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Hawkins or Embree? Who damaged our program more?
- Thread starter BUffphan
- Start date
Finest
Well-Known Member
The Fresno State game is scorched in my memory and that mockery was worse than Montana State (which Sac State matches) or even the Kansas fall-apart. Embree.
Also, Embree for hiring inexperienced coordinators who had never been in that position...when he had never been above a position coach. He should have positioned himself to at least have someone to lean on who had some experience.
Also, Embree for hiring inexperienced coordinators who had never been in that position...when he had never been above a position coach. He should have positioned himself to at least have someone to lean on who had some experience.
Idot Buff
Guest
1. Hawkins (terrible coach!!!)
2. Bohn (for hiring then keeping the terrible coach around for as long as he did)
3. Embree (poor choice of assistant coaches and ineffective recruiting)
2. Bohn (for hiring then keeping the terrible coach around for as long as he did)
3. Embree (poor choice of assistant coaches and ineffective recruiting)
Idot Buff
Guest
agree, bitch
95 BUFF
Member
If limited to just those two then I would say Embree. Hawkins was awful but when Embree took over there were enough pieces to work with. The team was junior heavy and were coming off a 5 win season. The recruiting situation was getting bad but the program had enough rep still that the right coach could have kept the ship off the reef. It was such a critical time for the program just joining the Pac 12. Our first impression those two years would go along way to how we were viewed by California HS football players. His complete **** show set this program back 5 years. That 2012 team may have been the worst in Pac 12 history. That set the reputation of Colorado and our recruiting still suffers from it. He was clueless and his staff was equally ill prepared.
i would say though the biggest culprit was Benson. I remember having a conversation with him when he forced Hawkins to remain for his fifth year where he told me athletic programs don't help the University. I give him credit for seeing the light and he has changed his tune but the 3-4 years at the end of Hawkins and through the Embree hire and how much he dictated football decisions were what killed the program.
i would say though the biggest culprit was Benson. I remember having a conversation with him when he forced Hawkins to remain for his fifth year where he told me athletic programs don't help the University. I give him credit for seeing the light and he has changed his tune but the 3-4 years at the end of Hawkins and through the Embree hire and how much he dictated football decisions were what killed the program.
Deleted member 807
Guest
Lots of names being thrown out there. Barnett, Peterson, Bohn, DiStephano, Hawkins, Benson, Embree.
Tharp, Albino, Hoffman and Brown could be added to the group., as each also were stewards of our beloved institution after the departure of HCBMc & Pres Gee.
The inability to find consensus after all these years goes to show institutional dysfunction.
No wonder CU earned a reputation as a place where football careers go to die.
Tharp, Albino, Hoffman and Brown could be added to the group., as each also were stewards of our beloved institution after the departure of HCBMc & Pres Gee.
The inability to find consensus after all these years goes to show institutional dysfunction.
No wonder CU earned a reputation as a place where football careers go to die.
Deleted member 807
Guest
Let's cross that bridge when we get there.
Wasnt tharp sort of the beginning of everything falling apart? And ultimately the reason kubiak didn't want to come to colorado?
SINKRATZ
PhD in Analogy
I'm assuming it happens eventually, otherwise I'd find it hard to keep caring.
Deleted member 807
Guest
The knock on Tharp and Bohn is that they treated the AD position as a country club. Keep the boosters happy. Don't ruffle feathers with the academically focused campus leadership. Let the tradition attract fans. That approach was good enough.
Both acted as if the gorgeous campus setting, the pageantry of running a live buffalo around the field, and coasting on the McCartney legacy was enough for CU football to sell itself and still succeed.
The strategy worked fine for skiing and xc. Coasting didn't work for football.
Tharp and Bill Marolt got tied up with expanding the Big8 by inviting the best of the SWC (and also **** bailer) to the Big 12, focusing taking a leadership role in conference affairs.
As the dynamics of football economics shifted from universities to cable TV and ESPN executives, CU was reactionary. 1 and done at tOSU or off-weekend dates on ESPN became CU's revenue growth model.
An arms race began across rival campuses that included palatial facilities, multi million dollar coaching salaries, academic qualification for questionable recruits, and expansions of fan bases into joe-six-pack America . These were concepts not adopted in Boulder.
Football victories under Neu and Barnett were taken for granted as a nice-to-have. In the aftermath of Doug Bruce's TABOR amendment, state funds for higher education were effectively frozen while campus costs were escalating at rates higher than inflation. CU leadership did not behave as if CU football success was something that the campus must have.
With Barnett's scandal, the true colors of CU came out. The football program was left to twist in the winds of public opinion, where anyone on the team was a potential rapist. Funding for the East Side club seats were criticized on the basis of generating a return. Spending on athletic facilities dried up as CU turned its attention to the development of the multi billion dollar Medical Center campus.
DiStefano was given responsibility for supervising all Boulder campus activities, including athletic department oversight. His priority was threefold: Academic achievement, sustaining a self-funded AD budget that operated in the black, and a display of compliance and institutional control that was above reproach. Winning, or more accurately called "being competitive" was more of an after thought.
There was no Boone Pickens or Phil Knight sugar daddy who could penetrate CU's beloved autonomous power structure. (Billionaire George Solich tried and walked away).
It wasn't until the Med Center was up and running that Benson woke from his slumber on CU football. He was never a die-hard football fan. For Benson, football is a means towards the ends of outreach to the private sector. Reliance on growing federal funding for campus operations looked to be risky in light of surmounting government deficits and mounting criticisms of the federal student loan system. Internet on-line degree programs begin to reshape the higher education landscape. Benson figured out he needs to diversify revenue for the massive CU system through private sector outreach. It turns out that athletic performance matters to private sector donors.
The Auto Pilot hiring of Boy Scout Hawkins and B4L Embree were spectacular failures. Benson dropped 5million of his personal fortune on athletics and green-lighted the overhaul we are seeing now.
By the time Rick George was hired, the legacy of McCartney was damaged beyond any immediate repair. It was only after a prolonged period of neglect that dates back to Tharp that CU finally decided to reinvest in athletics.
The lesson in all this is that success in football can't just be a once every other decade priority. It has to be a sustained effort.
It must include alignment between HC, AD, Campus leadership, and the president.
Embree and Hawkins were patsies in a much bigger structure of neglect and incompetence.
No matter what Mike MacIntyre does in 2015 and 2016, it is just a blip in the long game view.
With Benson nearing 80 and DiStefano finishing his 43rd year on the Boulder campus, the biggest recruitment questions should be, "Who should be the next CU president and chancellor? " and "Will the successors support whatever it takes for CU to play in the Rose Bowl?"
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I know the idiot who got on tv, Hoffman or whatever, didn't help. Barnett didn't help himself either. The whole damn thing was a ****show, they were even talking down here on local radio about it.
Deleted member 807
Guest
Textbook on what not to do. Harvard should write up a business case study.
Solich would be awesome.