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Rick Neuheisel, man or myth?

buffaholic

buffaholic

Club Member
Club Member
I nominate him as the guy who was most over-rated despite accomplishing nothing in his coaching career...

He had 3 PAC12 head jobs!

He left Colorado in a much worse situation than he found it in. Frankly, he left Boulder with absolutely zero on the QB depth chart. Zero.

Yet he still carried the moniker "quarterback guru" when he was named the UCLA head coach?

Did he improve the Raven's QB play? no

Did the UW program improve or degrade during his time?

I wrote a pretty long summary of this when he got the UCLA job.

Frankly, I hold Rick accountable for most of CU's issues in football today.

We went from national championship to undisciplined football. He left behind some talent from his first few recruiting classes, (enough for 2001 to happen), but the talent in his younger classes was less than national championship caliber. Was that a recruiting issue? No - more of a development issue. Same issue he had at UW and UCLA. Good classes that never developed. That was a definite trend.

He gave us Katie Hnida.
He gave us the complete lack of discipline that was evident during the Rick years - the same lack of discipline that yielded the scandal that wasn't....

Name the QB that Rick recruited to CU who played the most downs of football after he left! That's an awfully ugly picture.

Neuheisel - program killer. He did less with more than anyone until Dan Hawkins. And I'm not sure he didn't eclipse Dan. National title to Katie Hnida. That's Rick's legacy here boys.
 
As I've mentioned before, people forget that the program was put on watch by the Boulder DA during his tenure and the responsibility for the innitiation of the "scandal" is his.
 
Cannot disagree about Neuheisel. The timing of his jump to Washington could not have been worse either. That was a huge recruiting weekend (pretty sure Corey Redding was in town) toward the end of the recruiting cycle.

Those were weird times. The CU job was actually still pretty desirable and we almost landed Gary Kubiak, who happened to be on his way to winning a 2nd straight Super Bowl title. I still wonder how it would have turned out with Kubiak as the head coach. He was 37 years old, was about to get his third Super Bowl as an assistant, he was popular with Broncos fans/the Denver media, and he had deep ties to the Houston area. No way anyone of that caliber would even give us the time of day now.
 
He took arguably the most talented team of the 1990s (10 of the first 71 draft pics wore black and gold) and in 4 short years left it scandal-ridden, with much less talent and undisciplined. He was horrendous. Worse than Pigeon? Possibly as he had further to fall than DII.

All I can say is "In Embree We Trust"!

Shoulder to shoulder!
 
Totally agree about the weasel. Weasel brought in Katie Hnida, which begat the scandal, which begat D2 Dan.

Sorry to post this, but the fact that Embree let his son play for him is honestly one of the biggest concerns I had when he was hired.
 
buffaholic said:
Frankly, I hold Rick accountable for most of CU's issues in football today.
Click to expand...

F'ing this. I will certainly grant you that Coach Barnett did himself no favors, and his media "unfriendliness" made the scandal-that-wasn't MUCH worse than what it shoulda been, and Hawkins dragged us down to a new level of suck, but ****stick (I will NOT ever use his given name, nor will I ever ever call "him" Coach, as he never deserved it, was both the catalyst and active agent that quite frankly destroyed Colorado Football.
 
I've got mixed feelings about Rick. Everything in the OP is true. Especially as a younger coach, he took shortcuts and focused way too much of his energy on getting spotlight for himself. The way he handled his departure was awful.

He was chasing the brass ring and screwed up a lot. But he is also a smart, charismatic guy who knows the quarterback position. He's also maintained friendships with a lot of our current staff.

If Rip Scherer went back to the NFL, it wouldn't shock me for Embo to hire Rick as our QB Coach / Passing Game Coordinator. And despite the uproar that would cause among fans, I think he'd do a damn good job for us in that role while being an ace on the recruiting trail.
 
Buffnik said:
If Rip Scherer went back to the NFL, it wouldn't shock me for Embo to hire Rick as our QB Coach / Passing Game Coordinator. And despite the uproar that would cause among fans, I think he'd do a damn good job for us in that role while being an ace on the recruiting trail.
Click to expand...

After my initial shock wore off, not only could I live with that, I would be happy about it.
 
Buffnik said:
I've got mixed feelings about Rick. Everything in the OP is true. Especially as a younger coach, he took shortcuts and focused way too much of his energy on getting spotlight for himself. The way he handled his departure was awful.

