Firing Coaches, CU football Program and why there are no quick fixes...

[BlackNGold]

Back in 2005 when many were calling for the firing of Gary Barnett I tried to point out that to fire Barnett and not change the support for the football program would change nothing. Firing coaches, whether it the head coach or assistance at this point is like buying Lottery Tickets with your mortgage money and believing you will hit the jackpot. To build something you have to define goals, get a commitment to those goals, develop a strategy to achieve those goals, evaluate your resources and factor that into ability to achieve those goals - if they are not sufficient then figure out how you are going to to accomplish things with the resources at hand, and start implementing your strategy with tactics and planning. Within the present CU framework firing coaches is on the tactical level with none of the other levels in place. This leads to the Crux of the problem - the total lack of leadership in at CU Boulder campus and the CUAD. CU asks the coach to come in during the interview process and define how they are going to achieve building a football program - from good citizenship to academics to winning football. Sorry but that is backwards, a lot of that framework should already be in place for a coach utilize when he comes to CU.

It is great to say fire someone, but that is not always a solution - doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. We are on our 2nd coach since Barnett and we are still going downhill. We need to examine other factors.

Right now I would like to believe that Jon Embree and his staff can get this done but the last two weeks they have not done much to validate that belief. Even Jon's staunchest defenders are running out of positives to point to for staying the course. That is all on the CU coaching staff. But right now we need to let this play out for the rest of the season and see if there is any progress. But if there is a change to be made the administration needs to be putting into place a bigger strategy for football. And I think that starts by defining the goals and getting the commitment to those goals.

 

[MtnBuff]

Back in 2005 when many were calling for the firing of Gary Barnett I tried to point out that to fire Barnett and not change the support for the football program would change nothing. Firing coaches, whether it the head coach or assistance at this point is like buying Lottery Tickets with your mortgage money and believing you will hit the jackpot. To build something you have to define goals, get a commitment to those goals, develop a strategy to achieve those goals, evaluate your resources and factor that into ability to achieve those goals - if they are not sufficient then figure out how you are going to to accomplish things with the resources at hand, and start implementing your strategy with tactics and planning. Within the present CU framework firing coaches is on the tactical level with none of the other levels in place. This leads to the Crux of the problem - the total lack of leadership in at CU Boulder campus and the CUAD. CU asks the coach to come in during the interview process and define how they are going to achieve building a football program - from good citizenship to academics to winning football. Sorry but that is backwards, a lot of that framework should already be in place for a coach utilize when he comes to CU.

It is great to say fire someone, but that is not always a solution - doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. We are on our 2nd coach since Barnett and we are still going downhill. We need to examine other factors.

Right now I would like to believe that Jon Embree and his staff can get this done but the last two weeks they have not done much to validate that belief. Even Jon's staunchest defenders are running out of positives to point to for staying the course. That is all on the CU coaching staff. But right now we need to let this play out for the rest of the season and see if there is any progress. But if there is a change to be made the administration needs to be putting into place a bigger strategy for football. And I think that starts by defining the goals and getting the commitment to those goals.

Rep delivered for an intelligent and correct post.

First off firing Embree right now isn't going to do anything but make us feel better for a few days until we realize that there isn't a magical guy sitting out there unemployed and waiting for CU to call. Everybody we would want to hire is currently employed at least through the end of the season.

I was not sure that Embree could do the job when he was hired but I hoped he could and created a scenario in my mind where he could. From the looks of thing he is in over his head and it isn't going to happen but at this point there is no harm in at least giving him the rest of this season. Anyone we could replace him with isn't going to do any better at this point.

I could easily support firing Marshall at this point along with Brookhart. They aren't recruiting and their responsibility positions are complete and udder failures. For them we could bring in either a retired guy who is willing to come back or a young guy looking to get into coaching and they couldn't do a worse job.

What bothers me the most though is that we have lost two weeks in a row to teams that have less talent than we do. We aren't likely to see that opportunity the rest of the season, at least after Fresno and they get the home field.

Other than completely gutting the talent level of this team Hawkins managed to rip out their hearts and their integrity. So far Embree has failed to manage to re-instill some of that back into the team. This is still a team that not only looks for ways to lose but is total comfortable with losing. The guys who should be the leaders stepping up and forcing guys to choke on the losing and awaking the hearts of the team instead are the worst offenders. Our offensive line which was supposed to be the strength of the team with the most talent and experience has been an embarrassment. Maybe replacing Marshall may get them to wake up a little and recognize how bad they have been.

Back to the OP, it won't matter who we bring in and frankly I don't see anyone capable of fixing this situation until the message from the top is nothing short of excellence is expected and will be supported. This means that needed upgrades to facilities won't be put off, that admissions will be realistic based on the goal of winning, that assistant coaches salaries will be commensurate with quality, and a number of other smaller issues that are the difference between a contender for championships and a perenial also ran.

 

[buffs04]

Does CSU have better support in place than CU? Does Sac State? You can use the argument you advanced to support retaining any coach for any period of time.