CU Buffs: MacIntyre delivers passionate explanation of his sideline emotions

As the Buffs celebrated with Chidobe Awuzie on the field Saturday night after he pulled in his game winning interception, the camera panned over to Mike MacIntyre. Mac was holding back tears as he tried to coach out the final seconds of the game, his men had broken a 14-game losing streak in the conference and his emotions had overcome him.

Tuesday, at MacIntyre’s weekly press conference, he was asked to explain why he becomes so emotional in those situations and he delivered an inspiring quote.

“Well, if you think about your own personal family, if you spent hours and hours and time, invested in them, seen them overcome different obstacles, seen them reach different goals and then they don’t get to reach certain goals and you see them hurting, you see them trying and you’re working every way you can with somebody in your own personal family, just take your own family. Well, that’s what a football team is to me, all 112 of these young men are really my kids, they really are, their parents entrusted them to me.

“I have to love them, care for them, discipline them, handle them when they’re knuckleheads, keep maturing, keep hoping, keep praying, keep working with them, keep pushing them, keep finding ways to push the right buttons. A coaches job is to make a player do the things he doesn’t want to do to reach the goals he wants to reach. When you’re pushing kids and you’re helping them when you see game after game when their eyes are like, ‘aw crud,’ you want them to be successful.

“Then, when you see that joy in their eyes, you see them proud, excited and all of that, it’s just like being a proud dad. It’s an emotional situation and it should be, if you put that much time into something it’s going to be emotional, if it’s not, why do it? That’s the thrill of it and that’s also why a loss hurts, because you put a lot of time into it.

“There are all the other things that go into it, too. When I watch a kid make a play, I think about the time he sat in my office, or I think about the time something happened within his family that we had to go through, or he’s having a hard time here, or something off of the field that nobody knows about, I’m the only one that knows about it and I see him overcome something and know that he’s overcome that. That’s what I see, I don’t just see Chidobe Awuzie, I see everything about Chidobe, I don’t just see Sefo Liufau, I see everything about Sefo Liufau. I’m fully invested into these kids and that’s why it’s emotional to me.

“I think Bill Parcels gave me the best illustration… He told me, ‘Mike, learn from me and do the things that we ask you to do but be your own personality, be your own person. Don’t try to be somebody else or you’ll be a phony, you won’t be who you are.’ So, I grew up with a dad who really cared about me and really cared about people and that’s what I saw and that’s the same thing that I do, I can’t help it. I’m just who I am, that’s who I am, I’m passionate about it, and I care about them.

“My youngest son always teases, ‘boy we love our wins in the MacIntyre household.’ Yeah, we do, we always have and that’s even when they’re little kids and they win… College football to me is different, you truly are trying to build young men, you truly are. Now, you have to win football games, there’s no doubt about that, but I think you definitely will win more than you’re share doing it the right way and you can definitely look in the mirror at night, that’s for sure.”

If the words don’t sell you, maybe his expressions will, you can watch MacIntyre’s quote here.