Honestly, What Do We Expect from Colorado Football?
I don't know what to make of Colorado as a football program. Years ago, when I was covering Kansas coach Mark Mangino, Kansas had a great season. The Jayhawks went 12-1 in 2007 and despite that, Mangino kept getting asked by people like me about his relatively weak schedule.
I forget the exact quote now, but at one point he said something close to, I don't know any Kansas coach that beat Colorado, Texas A&M, Oklahoma State and Nebraska who got asked about his weak schedule.
Including Colorado in that struck me as weird at the time and still does today. It's not that Colorado is inferior to any of those other three programs, it's just that it's a weird program to stack among your big wins, yet ...
... Colorado has a national championship, which puts it around the top 35 ... even higher among those who have done it in my lifetime (which, if you need to know, began in 1983).
So was that a fluke?
An abberation?
A "confluence of events?"
I dunno. Maybe. But also: What difference does it make?
It's not like the state of Colorado is a football powerhouse. It's a great state in a lot of ways, but when it comes to high school football talent, it ain't no Florida, it ain't no Texas, it ain't no Louisiana, it ain't no Pennsylvania, ain't no Ohio, ain't even no Mississippi, which is one of the smallest states in the Union (whether Mississippi likes the Union or not).
Very much like Nebraska, it's a program that for a time figured out a formula for winning.
There are not a lot of legit D-1 football prospects in the state. Frankly, it's not a state with a lot of support for team sports in general -- we've all got outdoors stuff to do. And Colorado's glory days are long gone. It's not like any of these teenagers CU is recruiting remember 1990. The only thing I can remember from 1990 was asking my mom to buy me some neon bicycle shorts and six feet of Bubble Tape (for you, not them).
So what the hell, man? What is this program? Do any of us think this is the next Alabama?
Obviously not.
It's not Notre Dame. It's not USC. It's not Texas. It's not Michigan. It's not Ohio State.
Is it even a Sleeping Giant?
Probably not. However. It is a school that can win, and has won, a national championship. That doesn't just happen for anybody. It's not a fluke. It's not a gravitational pull from the moon, but it also doesn't just happen by chance.
Colorado is in one of the most unique positions in all of college athletics. There's no reason CU should have a national title. There's no great recruiting base here. There's no religious affiliation that transcends the recruiting base. There's no tradition, really, that would mean CU could pull players other similar schools wouldn't have gotten. And yet CU has a national title.
It also has a lot of really, really bad years.
So: Great.
What now?
Look at the list of schools that have won national championships. Colorado is not the only weird name in there. Pittsburgh has one (1976), Syracuse has one (1959), even Nebraska has one or -- possibly more than that.
Think about that for a second ... if friggin' Nebraska -- the state of Nebraska ....................
... Nebraska ...
... This is a state that has -- and, look, I grew up in rural Kansas; I'm not saying that was in any way better (or even meaningfully different) from rural Nebraska. What I am saying is if ... Nebraska" ....................
.................... produced a national champion football team (let alone five of them) means that anyone can do it. That's not even a slam on Nebraska. It's just obvious. If a landlocked state with a population a third the size of greater Houston can beat the whole world running the triple option, then there's hope for all of us.
Tom Osborne is an enemy in these parts but he said something one time I've always thought about. I'm paraphrasing, but as I heard it somebody asked him about running the triple option, even though he kept losing in the Orange Bowl. Wasn't it time to catch up with the times?
And Orborne said something, in his soft manner, to the effect of, Well, in Nebraska in November it gets very cold and very windy and gets very hard to throw the ball, so that's why we run like we do.
That stuck with me, and it makes me think about Colorado football now. I don't know what to expect of it. I don't know what it's major advantages are. But you could have said the same about Nebraska at one time, and it won titles all the same.
So that's the long way of answering the question in the headline -- I don't know, but I know not to set them too low.