Sometimes, you just have to accept what is and move on.
Dan Hawkins, obviously, isn’t the coach we thought he was when Colorado hired him to replace Gary Barnett after the 2005 season.
It seemed like a no-brainer, a stroke of genius. Hawkins had put Boise State on the map, winning 53 games there and losing only 11. His hiring ignited the Buffaloes’ fan base.
Hawkins explaining himself
But then the games started. And in his five-plus seasons at CU, Hawkins was 19-39. Get this: Colorado has lots its past 17 games played outside of Colorado. Unbelievable.
Hawkins was a disaster and the disaster became epic Saturday when the Buffaloes blew a huge fourth-quarter lead at Kansas.
Kansas.
Instead of protecting the lead, Hawkins continued to run passing plays and reverses and everything in the playbook, essentially. There were accusations that he was more interested in helping his son, Cody, become the school’s all-time leading passer than he was in securing a win.
Hawkins cut short his post-game radio show after a couple of comments because, surely, he could read the writing on the wall. It was there in big letters.
Y-O-U A-R-E F-I-R-E-D.
Strange, but sometimes things just don’t work. Even things that should work, like Hawkins at Colorado.
Colorado moves to the Pac-12 next season and coaching the Buffs is an attractive job, made more attractive by this move. Colorado is a perfect fit in the Pac-12, where it can establish a strong recruiting base of West Coast players who went to get away from home. And in case you haven’t noticed, Boulder is a pretty nice place. I expect Colorado to do well in its new digs.
Talk is that CU is interesting in luring former coach Bill McCartney back to coach. Not sure how I feel about that. McCartney is 70 and hasn’t coached in a long time. He did lead the Buffaloes to their only national championship in 1990 and is revered in the state of Colorado. And after the Hawkins disaster, there’s always a desire to go back to a more-known commodity.
It’ll be interesting to see which way the Buffs turn. But after feeling like they made a no-brainer hire in Hawkins and watching it blow up, they can’t feel confident.
* Three Pittsburgh Steelers players - safety Will Allen and running backs Mewelde Moore and Isaac Redman – suffered concussions during Monday night’s win over the Cincinnati Bengals.
All of these types of injuries make you wonder where the NFL – and even football – is headed. How long will society, even given the enormous popularity of the NFL and the game of football, accept these injuries? And how much longer will players put themselves at risk?
It’s manly, of course, to downplay the significance of head injuries. But with more and more information available, the danger of repeated head trauma cannot be ignored.
I don’t have an answer here. I’m not even sure of the question. I just know that as injuries mount, so do questions about the safety of playing the game.
* No more Jon and Joe. Tell me it ain’t so. Well, at least tell me Jon Miller isn’t really leaving the ESPN television booth for Sunday Night Baseball during the 2001 season.
Miller is one of my all-time favorites. I love his down-home humorous style. And the guy knows the game.
Jon and Joe
Morgan, I can do without. And I guess if one goes, the other has to follow.
But I’m not going to accept this overnight. Baseball, more than any other game, is made more enjoyable by the men who do the announcing. Miller’s voice is one I’ve become accustomed to to help me through a Sunday night. I could always depend on his low-key style of broadcasting, and his entertaining stories, to make the game even more interesting.
I will be surprised if many more people don’t feel the way I do. I’m not sure what’s going on here, but it doesn’t feel right. Miller, who has been doing the Sunday night games with Morgan for the past 21 years, had not come close to wearing out his welcome. Not in my house.
Who is the Opinion Line contributor?
I’m a retiree, and after the election I gave up all hope for this country. At least that, and a beer, made me feel better.
A wild guess, but this would seem to be a retiree. Retirees have the right to give up hope and to drink beer. In fact, that’s my plan when I retire. Hope is such a 1960s thing, anyway. Anyway, this retiree is a Democrat and we all know that in Kansas, Democrats have no hope. So they drink beer. It fits. This is a man, probably in his early 70s. He has a few Republican friends and they’ve made his life difficult in the past week. But he hasn’t really given up hope. Like all of us, he has an inherent hope that this country can be great again. Or at least pretty good. He thought strides were being made when the Kansas legislature allowed liquor stores to open on Sundays, but his enthusiasm was short-lived.