Colorado University Athletics
Woelk: Buffs' Special Season Still Has More Chapters To Be Written
November 13, 2016 | Football, Neill Woelk
BOULDER — Late Saturday night in the bowels of Arizona Stadium, Colorado coach Mike MacIntyre used the word "special" at least four different times to describe his team and players.
It was not excessive. What Colorado fans are witnessing is a year that has all indications of being a transformational season, one that will be remembered not just for the number of wins produced, but for the foundational building block put firmly in place that will serve for years to come.
"This is a special time in Colorado football," MacIntyre said in his postgame press conference, just after his No. 12 Buffs had taken care of business with a 49-24 win over Arizona. "Our young men have taken us from good to really good. We can move to great next weekend."
Indeed, strictly in terms of numbers, this team is now just one victory away from reaching a Colorado milestone.
A win Saturday at Folsom Field against visiting Washington State (1:30 p.m., Fox) would give the Buffaloes a 9-2 record. To properly gauge the difficulty of that feat, consider this: in 126 previous seasons of Colorado football, a Buffs team has won at least nine games just 13 times.
That's barely 10 percent of well more than a century's worth of seasons.
Eight of those years came from 1989 through 2002, when Bill McCartney, Rick Neuheisel and Gary Barnett produced an unprecedented — and since unmatched — stretch of CU success. Through that stretch, Colorado fans began to take such seasons almost for granted.
They weren't special; they were expected.
But not since 2002 have the Buffs won nine games. Instead, the program — for a variety of reasons — slipped. There were brief moments of hope, glimmers of promise, but overall, it was an inexorable march down that at times appeared to have no remedy.
It is why this season has been so special, not just for fans, but for everyone involved.
This has not been a team bouncing back from a couple of down years. This is a team putting an end to a trend, a team reversing a course that took a decade to develop. This is a once-in-a-generation type of turnaround.
It comes in the wake of a 10-year stretch that did not produce a winning record. It will end an eight-year bowl drought. It has halted a string of four straight years in which CU failed to win more than one conference game, and it could still end with the Buffs literally going from worst to first in the Pac-12 South.
It is the textbook definition of special.
What we don't know, of course, is what ensuing seasons will bring. We can't say for certain that this year's success will produce similar results in the future.
But we can make an educated guess that this is no flash-in-the-pan season.
These Buffs have not been built on the back of a superstar or two. The loss of one player will not decimate this program.
Rather, this team is a compilation of very good players with an outstanding coaching staff, a group that has figured a way to wrangle the best from each and every player. From the senior starters to the freshman reserves, CU's coaches have maximized the talents of each, putting them in the places where they can help the most.
It is, in many ways, a team whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
MacIntyre and his staff have built this program carefully, a step-by-step process that has taken no shortcuts. The progress has been hard to see at times — sometimes painfully so — but it has never stopped moving forward. From two wins to four to eight and counting over the last three seasons, it is a program constructed to withstand the test of time, built to hold up against future adversity.
Which brings us back to the present.
Neither of the Buffs' next two games are "gimmes," not by any stretch of the imagination.
Washington State, next Saturday's opponent (1:30 p.m. kickoff, Fox) is 8-2 overall and unbeaten in the Pac-12 North. Mike Leach's Cougars not only have their usual high-powered offense, but they've also been playing some good defense this year.
Utah, the Nov. 26 opponent, is 8-2 overall with a 5-2 conference mark that includes a win over USC and quarterback phenom Sam Darnold. The Utes are a typical Kyle Whittingham team: well-coached, tough and capable of making you play their game.
In years past, such a finishing stretch would have had the Buffs nervously wondering when the shoe was going to drop. Even with both games at home, there would have been an air of anxiety to go with the excitement.
But these Buffs are different. They've played every week this season with a narrow focus and a sense of purpose. They've studied their opponents, tuned out the noise, gone to work at practice, and each week, they have delivered a performance worthy of respect.
Not only do they believe they can win, they believe in themselves. They believe in their starters, they believe in their coaches — and they believe in the process that got them to this point.
Now they have two home games remaining to take the next step. Two games to take the step MacIntyre described as going "from very good to great," games that could possibly draw some of the biggest crowds Folsom Field has seen in years.
In short, games that could produce a chance to play for a Pac-12 championship and earn a ranking in the nation's top 10.
Special? Hard to argue with that description. It's been a wonderful tale.
But with two more regular season games to go, the Buffs firmly believe they aren't finished writing this story.
Contact: Neill.Woelk@Colorado.edu
