2006 football season woes have no one to blame – unless you count Barnett
Call it bad luck. Call it a bad omen. Call it just plain bad.
Call it what you will, but as the Colorado Buffaloes football team wrapped up a 2-10 season with their 37-14 loss to rival Nebraska, perhaps the best way to describe the Buffs’ season is “Whew” as in, “whew, at least its over.”
This was the first season under head coach Dan Hawkins, and if first impressions are everlasting, Hawkins most likely wants to hit rewind. It wasn’t pretty from the beginning, after all. The season-opening loss to I-AA Montana State came first, then the first loss to CSU in three years, and then it all simply snowballed until Frosty the Snowman would have been jealous.
As in every failure in the sports world, there must be some scapegoat, someone to blame for the ineptitude. It can’t be Hawkins; he has become such a media darling and fan favorite, he might be able to get away with another losing season next year. It can’t be the players; they are all still learning Hawkins new schemes and style, so they get a free pass as well. It can’t be the athletic director; he has made the first step by bringing in a quality coach.
As odd as it may sound, no one is necessarily to blame for the Buffs’ inequities. The entire football program is in a state of rebuilding – if that term can be applied to a college sports team. Gary Barnett might be the best scapegoat, in that his poor recruiting and well-documented scandalous running of the program into the ground necessitated the rebuilding process in the first place.
Several factors point to the football program being in a state of flux: junior quarterback Bernard Jackson, despite his tremendous improvement over this season, is not the answer at quarterback, and most likely won’t be starting behind center next season. The Buffs obviously have a new coach still trying to get juniors and seniors who were with Barnett for at least three years to buy into his system and his style of coaching. The Buffs’ record, at 2-10, says they have some work to do to get into the national spotlight again.
Nevertheless, this team is going to be fine. Hawkins totes around so much optimism in his back pocket, it is hard not to believe. He has already proven to be a savvy recruiter, wooing a five-star recruit from the clutches of Notre Dame and a four-star player from Georgia, both of whom were headed to winning institutions with better facilities and reputations. Not only that, but the coach’s son, now red-shirt freshman quarterback Cody, waits in the wings with an arm that can make all the throws and already knows what dear ol’ dad expects.
This is not to say everything will smell like roses next season, and this is also not to say that even Hawkins is the answer. No one can really say whether Hawkins is the next Bill McCartney or the next Barnett merely based on this season.
Hawkins has shown something of a propensity to mold players into his system rather than work with what he has and mold the system around that. Offensive coordinator Mark Helfrich is one of the youngest play callers in Division I-A, and his inexperience undoubtedly contributed to the team’s offensive woes. Even an extreme amount of confidence, which Hawkins has, isn’t enough to mask those shortcomings.
As a byproduct of his popularity, however, Hawkins will have at least a few years to work those problems out. If after he is given a fair shot with the right quarterback, better players for his system, and more experience in the Big 12, and a double digit number is still in the loss column, Hawkins himself might be saying “Whew, at least its over.”
