Q. Coach MacIntyre, can you put into words again how meaningful this bowl game is for Colorado to return after all these years.
COACH MIKE MACINTYRE: We were the last team in the major conferences to not go to a bowl. It’s a big deal. Our young men heard it every day. I’ve heard every day since I’ve been there. Now to kind of get that monkey off your back is good.
Also this senior class, to end it this way, it means a great deal. It shows that if you keep putting forth great work ethic, not listen to everybody, just keep working hard, you can accomplish a lot of goals. So it’s a great life lesson.
For our fans, for our student body, they’re really excited about being here and going to a bowl game. It rejuvenates that. Hopefully it will sell more season tickets for us next year, keep growing our program. It definitely is a big deal to be in this bowl game.
Playing against an excellent football team that I definitely feel like is a top-10 football team. If they don’t have that crazy play at the beginning of the year, they are. They’re an excellent, excellent football team. It’s going to be a great game.
Q. Coach MacIntyre, Colorado is a place that has a national championship, has competed for Big 12 championships. When you got there, achieved this rebuild to where you’re at right now, I know you don’t want to live in the past, but what were some of the challenges you had to overcome specific to Colorado?
COACH MacINTYRE: Well, the past, we embrace the past, we really do. It’s everywhere. You walk by the Heisman Trophy, Rashaan Salaam who we lost this year. You walk by the national championship trophy. It’s the first thing our guys see when they walk into our new locker room every day. We have a ring room and national trophy championship sitting right there. We embrace it. It’s a great thing.
The other side of it is, when we got there, our program was really down. We were the worst program in major college football. Coach Rick George has built new facilities for us. Now we’re back up at the top echelon of the facility area. Everybody has embraced us, the fan base has come back. All of that is there.
We just needed to, I guess, put a little bit more water on it, a little bit more fertilizer on it, it will grow again, because the history is great.
The cool thing, I bring back a lot of players to speak to our guys from the different times. All of them to a man came back and said, Hey, our history is great, but you need to set your own legacy and your own history. Our kids kept hearing that from guy after guy. They said, We’re tired hearing about our past, we want to see the new future. That meant a lot.
We’ve embraced our former players. They come around practice, different times. I love having them back. We embrace that. We’re very proud of our history.
These young men now want to make their own legacy, and they’re starting to do that.
Q. Coach MacIntyre, when you play in a championship game like you did a month ago, obviously the emotions are high. What were the keys after that game to heal guys and get them ready to where they’re prepared for this kind of big stage tomorrow?
COACH MIKE MACINTYRE: Playing in the PAC-12 championship game was an exciting event for our team. It’s kind of like a mini bowl situation, a lot of pomp and circumstance around it.
We didn’t play as well as we would have liked. Washington had a lot to do with that, of course. But we came back, started back to work, watched the film, put it behind us. They went on and took exams. When we started on Oklahoma State, we started just like we would any other game and approached it that way.
The guys get over it pretty quick. Coaches linger on it a little bit longer. As a coach, you have to make sure you don’t enforce that last game, carry it with you, not place negativity on your players.
Once they watched tape on Oklahoma State, they got nervous. Our players realized how good they are, and are excited about playing in this game.
Q. Coach MacIntyre, college football is not a patient game. Campus about an hour north here, Charlie Strong asked for patience, he didn’t get it. What were your conversations like with the administration during this rebuild? Did you have to ask for more time?
COACH MIKE MACINTYRE: No, I didn’t. We were so bad when we got there. Just a little bit of improvement. They saw improvement every year. Even though we were short on the scoreboard a lot of times, you could see our team improving.
When I first got there, If you could just stay till halftime. That’s what people asked me. We didn’t stay till halftime all the time the first few years. Then we got it going.
Last year was a year where I felt like our young men really matured, understood what they needed to do to be successful. We kept building. We were able to retain players. We had the biggest junior, senior class that they’ve had since the 2001 team that won the Big 12.
Retention was a big thing I noticed when I got to CU. Players were not staying. They had small senior classes. As a matter of fact, one of our fifth-year seniors got up and said there were only seven seniors in his first class when he got here. You’re not going to be able to win that way.
We’ve been able to do that. Our president, chancellor, AD, have been phenomenal. Everybody associated with us, even David Plati has been awesome (laughter). It’s been neat.
