Coach Prime hires two former head coaches

[ProudUte]

Coach Prime is putting an interesting staff together. He has hired the former FSU and Vikings head coaches. What do you think? Is this a good thing for Colorado? Or are there too many egos on the sideline?

[PlainsUte]

Vikings or Gophers?  Speaking of Tim Brewster?

Who is the former FSU head coach?  Kelly was a DC at FSU.

He and the CU AD have assembled a good group.  Like any team effort, time will tell how well they work together — litmus test if cracks appear when things don’t go right.  Good luck to them except when they play Utah.

[Hellhound152]

Who cares?  Seriously, Sanders takes a s**t and it is news in this market.  I don’t get it.  Win something and get back with me.

[Tony (admin)]

The one aspect to the whole “Prime” thing (other than their convenient same-day delivery for Prime members), is that this is all about Prime, not Colorado football.  Eventually I think that will get stale. 

[dystopiamembrane]

People enjoy winning.

[fosternano]

At the very least he is giving the Colorado program some life. That football team has been a dumpster fire for too long.

Hopefully he can at least go 6-6 in his fist season and gives fans something to look forward too.

[D T]

Where do you see 6 wins at?

[2008 National Champ]

I think all of the “bottom 6” in the conference are beatable and Colorado gets 3 of them – Stanford, Arizona, ASU. If you assume they can handle Colorado State that’s 4. Rhule may get Nebraska to being a contender in the B1G again but I wouldn’t expect them to be much, if any, farther along that path than Colorado so that’s 5 possible.

If Colorado can somehow get to their bye week at 4-3 they get @ UCLA, OSU, Arizona, @ WSU. Not exactly murderer’s row so they’d just need to split to hit 6 wins.

We also don’t know whether TCU will be the 2022 version after losing their Heisman candidate or the 2021 version that got Patterson fired. They were a nice story last year but Dykes hasn’t exactly been known as someone who coach’s elite teams.

[D T]

I’ll believe it when I see it.

[Utesby1]

It certainly is a big deal since we always knew Prime could recruit, but his coaching skills were in question. Now he is surrounding himself with guys who can coach.

[D T]

I don’t believe it’ll be as swift as some believe…..These kids transferring in will be facing a different caliber of opponent…..Apply the brakes a little on all this hype.

This won’t be LR 2.0.

[2008 National Champ]

I’m not predicting 6 wins, just pointing out the possibilities. As TCU and USC proved, it doesn’t take 3-5 years to go from sucking to relevant or better because you can bring in players out of the portal who are ready to play immediately.

Personally, I think that Colorado’s ceiling this year is roughly the same as Arizona in 2022. They lost so much after the 2021 and 2022 seasons that Sanders isn’t inheriting good talent that was coached poorly (USC). Had he taken over Colorado after 2021 and kept some of those transfers, I might be a little more worried than I am right now. I don’t remember all of the names but Gonzalez and Blackmon will both get drafted early this year. Rice and Broussard would be great to have back. Colorado had talent until Dorrell managed to run it all off.

Ultimately winning at the P5 level requires depth and it’s going to take him at least a full year before he can address that. Sure he’s getting a few high profile transfers and recruits but he needs to stack classes to get the program where it needs to be.

[D T]

I mostly agree…..However, Riley/Dykes both had extensive experience coaching at the P5 level before last year [& the Heisman winner/a runner-up]…..Maybe Sanders’ assistants help to mitigate his utter lack of P5 experience, but I’m skeptical in Year 1 till I see otherwise, particularly with how strong our conference will be, in addition to their OOC schedule…..I suspect it’ll be more like 4-5 victories, max.

[2008 National Champ]

That extensive experience you are giving Dykes credit for was going 19-30 in 4 years at Cal. He ran his dad’s schemes, couldn’t figure out how to spell defense let alone coach it and needed Jared Goff to throw for 4700 yards to get his only P5 winning season. Anyone who thought he was a home run hire who would put TCU in the playoff his first year probably had his same last name.

Riley? Great offensive mind who inherited a program in Oklahoma that could out-talent 95% of their opponents. Then went to USC where he has the same advantage. We’ll never see him have to build a program so who knows how he would do if he stepped into the Colorado job.

We’ve also seen a guy with no head coaching experience at any level take a program that aspired to only be as bad as Colorado was last year to on the cusp of bowl eligibility in Jedd Fisch. Hell, we witnessed Whitt keep deeply flawed teams in the mix in 2012 and 2013 while many were saying he wasn’t up to the task. Until he was.

The point is, betting on P5 hires to fail is a winning proposition. Yet, there are successes and the new normal of NIL and the Transfer Portal has created an opportunity for it to happen quickly under the right circumstances. Are those present at Colorado? No one knows but many are interested in finding out.