Why are they so freakishly awful? You'd think being in the Pac 12 and the wealth of talent in the region they could be better. Seriously, what the hell?
Every college team there is awful I believe. The coach is awful, the team regularly quits and there is no saving it. Needs a new coach yet they are still blaming hawkins it seems.
The state of Colorado does not have the high school football culture that places like Louisiana, Texas, Florida, etc have so they don't have a fertile recruiting ground in state. Additionally, Denver (the largest population base in the state) has a significant percentage of its population that is transient - a lot of young people moving in and out of the state for jobs. I lived there for 10 years and I think that out of all of the people I knew that probably only about 25% were actually born and raised in Colorado...that does not lead to a culture of loyalty. Lastly, the University itself is to blame. After the successive fiascoes of having Rick Neuhiesel and Gary Barnett as head coaches, the University is not as committed as it once was to building a first tier program. Under Neuhiesel, slick rick recruited gems like Rae Carruth and the program rubbed the rest of the university community the wrong way with a player culture of thuggery...under Barnett you might recall an environment where strippers and escorts were hired to entertain recruits, sexual harassment of a female kicker, Colt Brennan getting kicked off the team for pulling a Cecil Collins, etc. To be fair, the tone of the 'football uber alles' culture for the Buffalo program started under Bill McCartney (when both Les Miles and Gerry DiNardo were assistants) and the University community started getting rubbed the wrong way as far back as the early 90's (one incident I remember was McCartney printing up a bunch of bibles for his 'Promise Keepers' organization that had the CU Athletic Department logo on the covers).
Colorado, like many schools that used to recruit well nationally, has fallen on hard times. Schools like us with great local talent have been locking it down, so the rest of the the national recruiting schools are down big time. Let's look at the list: Michigan, Tennessee, Penn State, Notre Dame, and several others have been seriously down over the last 10 years because locals are lockin' down locals. I blame Saban for starting the trend, personally.