He was chasing the brass ring and screwed up a lot. But he is also a smart, charismatic guy who knows the quarterback position. He's also maintained friendships with a lot of our current staff.

If Rip Scherer went back to the NFL, it wouldn't shock me for Embo to hire Rick as our QB Coach / Passing Game Coordinator. And despite the uproar that would cause among fans, I think he'd do a damn good job for us in that role while being an ace on the recruiting trail.
Click to expand...
I have mixed feelings as well. New-weasel won 33 games in 4 seasons, went 3-0 in bowl games, and his last class led the 2001 team to our last conference title. Of course he inherited an incredible team/program, but if he was a total disaster, we wouldn't have won 10 games in 1995 and 1996. His biggest failure was overestimating the abilities of John Hessler and not having a Plan B for QB once Hessler struggled (also not being able to beat Nebraska, who was busy winning NCs). The culture issue can't be put all on him, or even half on him. Barnett could have righted the culture ship in 1999 and kept it from becoming a "scandal."

He was not as bad as Hawk, people. Hawk would not have won 10 games in 1995 + 1996.
 
I have mixed feelings about Rick. And there's no doubting that his players loved him.

Of one thing I'm certain, and that is I'm glad he's no longer at CU or UW. I wish he would've stayed at UCLA a little longer...:nod:

Rick was not a good HC or recruiter. I wish I could blame the downfall of Husky football on him but he was not the reason for UW's demise. It was their upper campus. Rick was infinitely better as HC than Willingham, and its not even close...

I wish I didn't hate his voice though because he could surprise like Mike Belloti and become a pretty good broadcaster with the new network...
 
You forgot one thing: Rick thought CU didn't make the proper investments in terms of facilities during his time there and didn't have the passion to be one of the "haves". It wasn't a popular statement at the time but I think there is a lot of truth to it. CU administration didn't reinvest into the program like it should have during the 90's.
 
NewWeasels best performance was as the qb coach for a pro team. It was the one place where he had actual adult supervision in his day-to-day chores.

Would he be a positive if he returned to Boulder as the qb coach and pass game coordinator? Sure, I'd be okay with that, as long as that's all he's allowed to do. Any other coaching assignment, and I'd be pissed -- sure as shiit, he'd find a way to screw it up.
 
Buffnik said:
I've got mixed feelings about Rick. Everything in the OP is true. Especially as a younger coach, he took shortcuts and focused way too much of his energy on getting spotlight for himself. The way he handled his departure was awful.

He was chasing the brass ring and screwed up a lot. But he is also a smart, charismatic guy who knows the quarterback position. He's also maintained friendships with a lot of our current staff.

If Rip Scherer went back to the NFL, it wouldn't shock me for Embo to hire Rick as our QB Coach / Passing Game Coordinator. And despite the uproar that would cause among fans, I think he'd do a damn good job for us in that role while being an ace on the recruiting trail.
Click to expand...

I think you're right, Nik, but is that even a job Rick would take? I have my doubts.
 
JimmyBuff said:
You forgot one thing: Rick thought CU didn't make the proper investments in terms of facilities during his time there and didn't have the passion to be one of the "haves". It wasn't a popular statement at the time but I think there is a lot of truth to it. CU administration didn't reinvest into the program like it should have during the 90's.
Click to expand...

Dal Ward had just opened a couple of years before RN was made head coach. At the time it was one of the Best CFB facilities around.

Neuheisel is a Myth as a coach. That was definitively shown at UCLA. He had no lack of talent to work with and had some top assistants (Chow) around. He still laid an egg. A continuing theme were his teams play very inconsistent - getting up for some game and choking on others. Rick's comments about the haves and have nots had everything to do with Rick and his ego and nothing to do with facilities. Tharp refused to give him the long term contract in 1998 and in fact had told him he needed to turn things around in the program (remember the (in)famous article where he said he was content to become the Joe Pa of CU and then he turned around and took off.
 
I cannot think of a worst choice for a QB coach - honestly.

Fact is that he left behind a very poor depth chart at CU at the position of QB.
The future was in the hands of Jeremy Weisinger (JR), Taylor Barton (FR), Zac Colvin (FR), Adam Bledsoe (SO). Mike Moschetti was brought in as a Juco to save the day.... Basically, the cupboard was bare at the QB position.