I just hit the right time when everybody understood where we were going. They were thriving to be successful. We were able to do that. We just kept building to try to get better.
Q. Coach MacIntyre, there’s been a lot of conversation about the fact that in your two regular-season losses, you didn’t have Sefo Liufau. In Michigan you lost Derek McCartney. Talk about the process of overcoming that, not having a guy that was the backbone of your defense, still ending up the season with a defense ranked atop the PAC-12.
COACH MIKE MACINTYRE: It was interesting, Sefo goes down. Most Colorado people don’t know this. Sefo goes down. We kicked the football off. Our kicker blows his Achilles, who was having a phenomenal year. Next play on defense, Derek McCartney tears his knee up. All three of those guys are roommates. The house they live in, nobody will ever live in again, I told them when they were gone.
Losing Derek, he’s going to New Orleans after this game for the Good Works Bowl. He was one of the 11 people picked for the Good Works. He’s just a phenomenal leader for us, too. He’s a legacy. He’s Coach Mac’s grandson. He means a lot to our program in a lot of ways. 6’5″ and a half, 255 pounds, can rush the passer, is a force. We definitely missed him.
We had to tweak a few things. That’s one of the reasons you see Ryan Moeller. We felt like playing Ryan Moeller, because we started playing more teams that were spread teams. We kind of tweaked a little bit.
Missing Derek is big. The great thing about Derek is he’ll be back next year. He’s going to be going to med school. He started his prerequisites for that. We’re excited about having Derek back. He was a big loss, not only on the football field but off. We had a strong senior class. So they filled in well for him.
Q. Coach Mac, your team returned 56 upperclassmen this year, most out of any PAC-12 school. What kind of mentality and work ethic have these older guys instilled in some of the younger guys in the program that will shoulder this team in years to come?
COACH MIKE MACINTYRE: They built it. The culture they’ve developed, it’s good when you really don’t have to say much as a head coach on work ethic, being on time, how they’re supposed to be dressed. They just do it.
That’s what I’ve seen, the work ethic, them holding each other accountable. There was a couple times I went down to summer workouts. There’s guys standing outside the gate. They won’t let them in because they didn’t get there early enough. The players ended up punishing them.
They just had a great mentality. They understood what it took. I’ve always said, as you come in as a freshman, you kind of want to be part of a team. If you get to play, you’re happy. As a sophomore, you just want to play. As a junior and senior, you just want to win.
As you keep that mentality going, they pass it down to the younger guys, they’ve done that. We just got to keep the culture going, restart it after this bowl game with a new group of guys.
Q. Coach Mac, have you thought at all about what it’s going to be like to see Sefo walk off the field the last time in a Colorado uniform?
COACH MACINTYRE: No, I don’t want to do that. I’ll enjoy watching him play his last game, the other seniors, just like Mike will enjoy watching his seniors play.
In the locker room, there will be a time that I’ll think about it, but right now I’m thinking about us trying to find a way to win the football game.
Q. Coach MacIntyre, you mentioned earlier you lost one of the greats in program history in Salaam. Do you have anything planned as a team to commemorate him?
COACH MIKE MACINTYRE: We’re going to wear a decal on our helmet for him, honor him that way. Our guys walk by his trophy every day. There’s flowers around it now. It’s something that we notice every single day.
I didn’t know him real well. I got to know him these last four years. I remember seeing him play as a player, of course, on television. Every time I remember Rashaan, he always had a great smile. He was very, very humble. I really appreciate Rashaan and what he did for the CU program.
Q. Coach Gundy, you were just asked about your outstanding receiving corps. A comment from your perspective on the challenge of facing what Coach MacIntyre puts out there on the back end of his defense.
Q. How have you felt about the job Coach Tumpkin has done? Will we see him put his own spin on things tomorrow night?
COACH MacINTYRE: Joe has done an excellent job, so has Charles Clark, Jim Jeffcoat. Everybody that’s been working with them has been good.
We’ll keep doing the same thing. You can’t change. We’ll keep doing the same thing we’ve been doing. We just got to play better than Oklahoma State does. They want to play better than we do.
But talking about their receiver corps, their quarterback, they’re excellent, excellent, excellent. Reminds me of USC, which they have excellent ones. We’re lining up against USC’s receivers and quarterbacks. They’re special players.
