Colorado's return to prominence built on the uncommon man

BOULDER – The view from the top of a mountain range is reserved for the uncommon men who’ve taken the time to reach the peak.

Men who have dedicated themselves to achieving the unthinkable, who have battled through adversity and never given up. These men take the calculated risks, to dream, to build, to fall, and to rise from the ashes.

“Think of all the great stories,” Colorado Buffaloes head coach Mike MacIntyre preached in CU’s “The Rise” documentary. “All of you have a different story. The conflict… it can make or break you, but if you keep stepping into it, it will make you something great.”

At the beginning of the 2016 season, the Colorado Buffaloes wanted a lot of different things but the main goal was simple, they wanted to fulfill a dream. A dream that many on the outside perceived too high to reach. A dream that these players have thought of since the moment they committed to the University of Colorado. A dream that was passed down to them by older teammates and brothers to whom they’ve looked up to. A dream these coaches have tried to make possible year after year. They were done being underestimated. These players and coaches sought out to be uncommon and write this story in their own way.

The CU Buffs surprised the nation of college football this season. One game at a time they began silencing the critics and making fans believers once again. Although they fell just short of their goal of becoming Pac-12 Champions, they will forever be remembered in Colorado history as the team that went from worst to first, that put the program back on the map, and made CU great again.

The leader of it all, MacIntyre, has received numerous accolades after helping his team rise from the ashes. Even when laughed at, the head coach never gave up hope that his players would accomplish their dreams and his own. He credited his staff and players for the success of the program, but a phrase that Mac has consistently used when asked how he orchestrated this turnaround always seems to reappear, “uncommon men.”

“What we talk about all the time is to be uncommon,” MacIntyre said smiling. “I want them to be uncommon fathers that never leave, uncommon husbands that stand besides their wife through thick and thin and I want them to be uncommon business men, where people can say ‘that man works with integrity and I can trust him.’ This is what I am trying to build. I believe if a young man grows as a person off the field and really makes the right choices…he can be the best football player he could be.”

An important aspect of being uncommon is recognizing challenges of adversity and using them to help one grow. This football program is no stranger to that, with their recent track record they know more than anyone what it feels like to fail. The 50-year-old head coach does not regret his players progresson through the struggle of the last few years, though, he believes adversity helped develop the characters you saw out on the field this season. It’s that struggle that gave his team the strength to persevere and helped build that oh-so-special destiny factor within them.

For Colorado fans, MacIntyre brings back memories of their beloved former head coach, who brought the Buffs to their one and only national championship, Bill McCartney. MacIntyre not only shares a nickname with McCartney but a similar coaching style as well as similar values.

McCartney’s first season with the Colorado Buffaloes in 1982 brings a sense of deja vu to fans, with a team that struggled and was in desperate need of rebuilding, Coach Mac tried his best but the results weren’t there. In fact, the original Mac, as is now well documented, produced multiple disappointing seasons. The challenges and the adversity grew for the team while many were calling for McCartney’s farewell.

During his fourth season as head coach, though, the 1985 Colorado Buffaloes began showing signs of potential, going 7-5 and reaching a bowl game which hadn’t been done in nine years.  After that, the player began to build character and find who they were as a team. Five years later, national champions were crowned.

McCartney has compared the 2016 team to some of his own due to their willingness to be coached on and off the field, which is something he found key to his team’s successes.

“If you want to take the meaning of the word integrity and reduce it to its simplest terms,” the former head coach explains in the ESPN Documentary biased on his own rise. “You’d conclude that a man of integrity is a promise keeper When he gives his word. You can take it to the bank. His word is good.”

Promise Keepers was the name of a non-profit McCartney began to “help men keep their promises” and become better husbands and fathers, again going hand in hand with MacIntyre’s focus on uncommon men.

“The Macs” style of coaching revolved not only around winning football games, but around creating great men that would succeed after their football days end.

“I want them to start growing up right now and learn how to be accountable and responsible,” MacIntyre said sternly. “I also think about their future wife and their future kids, I want them to be someone they can rely on and count on. I think men in our country need to stand up and be men. Be accountable and responsible and if in someway or somehow I can influence, inspire, and get young men to think that and do that. It means a lot more than winning a football game and it’s going to affect a lot more lives. Yes we have to win football games and we are going to win a ton,  just like we are now but I want to do it that way first.”

MacIntyre’s urge to become involved in this career came after watching his father George Macintyre coach. He not only found the way his late father coached intriguing but he saw the way he made his players feel. He invested in the lives of young men to help them become better people and grow into the men he knew they could be. When reflecting on all of that Mac explained how that’s what he wanted to do.

Colorado’s now-acclaimed head coach has achieved just that by showing his team what it means to be uncommon, what it means to stand together, and what it means to step through doubt and fear and continue to fight, on and off the field.

“It’s about Colorado. It’s about what is in your heart, and it’s about what is in your soul, and it’s about how much you care about each other,” MacIntyre said to his players. “The only way we are going to do it is staying locked arms, going one game at a time and keep improving.”

The Colorado Buffaloes reached a dream that—to others—seemed too high, they helped rebuild a program and complete a promise that was given to them by MacIntyre before committing to CU, they won the Pac-12 south and reached a bowl game in honor of those teammates and brothers before them who were unable to.

“They’ve fulfilled dreams they might not even have known they had.” former CU record-setting quarterback Joel Klatt said.

They have accomplished these things as uncommon men would, and to them it is just the beginning. They are uncommon men attempting to achieve the common dream in their own way, the ‘Colorado way.’

“Everybody has a story.” MacIntyre proclaimed. “If there is no conflict, man there is no story. Now look at where we are… Look at where we are now. You keep using those stories to motivate you. You keep pushing.”

With the foundation, this head coach and his players have set forth, there is no question that the Colorado Buffaloes will continue to push. After the 2016 season comes to end for the team Thursday night in San Antonio, the seniors will say there goodbyes and new leaders will take their place. The culture they built will stay as the foundation for the program. The Buffs will continue to chase their uncommon story as they dream to fulfill their destiny towards greatness in the coming years.

In the words of McCartney, “Big dreams create the magic that stir men’s souls to greatness.”