Between Whizzer White's ascendancy to the Supreme Court and Rae Carruth's trip to the penitentiary, Colorado football has weathered many storms. But this fall, the program may face its sternest test yet -- on the field and in the crucible of public opinion. Bray, the team's new secondary coach and a 26-year college coaching veteran, believes his new charges are up to the task. "I've come in with a lot of different programs in different places, and it's always been that you have a group of kids, and there are three or four kids you like right away, three or four you're not sure about and three or four you go, oh boy, this is gonna be something. But this group is different. They are all really positive, all really refreshing. Really good people. And I don't see any residue on them at all. I think they're all ready to give everyone a better sense of who they really are."
That sense of purpose, Barnett says, got inside the players early. "This team comes in on a mission," he said. "Most other teams have to discover their mission or decide what it is during camp or as the season unfolds...this group knows. The team mission is to restore confidence in our program in the people out there who have supported us and the people out there who have doubted us a little bit. They want to show what they're really about."
Fred Harper
Mark Manger
Coach Gary Barnett talked about The Ordeal at a CU
media day.
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Just to underscore the mission, Barnett has seemingly embraced a new transparency for his operation. August practices were opened to the public for the first time during his regime. And McCartney, rather than rail against the shadow of sin gathering at the foot of the Flatirons, gave the players a pep talk. And just to drive home the point, Barnett, his lieutenants and the team captains are scheduled to gather at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts galleria on September 3, where the Denver Buff Club will host a free rally (complete with hot dogs and Pepsi). On the agenda? An honor guard of players, cheerleaders leading the CU Fight Song, and recognition of various groups -- including the Buff Defenders, the CU Football Families, the Boulder Buff Club and the Buffalo Belles, who, in the words of organizers, "have supported the CU football program during the past months."
But such steps may not change the outcome on the gridiron. Apart from the jokesters in Lincoln and Grand Island, there are plenty of skeptics right here in Colorado who probably think Jack the Ripper will be hunkering down in a three-point stance on Colorado's offensive line and Osama bin Laden will be starting at cornerback. Still, those in the "negative camp," as license-plate-flaunting CU boosters might say, haven't met Daniel Jolly, a 230-pound sophomore fullback from San Antonio, Texas, who also happens to be enrolled in Colorado's "gifted and talented" program. Anything but dispirited, he says he'll be inspired by adversity to bring his A-game on every play this season.
"Of course, I feel all of what has happened personally. The situation we just went through probably brought us closer together than any team I've ever played for. We went from just being teammates to being family, because we're in this for the long run. We didn't come here to be politicians or to atone for things that happened before we got here. We came to play football, and we want our fans to be proud of us. We want to restore their trust, beginning September 4 against CSU. I don't care what we hear in the stadium, or if there's trash talk from opposing players. I'll just have to tune it out, because the game is not won by talking -- it's won through your actions."
Whizzer White couldn't have said it better, but some say it differently, and others have an entirely different message in the face of CU's woes. Jake Smith, a 1981 CU alum who now lives in Miami and follows Buff football from afar, ascribes the recruiting scandal, the campaign against Barnett and criticism of the athletic department to "left-wingers who hate football, who hate all sports and don't give a damn if the whole thing went away in the morning so they can get back to their knitting." There is no excuse, Smith says, "for the way these people are trying to undermine the tradition of CU football and everything it stands for. It's an insult to the players, to the parents and to the school. Do you really think these recruiting parties are sex orgies, or that football players get special treatment? Do you really think these girls were taken advantage of? That football players are a bunch of Neanderthals? Not only that, but do you have any idea, any idea at all, of the kinds of things that go on at Florida State? Or Miami? Makes Colorado look like a nursery school for blind kids. Get real."
