Chris Wilson is returning to the college ranks and he's bringing a doctorate in football with him

BOULDER — When you look at Chris Wilson’s resume, four years stick out.

Wilson, 51, is a veteran coach. His career started in 1993 with Indiana State and since then he’s worked at Northern Illinois, Illinois State, Army, Oklahoma, Mississippi State, Georgia, USC and now — for the second time — Colorado.

But from 2014-19, Wilson didn’t coach college football.

What did Wilson do instead?

An outsider would probably point to the Super Bowl ring he earned as a defensive line coach, or his work with Fletcher Cox, a first-team all-pro under Wilson.

Wilson describes those years differently.

“I got a Ph.D. in football,” he told reporters Thursday. “That’s what I did for the last four years.”

For three seasons, Wilson led one of the best groups of defensive linemen in the NFL with the Philadelphia Eagles. Then he went to Arizona, where Chandler Jones finished half of a sack off the NFL lead under Wilson’s watch.

Now, Wilson is taking over the Buffs’ defensive line, the exact same position he held from 2000-04. He coached Matt McChesney, Justin Bannan and Tyler Brayton in his first stint.

“This isn’t the NFL,” Wilson said. “You can cut your mistakes in the NFL. In college you’ve gotta develop those guys. You’ve gotta figure out what their traits are and what they do well.”

That’s why Wilson came back to the college ranks. He has to get something out of everybody in his group, unlike in the NFL where teams can patch a problem spot with a deep pocketbook.

“The thing you miss the most is the developmental piece,” Wilson said. “I had a chance after I left (college coaching) to coach some really cool guys, but they don’t pay you to coach Fletcher Cox. Fletcher Cox was born Fletcher Cox.”

But there was a time before people knew Fletcher Cox was Fletcher Cox and Wilson sees college coaching as a chance to be a part of the developmental process of other great players.

“Guys don’t really know who they are right now,” Wilson said. “They’re growing and they’re developing into those guys. Some guys are getting an inch taller, 10 pounds bigger, a tenth of a second faster. That’s what’s exciting.”

Even though Wilson seems to be a college coach through-and-through, he learned valuable lessons in the NFL. One of the biggest was about the basis of the relationships he formed.

“They really care about two things,” Wilson said. “A: Are you competent? Can you help them extend their career? And B: Can you treat them well?”

Wilson believes the same is true for college players. They want their careers past college football and to do that, their coaches have to be able to teach them.

“That bodes well wherever you go,” Wilson said. “Can you be a great communicator? Can you get them the information that they need accurately? That’s the biggest piece I’ve learned over these last four years.”

Through two days of interviews with the Buffs’ coordinators and new assistant coaches, every coach has brought up the importance of being a good teacher. New head coach Karl Dorrell has, too. That’s a major theme so far in the new regime, even if it doesn’t stray too far from Mel Tucker’s teachings during his one year leading the program.

“Great teachers are like custom tailors,” Wilson said. “Each one of you men has a different in-seam. You wear a different size. And you can’t take the cookie-cutter approach.”