COACH MIKE MACINTYRE: We were the last team in the major conferences to not go to a bowl. It’s a big deal. Our young men heard it every day. I’ve heard every day since I’ve been there. Now to kind of get that monkey off your back is good.
Also this senior class, to end it this way, it means a great deal. It shows that if you keep putting forth great work ethic, not listen to everybody, just keep working hard, you can accomplish a lot of goals. So it’s a great life lesson.
For our fans, for our student body, they’re really excited about being here and going to a bowl game. It rejuvenates that. Hopefully it will sell more season tickets for us next year, keep growing our program. It definitely is a big deal to be in this bowl game.
Playing against an excellent football team that I definitely feel like is a top-10 football team. If they don’t have that crazy play at the beginning of the year, they are. They’re an excellent, excellent football team. It’s going to be a great game.
Q. Coach MacIntyre, Colorado is a place that has a national championship, has competed for Big 12 championships. When you got there, achieved this rebuild to where you’re at right now, I know you don’t want to live in the past, but what were some of the challenges you had to overcome specific to Colorado?
COACH MacINTYRE: Well, the past, we embrace the past, we really do. It’s everywhere. You walk by the Heisman Trophy, Rashaan Salaam who we lost this year. You walk by the national championship trophy. It’s the first thing our guys see when they walk into our new locker room every day. We have a ring room and national trophy championship sitting right there. We embrace it. It’s a great thing.
The other side of it is, when we got there, our program was really down. We were the worst program in major college football. Coach Rick George has built new facilities for us. Now we’re back up at the top echelon of the facility area. Everybody has embraced us, the fan base has come back. All of that is there.
We just needed to, I guess, put a little bit more water on it, a little bit more fertilizer on it, it will grow again, because the history is great.
The cool thing, I bring back a lot of players to speak to our guys from the different times. All of them to a man came back and said, Hey, our history is great, but you need to set your own legacy and your own history. Our kids kept hearing that from guy after guy. They said, We’re tired hearing about our past, we want to see the new future. That meant a lot.
We’ve embraced our former players. They come around practice, different times. I love having them back. We embrace that. We’re very proud of our history.
These young men now want to make their own legacy, and they’re starting to do that.
Q. Coach MacIntyre, when you play in a championship game like you did a month ago, obviously the emotions are high. What were the keys after that game to heal guys and get them ready to where they’re prepared for this kind of big stage tomorrow?
COACH MIKE MACINTYRE: Playing in the PAC-12 championship game was an exciting event for our team. It’s kind of like a mini bowl situation, a lot of pomp and circumstance around it.
We didn’t play as well as we would have liked. Washington had a lot to do with that, of course. But we came back, started back to work, watched the film, put it behind us. They went on and took exams. When we started on Oklahoma State, we started just like we would any other game and approached it that way.
The guys get over it pretty quick. Coaches linger on it a little bit longer. As a coach, you have to make sure you don’t enforce that last game, carry it with you, not place negativity on your players.
Once they watched tape on Oklahoma State, they got nervous. Our players realized how good they are, and are excited about playing in this game.
Q. Coach MacIntyre, college football is not a patient game. Campus about an hour north here, Charlie Strong asked for patience, he didn’t get it. What were your conversations like with the administration during this rebuild? Did you have to ask for more time?
COACH MIKE MACINTYRE: No, I didn’t. We were so bad when we got there. Just a little bit of improvement. They saw improvement every year. Even though we were short on the scoreboard a lot of times, you could see our team improving.
When I first got there, If you could just stay till halftime. That’s what people asked me. We didn’t stay till halftime all the time the first few years. Then we got it going.
Last year was a year where I felt like our young men really matured, understood what they needed to do to be successful. We kept building. We were able to retain players. We had the biggest junior, senior class that they’ve had since the 2001 team that won the Big 12.
Retention was a big thing I noticed when I got to CU. Players were not staying. They had small senior classes. As a matter of fact, one of our fifth-year seniors got up and said there were only seven seniors in his first class when he got here. You’re not going to be able to win that way.
We’ve been able to do that. Our president, chancellor, AD, have been phenomenal. Everybody associated with us, even David Plati has been awesome (laughter). It’s been neat.
