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Kin: Most important CU athlete ever?

buffgal said:
I can't point to one player in any time frame as the "most important" ever. There are other sports than men's basketball and there have been great athletes in every sport CU has.
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There is ONLY ONE "most important ever" : Byron "Whizzer" White; everyone else vies for second place.

Colorado-born and raised; 3-sport letter winner in college (his CU basketball team was NIT runner-up when the NIT was the tourney); All American and Heisman runner-up; CU Class President and ranked No 1 academically; Rhodes Scholar; played three years in the NFL and led the League in rushing two of those years, was the highest-paid player in the League; WWII US Navy, medal-winning intelligence officer; 1st in his class Yale Law; clerked for US Chief Justice Vinson; practiced 15 years in Denver; Deputy US Atty General for JFK and finished career as Associate Justice US Supreme Court. And prior to going bald, was a damned handsome man!

Unbelievable on and off the field! As noted, everybody else competes for #2!
 
Rob DeVere said:
There is ONLY ONE "most important ever" : Byron "Whizzer" White; everyone else vies for second place.

Colorado-born and raised; 3-sport letter winner in college (his CU basketball team was NIT runner-up when the NIT was the tourney); All American and Heisman runner-up; CU Class President and ranked No 1 academically; Rhodes Scholar; played three years in the NFL and led the League in rushing two of those years, was the highest-paid player in the League; WWII US Navy, medal-winning intelligence officer; 1st in his class Yale Law; clerked for US Chief Justice Vinson; practiced 15 years in Denver; Deputy US Atty General for JFK and finished career as Associate Justice US Supreme Court. And prior to going bald, was a damned handsome man!

Unbelievable on and off the field! As noted, everybody else competes for #2!
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Wait a minute .... you can’t be bald AND handsome? My wife might disagree ... lol.
 
If White wasn't as good as he was in the '30s, we may not have been invited to the Big 7 when it formed, and may have ended up in the Mountain West today.

Utah and CU are the only two from the original RMAC that made it to power conference status, and it took Utah a long time.

So that was a defining pivot for CU, and gives White the nod as to CU all-time for me.

Hoops is way more interesting... very close, no clear answer.
 
Rob DeVere said:
There is ONLY ONE "most important ever" : Byron "Whizzer" White; everyone else vies for second place.

Colorado-born and raised; 3-sport letter winner in college (his CU basketball team was NIT runner-up when the NIT was the tourney); All American and Heisman runner-up; CU Class President and ranked No 1 academically; Rhodes Scholar; played three years in the NFL and led the League in rushing two of those years, was the highest-paid player in the League; WWII US Navy, medal-winning intelligence officer; 1st in his class Yale Law; clerked for US Chief Justice Vinson; practiced 15 years in Denver; Deputy US Atty General for JFK and finished career as Associate Justice US Supreme Court. And prior to going bald, was a damned handsome man!

Unbelievable on and off the field! As noted, everybody else competes for #2!
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This. In fact, I would say that White isn't the greatest CU athlete of all time, he's the greatest CU alumni.
 
Buffnik said:
I think this thread should have been "most important CU basketball player ever" because we have a lot of CU fans who can't wrap their heads around any non-football player being more important than even a Joel Klatt.
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buffgal said:
That really doesn't matter. I couldn't tell you the name of a single athlete from my under grad school, but I can tell you about athletes from many of the sports at CU.

The athletes in the Olympic sports work every bit as hard as the ones in the spectator sports. Why should they not be recognized in their own right?

Also, training and medicine has changed so much. That makes it very difficult to compare athletes from different eras.
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Cross Country is really the best program of the last 25 years for CU sports; 5 Men's National Team Titles, 3 Women's National Team Titles, 4 Individual Men's Champions, and 2 individual Women's titles. Only Skiing can assert itself as also having been elite in the same time frame.

Just came across this thread, and in the spirit of the title, and these two comments, I think Adam Goucher and Kara Goucher (nee Grgas-Wheeler) deserve a little space in the discussion. They were the first individual champs as the team established itself as elite.
 
AztecBuff said:
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One of 69.

Excited Season 5 GIF by Parks and Recreation
 
update:

Former CU point guard McKinley Wright IV is doing his best to make an impression with NBA scouts and front office personnel.

During his first five-on-five scrimmage Thursday at the NBA Draft Combine in Chicago, Wright turned in a solid all-around game. Wright shot just 2-for-7 overall, but he made his only 3-point attempt and finished with nine assists against only two turnovers in nearly 23 minutes. Wright also grabbed five rebounds and, according to ESPN draft analyst Jonathan Givony, turned in an impressive effort at the other end of the floor as well.

According to a tweet from Givony, Wright was, “playing lockdown defense all game and making some great reads passing out of PNR (pick and roll). Good first game for him at the NBA Combine.”
 
McKinley is just one of many excellent basketball alums from CU. I don't know if the MBB brand at CU has ever been brighter, with the recent success of McKinley, the ball program, and the alumni becoming head coaches in the NBA. I'm very excited about the future with Tad and the recent recruits and the headline success of our alumni.
 
Depends on the criteria sport or what was accomplished after leaving CU.
Outside of Sports: Whizzer White
Within Sports: Chauncey Billups (I'm a Trailblazer fan now)
Wealthiest CU athlete: Soon to be Spencer Dinwiddie
Taking nothing away from Wright he was so fun watching play and deserves everything he can get.
 
From The Athletic, Hollinger's Top 70:

Group 8: My top 2-way guys​

61. McKinley Wright IV, PG, Colorado, Senior

A tough defender who knows how to run an offense, Wright did a solid job at the combine but his lack of size and iffy shooting combine to make it an uphill battle for him to crack a rotation..........

(won't copy more due to paywall)
 
Buffnik said:
More money slotted. Better odds the team tries hard to develop you on a 2-way deal.
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I was thinking along the lines of football where a guy is better off being an FA than a late pick. But your line of reasoning makes sense.
 
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