Just no way. No way. Please. No way.
Embree's got twice as long to recruit and know his players. Leach arrived without any trusted assistants. His is easily the most complicated offensive scheme in the NCAA. There is NO WAY that Leach should hold any advantage over Embree & Co.
Yet it's Embree that is facing an absolutely must-have win. Because we're already seeing two weeks of "CU Football is worst in country" comments and blogs. Embree's only got one more chance before facing the meat of Pac-12 opposition.
If he doesn't get a win THIS WEEK, then he'll be facing 10 weeks (including 1 bye week) of having every recruit read and hear "CU Football is the worst in the country." Ten weeks.
It's one thing to be bad. To have a down season or two. But "Worst"? Can you imagine good players telling their friends, "I'm choosing The Worst Program in Football rather than USC, LSU, Florida, Notre Dame, Stanford..."
I can't. Players who'd choose "The Worst Program In The Country" are still choosing Their Best Offer.
If Embree waits until a victory over Utah, those prospects will have still heard 10 weeks of "CU Football Is The Worst" and then maybe some bowl-game commentator will say, "Yeah, but Embree did beat Utah! He's not The Worst!"
Yeah. Right.
No, Embree must win THIS WEEK. (Of course, taking down USC and Oregon would be acceptable, too!)
What about Leach, though? Leach isn't in a great situation. He's literally in "the only place available". Pullman's so isolated that they were able to cover up the King Of Juarez Strip Club antics (er, Mike Price). Once he escaped Pullman, all of that was exposed. Uh. Literally. Leach has a very small chance to rehab what's left of his reputation.
He needs to win, too. He needs to win big. Think he doesn't know this? Think he's not hoping for a huge, headline-shocking score?
In fact, a close win may be worse than a loss for him. He can probably say, "Just don't have the pirates aboard yet..." as his excuse for a 10-20 point loss. "Turnovers!" Something like that.
He needs a blow-out victory. His win last week at UNLV was puny, considering the low-quality of UNLV. That's probably a moral loss, in fact. And he's got 6 weeks before the Utah game, and no other prospects for any wins in sight.
He needs this victory bad. And he probably needs a BIG margin victory, too.