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CU Buffs hire former Minnesota OC Mike Sanford as their new OC

Was a 247 top 50 recruiter before going to the dolphins in 2012:


And bio looks pretty good before his 2nd NFL stint:

 
It’s also very possible that KD isn’t nearly as bad as everyone thinks and is being hurt by the admin at CU, ie wanting to get rid of Chev after last season. If we have a different OC we go bowling two years in a row.
I'm in the camp that KD isn't as bad as everyone thinks he is. He isn't good enough to overcome bad assistants and coordinators, which most aren't. He had a pathetic staff last year, which some was of his own doing.

I am not sure if CU goes bowling last year with Sanford at OC, but I do think it would have been close. Either way, he is getting two more years and I'd love nothing more than him to turn it around and be successful. Once he gets this WR coach in, this is his staff and he deserves two years to see what he can do. At that point, recruiting and transfer portal will be whether he is here longer or his undoing. I think this is a good enough staff to win 6 games a year.
 
I think this is a good enough staff to win 6 games a year.
yay?

Somewhat serious.

If 6 wins is a ceiling, my "yay" be like:
Sarcastic Season 9 GIF by The Office


If 6 wins is a floor, it be:

Excited Scott Evans GIF by NBC World Of Dance
 
OL is a big ? with potential, but will be a huge improvement just by showing up to the job. Rest have been unreservedly good hires.

Kind of reminds me, construction wise, of the Embree staff, although obviously not as bad. Great position coaches for the most part and crap HC/coordinators.
The current coordinators are better than the Embree staff. I wouldn't call Wilson and Sanford elite or great, but they are better than first time as an OC EB and Brown not having any business as a coordinator.
 
I wonder if recruiting is much of a consideration in the hiring process here.

Hopefully it came up in the interview.
I don’t think we really understand how recruiting is going to change over the next 5 years. If you are an awesome salesman but you don’t have the money behind you it is irrelevant. You can also be a terrible salesman and have a booster paying that recruit and land him. I think CU needs to decide where they want to go because it will take a lot of money to compete for a national championship. RG would have to pivot to a completely different role and I don’t think that is why he wanted this job to begin with so that is asking a lot. The next AD or assistant AD will have to go out to local businesses, big money, etc. and convince them to to give money to 17 year old kids that haven’t earned anything and that sounds like the definition of hell if you ask me. Other schools have people lining up to do that, we don’t.
 
I don’t think we really understand how recruiting is going to change over the next 5 years. If you are an awesome salesman but you don’t have the money behind you it is irrelevant. You can also be a terrible salesman and have a booster paying that recruit and land him. I think CU needs to decide where they want to go because it will take a lot of money to compete for a national championship. RG would have to pivot to a completely different role and I don’t think that is why he wanted this job to begin with so that is asking a lot. The next AD or assistant AD will have to go out to local businesses, big money, etc. and convince them to to give money to 17 year old kids that haven’t earned anything and that sounds like the definition of hell if you ask me. Other schools have people lining up to do that, we don’t.
Yeah I posed that question a week or so ago. This new staff is actually pretty good on paper, but without much to offer from an NIL standpoint, I'm not sure it really matters if they can recruit.
 
I don’t think we really understand how recruiting is going to change over the next 5 years. If you are an awesome salesman but you don’t have the money behind you it is irrelevant. You can also be a terrible salesman and have a booster paying that recruit and land him. I think CU needs to decide where they want to go because it will take a lot of money to compete for a national championship. RG would have to pivot to a completely different role and I don’t think that is why he wanted this job to begin with so that is asking a lot. The next AD or assistant AD will have to go out to local businesses, big money, etc. and convince them to to give money to 17 year old kids that haven’t earned anything and that sounds like the definition of hell if you ask me. Other schools have people lining up to do that, we don’t.
There's also the aspect of knowing the coaches & turf within a footprint area and having an eye for talent. For CU, finding the talent among those who are not part of the bidding wars is possibly the most important thing. I strongly believe we need coaches who are networked & dialed into TX and CA.
 
It is also possible he is a pretty mediocre coach with no real clue how to run an offense.
Possible? Yes. Likely? No.

edit: I’m just talking about you comment about him not having any idea how to run an offense, not about him being a mediocre coach.
 
Last edited:
Possible? Yes. Likely? No.

edit: I’m just talking about you comment about him not having any idea how to run an offense, it about him being a mediocre coach.
Objectively, the last time he ran an offense Vanderbilt ran him out after one season. And the next time he had control has been at CU, albeit without focused responsibility for offense. His team's offense just turned in the worst season in over 40 years of CU football.

