It's time for Colorado to "control the controllables"

BOULDER – Karl Dorrell is no longer an unknown quantity.

The mild-mannered football coach has introduced himself to Boulder, Colorado, the Pac-12, and the national college football scene as a whole.

He took a team that had appeared in one bowl game in the previous 12 years to where it is right now: guarunteed a bowl game and within 24 hours of a berth in a Power 5 championship game. He did it with a quarterback who had played safety last season and a running back that hadn’t played a snap of college football in his life. He did it without a single spring practice.

Karl Dorrell was hired without fanfare, probably because he was unknown. Sure, he’d been in the Pac-12 for five seasons–making appearnaces in all five postseasons–and he’d previously coached in Boulder, but people didn’t know Karl Dorrell as much as they knew *about* Karl Dorrell.

They knew that he’d been fired by UCLA. They knew he’d bounced around NFL teams, building his name as one of the better receivers coaches. They knew he wasn’t a brash salesperson for the program, wearing Jordans and bouncing from national radio broadcast to national radio broadcast like his predecessor.

Since Dorrell was hired in February, he’s introduced himself. We’ve gotten to know his schemes and his leadership style and why he does what he does.

We’ve gotten to know the words he repeats over and over again.

“Efficiency.”

“Depth.”

“Development.”

“Forcing the defense to defend every part of the field.”

And the most common: “Control the controllables.”

Dorrell’s belief that controlling what is within your contol instead of wasting time thinking about everything else that could be going on around you was the exact refrain that Colorado–and just about every other team in the country–needed this season.

Pac-12 football in 2020 came with plenty of challenges–less practice, more injures, games cancelled just hours before kickoff and games scheduled with just a walkthrough beforehand–but so many of the problems teams faced were totally out of their control.

And as the league enters the final day of football before the participants in the Pac-12 Championship Game are decided, it’s only fitting that the team preaching “control the controllables” every day is the one that ha arguably the least desirable of all controllables standing in its way: The Colorado Buffaloes have to accept that they can control every single one of their controllables to the absolute best of their ability… and still fail.

If Colorado beats Utah on Saturday, the Buffs will finish undefeated and still may not get a chance to play for the conference championship. That’s because the USC Trojans are also undefeated, and as long as that is still true after they play UCLA on Saturday, they will go to the Pac-12 Championship game regardless of what Colorado does.

If Colorado wins on Saturday, there are a few scenarios that would get them into the championship:

• USC could lose.
• The Pac-12 could see at least two more games cancelled tomorrow, triggering a “doomsday protocol” that would put Colorado and USC in the Pac-12 Championship Game.
• Washington could still be sick next week, opnening a spot in the title game that could be given to Colorado or Oregon.
• King County could choose to enforce an existing policy that would place the entire Washington roster into quarantine through next week, opening a spot in the title game that could be given to Colorado or Oregon.
• Or all of those things could not happen, and the Buffs would be stuck on the couch next Friday night, watching the Huskies take on the Trojans in the championship, despite winning every single game they’ve played this season.

  (It should be noted, by the way, that the Buffs’ haven’t been the cause of either one of the cancellations that involved them – the first against ASU, which would have given Colorado a tie with USC in the divisional record tiebreaker had it won, and the second against USC, which would have given Colorado the head-to-head tiebreaker over USC had it won.)

Now, none of that stuff matters. There’s only one way to ensure your best chance at success: block out the uncontrollables one more time.

On Monday, Dorell said exactly that when he was asked how he’d feel if Colorado finishes undefeated but isn’t invited to the Pac-12 Championship.

“I’ll worry about those emotions when we get there,” Dorrell said. “We have to control this week and not really think about what is going on a week from now. All of that would be for naught if we don’t play well this week. We have to take care of this week. We know that is going to be a tough task. Utah is a really good team. We are a really good team. We have to play better. This is going to be a great test for us on Friday night.”

Did his team listen to his message for one final week?