The track-record for evaluating and developing his own QB talent isn't good.

Rick has probably found his niche as an announcer. He won't be coming back as a QB coach if that gig works for him at the PAC12 network.
 
Myth

I remember being so excited when Slick was hired. His charisma sucked me in. He played the electric guitar, took the kids tubing down Boulder creek, smiled at lot, and said the right things. The kids loved him. Amongst my circle of friends conversations would center around how all the top recruits were going to want to come here and have fun with Slick.

It didn’t take long before the missteps started to happen and our conversations moved to comments like “You know, Slick going to be a great coach someday, it’s just probably not going to be at Colorado.” I thought that he would learn by his mistakes, recognize his weaknesses, and hire the right people to make up for his shortcomings (discipline, structure, not doing stupid ****). All leaders have areas of weakness but the great ones recognize this and put strong people in place that will stand up to them, oversee the areas that they suck at, and help steer them from disaster. Slick never did this.

I was in attendance at some community event and Gary Barnett was the guest speaker. It was right before his second season and he opened his talk by telling a story. He told us about the first day of practice after he took over the program. He said all the players came out for practice carrying a towel. He watched as each player spread out their towel on the field before beginning stretches. He asked a player “What’s up with the towels?” The player told him that the field was wet and they didn’t want to get their uniforms wet. The player told him that Coach Slick always let them do this. Barnett stopped practice, collected all the towels and told the players they were soft and things were going to change. He knew then how big a job he had ahead of him. Now I’m no big Barnett fan, but Slick did leave a big mess behind. He did burn bridges as far as I’m concerned.

I know Embree and Slick are friends. I know his son played for him. I know that on some levels Slick would have something to offer. All this doesn’t change the fact that I would be pissed off if Embree doesn’t steer clear of that baggage laden bumble head.

He will make a great announcer.

Buffnik, I’ve read tons of your post and have a lot of respect for your opinions. Are you just trying to provoke discussion or do you really believe this has any chance of happening?
 
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sockdolager said:
Myth

I remember being so excited when Slick was hired. His charisma sucked me in. He played the electric guitar, took the kids tubing down Boulder creek, smiled at lot, and said the right things. The kids loved him. Amongst my circle of friends conversations would center around how all the top recruits were going to want to come here and have fun with Slick.

It didn’t take long before the missteps started to happen and our conversations moved to comments like “You know, Slick going to be a great coach someday, it’s just probably not going to be at Colorado.” I thought that he would learn by his mistakes, recognize his weaknesses, and hire the right people to make up for his shortcomings (discipline, structure, not doing stupid ****). All leaders have areas of weakness but the great ones recognize this and put strong people in place that will stand up to them, oversee the areas that they suck at, and help steer them from disaster. Slick never did this.

I was in attendance at some community event and Gary Barnett was the guest speaker. It was right before his second season and he opened his talk by telling a story. He told us about the first day of practice after he took over the program. He said all the players came out for practice carrying a towel. He watched as each player spread out their towel on the field before beginning stretches. He asked a player “What’s up with the towels?” The player told him that the field was wet and they didn’t want to get their uniforms wet. The player told him that Coach Slick always let them do this. Barnett stopped practice, collected all the towels and told the players they were soft and things were going to change. He knew then how big a job he had ahead of him. Now I’m no big Barnett fan, but Slick did leave a big mess behind. He did burn bridges as far as I’m concerned.

I know Embree and Slick are friends. I know his son played for him. I know that on some levels Slick would have something to offer. All this doesn’t change the fact that I would be pissed off if Embree doesn’t steer clear of that baggage laden bumble head.

He will make a great announcer.

Buffnik, I’ve read tons of your post and have a lot of respect for your opinions. Are you just trying to provoke discussion or do you really believe this has any chance of happening?
Click to expand...
Really like your post. Thanks!!
 
bigbang2 said:
Rip Scherer is a doing a great job, don't want any part of Rick Neuheisel as a QB coach.
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Uh, even those saying Neu wouldn't be a bad choice for QB coach are doing so under the presumption that Rip leaves for the NFL.
 
azbuff said:
Uh, even those saying Neu wouldn't be a bad choice for QB coach are doing so under the presumption that Rip leaves for the NFL.
Click to expand...

You couldn't just let BigBang think he was one step ahead of everyone else, could you?:wink2:
 
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