I just hit the right time when everybody understood where we were going. They were thriving to be successful. We were able to do that. We just kept building to try to get better.
Q. Coach MacIntyre, there’s been a lot of conversation about the fact that in your two regular-season losses, you didn’t have Sefo Liufau. In Michigan you lost Derek McCartney. Talk about the process of overcoming that, not having a guy that was the backbone of your defense, still ending up the season with a defense ranked atop the PAC-12.
COACH MIKE MACINTYRE: It was interesting, Sefo goes down. Most Colorado people don’t know this. Sefo goes down. We kicked the football off. Our kicker blows his Achilles, who was having a phenomenal year. Next play on defense, Derek McCartney tears his knee up. All three of those guys are roommates. The house they live in, nobody will ever live in again, I told them when they were gone.
Losing Derek, he’s going to New Orleans after this game for the Good Works Bowl. He was one of the 11 people picked for the Good Works. He’s just a phenomenal leader for us, too. He’s a legacy. He’s Coach Mac’s grandson. He means a lot to our program in a lot of ways. 6’5″ and a half, 255 pounds, can rush the passer, is a force. We definitely missed him.
We had to tweak a few things. That’s one of the reasons you see Ryan Moeller. We felt like playing Ryan Moeller, because we started playing more teams that were spread teams. We kind of tweaked a little bit.
Missing Derek is big. The great thing about Derek is he’ll be back next year. He’s going to be going to med school. He started his prerequisites for that. We’re excited about having Derek back. He was a big loss, not only on the football field but off. We had a strong senior class. So they filled in well for him.
Q. Coach Mac, your team returned 56 upperclassmen this year, most out of any PAC-12 school. What kind of mentality and work ethic have these older guys instilled in some of the younger guys in the program that will shoulder this team in years to come?
COACH MIKE MACINTYRE: They built it. The culture they’ve developed, it’s good when you really don’t have to say much as a head coach on work ethic, being on time, how they’re supposed to be dressed. They just do it.
That’s what I’ve seen, the work ethic, them holding each other accountable. There was a couple times I went down to summer workouts. There’s guys standing outside the gate. They won’t let them in because they didn’t get there early enough. The players ended up punishing them.
They just had a great mentality. They understood what it took. I’ve always said, as you come in as a freshman, you kind of want to be part of a team. If you get to play, you’re happy. As a sophomore, you just want to play. As a junior and senior, you just want to win.
As you keep that mentality going, they pass it down to the younger guys, they’ve done that. We just got to keep the culture going, restart it after this bowl game with a new group of guys.
Q. Coach Mac, have you thought at all about what it’s going to be like to see Sefo walk off the field the last time in a Colorado uniform?
COACH MACINTYRE: No, I don’t want to do that. I’ll enjoy watching him play his last game, the other seniors, just like Mike will enjoy watching his seniors play.
In the locker room, there will be a time that I’ll think about it, but right now I’m thinking about us trying to find a way to win the football game.
Q. Coach MacIntyre, you mentioned earlier you lost one of the greats in program history in Salaam. Do you have anything planned as a team to commemorate him?
COACH MIKE MACINTYRE: We’re going to wear a decal on our helmet for him, honor him that way. Our guys walk by his trophy every day. There’s flowers around it now. It’s something that we notice every single day.
I didn’t know him real well. I got to know him these last four years. I remember seeing him play as a player, of course, on television. Every time I remember Rashaan, he always had a great smile. He was very, very humble. I really appreciate Rashaan and what he did for the CU program.
Q. Coach Gundy, you were just asked about your outstanding receiving corps. A comment from your perspective on the challenge of facing what Coach MacIntyre puts out there on the back end of his defense.
Q. How have you felt about the job Coach Tumpkin has done? Will we see him put his own spin on things tomorrow night?
COACH MacINTYRE: Joe has done an excellent job, so has Charles Clark, Jim Jeffcoat. Everybody that’s been working with them has been good.
We’ll keep doing the same thing. You can’t change. We’ll keep doing the same thing we’ve been doing. We just got to play better than Oklahoma State does. They want to play better than we do.
But talking about their receiver corps, their quarterback, they’re excellent, excellent, excellent. Reminds me of USC, which they have excellent ones. We’re lining up against USC’s receivers and quarterbacks. They’re special players.
