Once the writing was on the wall that the hire had to be from the Buff family (and Les Miles wouldn't be coming back to Boulder), my support was for Embree.
I still think he was the best choice among available options.
I wish that I would have been a lot more vocal about how dumb it is to limit yourself to "in the family" hires, or even to make that a factor in the hiring process. I believed that he would restore some important things that had been lost and would at least stock the roster with better talent based on his previous recruiting success on the college level. Then, even if he didn't win, the program would be in better shape for the next guy. Unfortunately, it went as badly as it possibly could from every standpoint.
On a positive note, I think that like an addict, CU needed to hit rock bottom in order to get truly motivated about recovery. Barnett and even Hawkins allowed us to be a functional alcoholic of a program for a lot of years before the bottom started to fall out.
