time athletic director on July 17, 2013, George took over following what at the time was a somewhat surprising decision to move on from Mike Bohn, who led Colorado through the transition from the Big 12 Conference into the Pac-12. Bohn also was riding the success of hiring Tad Boyle, who at the time of George’s arrival had just led the CU men’s basketball program to consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances while setting attendance records at the Events Center.
Yet within a year of George’s arrival, CU broke ground on the Champions Center, the $156 million facility that included a new indoor practice facility along with extensive improvements to the Dal Ward Center, the coach and administration offices, the athletic nutrition services, as well as the football locker room and meeting facilities.
In those 10 years, NCAA athletics has evolved into something George probably could never have envisioned when Bill McCartney hired George to be the recruiting coordinator for CU football in March of 1987. Eliminating the mandatory redshirt year for transfers has brought unfettered free agency to football and basketball. The advent of name, image and likeness opportunities has opened previously closed windows of revenue for athletes but also has created new fundraising and enforcement challenges for athletic departments. And after taking over a CU athletics department still new to the Pac-12, conference realignment has been a constant specter that will take UCLA and USC out of the Pac-12 following the 2023-24 athletics calendar.
Finally, like all athletic departments, George was tasked with leading Colorado through the shutdowns spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We navigated some really difficult waters with COVID. That was a year and a half of a lot of changes and I think we came out well on that and minimized the losses that we had,” George said. “We’ve accomplished a lot. Building (the Champions Center) was really important for us. And we’ve provided a lot of good programs for our student-athletes. Thatap kind of the basis of where we need to start every conversation when we talk to recruits or donors. At the end of the day we need to win in all our sports, and that will always be our focus moving forward.”
George made his first coach hire in December of 2015 with volleyball’s Jesse Mahoney, who has led the Buffs to three NCAA Tournament appearances in seven seasons. Months later he hired JR Payne, who has lifted the women’s basketball program out of the doldrums with consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances. Payne’s club will be favored to earn a third bid in a row next season.
From fundraising to facility improvements to general leadership, it is difficult to quibble with George’s 10-year track record at CU. Yet any evaluation of his tenure inevitably ends with some form of the phrase, “Yeah, but the football…”
The lack of success in football grates on George, who was part of the program during the run to the 1990 national championship. He inherited former coach Mike MacIntyre, who briefly led the Buffs back to respectability with a Pac-12 South title in 2016. But when the rise proved fleeting, George made his first football coach hire at CU in Mel Tucker.
Few still question the choice, even after Tucker opted to bolt in the late winter of 2020, weeks before the onset of the pandemic, when Michigan State made Tucker a financial offer CU wouldn’t match. Even in a recent interview, George offered no excuses for the awkward timing of the search that brought Karl Dorrell to CU — “I’m not going to make excuses…we hired Karl and I thought he was the right guy for the job,” — but after Dorrell was fired five games into what became a woeful 1-11 season last fall, George understood he needed to make a splash.
Enter Prime Time.
George has squarely hitched his wagon to Deion Sanders’ star, convincing the Hall of Famer to leave Jackson State and eschew other offers to help put the Buffs back on the national map. It remains to be seen if the experiment will succeed, but George nonetheless hit a PR home run with a hire that has turned a one-win program into one of college football’s biggest offseason talking points.
In George’s tenure, CU football has gone 44-73, a .376 winning percentage in 10 seasons. That winning percentage dips to .352 (19-35) in the four seasons that began with coaches hired by George.
“We’ve got to get football going. Any successful Division I athletic department has a successful football program,” George said. “When I came back I wanted to get football turned around. We’ve had three coaches, and now our fourth coach, since I’ve been here, and I think Coach Prime is the right guy at the right time. I feel strongly that he’ll get this program back on track and we’re not going to wait long to see that.”
While the decade has been prosperous for George professionally and personally, the years have taken a toll physically. His time at CU has included numerous surgeries, with George enduring two back surgeries, a full knee replacement, and other knee procedures. He wore many hats before returning to CU, including working as the president of the PGA’s Champions Tour before joining the Rangers. Yet if any challenge remains for the 62-year old George following the expiration of his current contract on June 30, 2026, it is unlikely to occur with an extension at CU.
George told BuffZone, “I have less than three years left on my contract now, and I don’t see me working past that time frame in this position.” George still has a to-do list to tackle before that day arrives, listing renovations to the west side of Folsom Field, upgrades at the Events Center and a new tennis facility among his remaining goals.
“I’ve got an incredibly supportive family and a great exec team, good people, that I work around,” George said. “Seeing these young men and women working hard is rewarding. I really enjoy the games and that always keeps me grounded. And probably the most important thing that keeps me grounded is my two grandkids. Whenever I’m having a bad day, I can call them and it’ll be fine. We’ve built something that is pretty good, and itap going to get really good in the next few years.”
