With the Colorado Rockies slogging toward a .500 finish, with the NFL in the midst of a lockout/legal battle and the NBA about to follow suit, what are we left to cheer about these days?
Thankfully, it’s almost time for college football.
And there will be even more to cheer about this season if you’re an alum of the University of Colorado, Colorado State, the Air Force Academy or the University of Northern Colorado. The head coach is one of you.
For the first time that anyone can remember, each of the head coaches of our state’s four major college football programs are alumni of their respective schools. New guys Jon Embree at CU and Earnest Collins Jr. at UNC join Steve Fairchild at CSU and Troy Calhoun at Air Force in leading their programs. They won’t have to teach these coaches the words to the school’s fight song.
That’s not the only advantage to being able to return to a place you’re familiar with and take over a program that you know well. So many things can influence a program, like fan support, facilities, relationships with donors and all that. It helps to already know the landscape when you take a job, so you can spend time working with the things you have to work with, not worrying about the things you don’t.
Embree – a former Buff tight end – joins Calhoun and Fairchild in returning from a stint as a NFL assistant coach to accept his first head coaching gig. Embree was a local prep standout at Cherry Creek High School before moving to CU in the mid 1980’s. He was a four year letterman for the Buffs before a brief NFL career led him into the coaching ranks. He left the Washington Redskins to come back to Boulder.
“It's truly a privilege when you have the opportunity to become head coach at your alma mater,” Embree said when he took the job last December. “Colorado has a great tradition and with the staff I've assembled, our aim is to restore the program to national prominence."
This season will mark the first time since John F. Kennedy was President that an alumnus of CU is the head football coach. It doesn’t stop there. Half of the Buffs' new football staff are alums as well, including new offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy, the school’s all time leading rusher.
“Who better to know what the University of Colorado can offer?” asked Bieniemy. “We have alumni’s here who have lived it.”
At CSU, Fairchild – a former Rams QB – has the same number of former Rams on his current staff. He also views that as a big plus. “We all know how special this place is. That makes it easier to tell recruits about it,” Fairchild said. He quarterbacked the Rams from 1978 to 1980 before beginning a coaching career that has included time in Fort Collins as an assistant to Sonny Lubick and time as an NFL QB coach and Offensive Coordinator. He left the Buffalo Bills late in 2007 to take over the reigns at his alma mater.
Of the group, Calhoun has had the most success to this point…and he probably has the toughest task. After all, Calhoun’s main job is not winning football games, but producing men capable of defending this country. He just so happens to have been able to do both pretty darn well. Calhoun is the only head football coach in the history of the Academy to lead teams to three consecutive seasons that included at least eight wins and a bowl game.
As a player, Calhoun graduated from the Academy in 1989 as a member of the superintendent's list by earning over a 3.0 grade point and military performance average. After several stints as an assistant at both the college and professional levels, he became the head man at his alma mater in 2007.
Finally, in Greeley, they’re excited to welcome Collins back home. He’s the first former Bear EVER to return as head football coach. Like Bieniemy, he still holds a school record – Collins amassed 978 punt return yards during his three year career in Greeley in the early 1990’s. He has the single season record, too, of 497 yards in 1994. Collins was a Bear’s assistant coach early in the 2000’s and eventually worked at Kansas and Central Florida. He got the head job at Alcorn State in 2008 and left that post to return to Greeley, Colorado.
These alums will all bang heads this season. CU and CSU meet on September 17th in Denver. The Bears travel to Fort Collins the week before, and in late November, Air Force travels to meet CSU in a Mountain West Conference game. May the best alums win.
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