Making the case that he's good or even mediocre at running an offense is a more difficult argument to substantiate than the opposite.

What am I not seeing?
 
Objectively, the last time he ran an offense Vanderbilt ran him out after one season. And the next time he had control has been at CU, albeit without focused responsibility for offense. His team's offense just turned in the worst season in over 40 years of CU football.

Making the case that he's good or even mediocre at running an offense is a more difficult argument to substantiate than the opposite.

What am I not seeing?
Didn’t exactly light it up in his stint at UCLA either
 
Objectively, the last time he ran an offense Vanderbilt ran him out after one season. And the next time he had control has been at CU, albeit without focused responsibility for offense. His team's offense just turned in the worst season in over 40 years of CU football.

Making the case that he's good or even mediocre at running an offense is a more difficult argument to substantiate than the opposite.

What am I not seeing?
I think that using his one year at vandy as the basis to evaluate his offensive knowledge is dumb. That was an awful program and he tried to switch their philosophy and which rarely goes well in the first season.

the guy got a head coaching gig at UCLA based on what he did as an OC.
 
Objectively, the last time he ran an offense Vanderbilt ran him out after one season. And the next time he had control has been at CU, albeit without focused responsibility for offense. His team's offense just turned in the worst season in over 40 years of CU football.

Making the case that he's good or even mediocre at running an offense is a more difficult argument to substantiate than the opposite.

What am I not seeing?
Wins?
 
I think that using his one year at vandy as the basis to evaluate his offensive knowledge is dumb. That was an awful program and he tried to switch their philosophy and which rarely goes well in the first season.

the guy got a head coaching gig at UCLA based on what he did as an OC.
Not really. He had the 4 years of Mac's last recruiting class, followed Neu to UW for a year, went back to the NFL after that 1 year to be a WR coach, and then got the UCLA job where he had 1 year of success bracketed by 4 years of meh. 6 years of position coach career rehab landed him the Vandy opportunity he failed. 5 more years of rehab and then he got the CU HC job.

Never been an innovator on offense. Best attributes are being an excellent position coach who other coaches seem to like a lot.
 
Not really. He had the 4 years of Mac's last recruiting class, followed Neu to UW for a year, went back to the NFL after that 1 year to be a WR coach, and then got the UCLA job where he had 1 year of success bracketed by 4 years of meh. 6 years of position coach career rehab landed him the Vandy opportunity he failed. 5 more years of rehab and then he got the CU HC job.

Never been an innovator on offense. Best attributes are being an excellent position coach who other coaches seem to like a lot.
Never said he is an innovator, just that he isn’t a complete moron.
 
Dimitry Stanley is obviously overjoyed.

I've been mostly quiet on our offensive staff hires, but I'm really struggling with our attrition.
When KD went to fUCLA, he took over for Bob Toledo, a middling .605 coach. HCKD turned them into a .565 juggernaut. In other words, he did not move the needle. I expected him to do about the same here. Take a perennial 5-7 team and turn them into a, well, perennial 5-7 team, hopefully with a couple 7-5, 6-6 seasons punctuated by the occasional 4-8.

Year one looked like that was the way CU was headed. Somewhere in the back of mind, the W's over SDSU and AZ looked like the proverbial mirage after the beatdowns administered by Utah and the school of the mutant cow in the Alamo Bowl. (I mean just once, couldn't we go to the Alamo Bowl and play the part of the Mexicans instead of the Texans?, I digress). Perhaps when CU is there they should call it the LMAO bowl.

UNC, looked bad winning by 28. No prob, first game. Hung on with aTm, wow, maybe this will work after all, then Minny took their little rowboat and sank the good ship Ralphie good and proper. From then on, CU looked bad in all phases of the game, but managed to manhandle quite possibly the worst D1 team in the US (AZ), who incidentally is recruiting circles around CU, look pretty good against OSU, who promptly fired their DC for allowing the weakest O in the conference to run wild, and beat an inept UW team. 4-8.

Then the mass exodus of most every significant contributor on the team. This is new to the Dorrell experience. Usually he just plods along at the same level of his predecessor. I do not see many examples of creating massive roster turnover followed by success, unless of course, the staff recruits like a house a fire. Since that has never been HCKD's calling card, I think there is something systemically wrong up there and this will keep CU down for a long while.

Bummer.
 
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