Opinion: CSU loss falls on the coach’s shoulders

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A lot can happen in three and a half hours.

You can fly from Denver to New York, run a marathon, or in the case of Sunday night’s game against Colorado State, you can change the entire outlook of your football program and turn up the burner underneath the seat in head coach Dan Hawkins’ office.

The question before Sunday’s game between Colorado and Colorado State wasn’t whether the Buffs would win or lose, but rather by how much would they win. The questions afterward are much more complicated.

Some fans had been getting uneasy after Hawkins failed to provide a winning season during his first three years in Boulder, but this was the season that most of them had been waiting for.

This was the year where the schedule would allow the Buffs to have a winning season, and maybe compete for the Big 12 Conference’s North division. This was the year when almost every player on the field was one of “Hawk’s guys” and not recruited by former head coach Gary Barnett. This was the year that the young, highly-regarded high school talent was going to be able to make the transition to the college game and contribute.

This was the game, however, where all of those expectations were thrown out and replaced with numerous boos and chants of “we want Hansen” in reference to CU’s back-up quarterback, Tyler Hansen. For anybody wondering whether Hawkins was really having a hard time deciding on a starter, you got your answer when the coach refused to take out his son, Cody Hawkins, even when it seemed that any type of change would have been better than what was going on out there.

The blame should not fall squarely on the coach’s son for this one, though. He may not be the most physically gifted quarterback on the roster, but he played with heart until the end and was just as upset as any fan in the stands after the shocking loss to the Rams. No, the blame for this falls on Dan Hawkins.

For the first three seasons, I gave Hawkins a pass when we saw walk-ons returning punts and habitually head-scratching play-calling (did a single end-around to the wide receivers work last year?). But in year four, there doesn’t seem to be a good reason why your five-star running back — who made one of the more exciting plays of the night on a screen pass — rides the bench for most of the game. Or why with only 29 net yards rushing, you didn’t put Hansen in for at least a series to maybe provide the kind of spark with his legs that propelled the Buffs last year over Kansas State?

I’ve never coached a football game and I don’t see the same thing the coaches up in the booth get to see. But I know one thing: Whatever the game plan was yesterday, it wasn’t working and the only person who didn’t seem to think so was Hawkins.

You can lose the first game of the season and still have a successful year. But losing to your in-state rival at home in a game where you were favored by as much as 13 points is a cause for concern as to whether the guy who came to Boulder to clean up a program in shambles and restore a winning attitude while firing up the fan base is the right guy for the job.

In Hawkins’ defense, this is one game in a 12-game season. It’s also a game in which the Buffs faced a no-win situation. They either win like they are supposed to, or they lose and get heavily criticized. Should Hawkins put up eight wins and beat their true rival, Nebraska, to cap off the season, then it will make it a little easier to forgive this early-season blunder.

Luckily for Hawkins, he has only three more days between games, and can start righting the ship quickly in just three and a half hours on Friday night against Toledo.

If not, he may start thinking about something else that takes about three and a half hours, such as…cleaning out his office.

Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Ryan Callahan at [email protected].

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