Know When to Fold 'Em: Why CSU football must make radical changes

FORT COLLINS, Colo. — While playing dominos with my family on Thanksgiving, Kenny Rogers’ iconic tune, ‘The Gambler’, was one of the many country classics that played in the background. Throughout the song, Rogers repeatedly explains that you’ve got to know when to hold em’, know when to fold em’, know when to walk away and know when to run.

As Colorado State fell to Boise State 31-24 at Canvas Stadium Friday afternoon, the song was the first thing that came to mind. Losers in 17 of the last 24 games overall and completely winless against their biggest rivals since 2015, the Rams have quickly become an afterthought in the Mountain West.

As a result, according to Doug Samuels of Football Scoop, CSU intends to move on from head coach Mike Bobo. When asked about the validity of the report by Kelly Lyell, Athletic Director Joe Parker had no comment on the future of the program. Bobo, however, stated that while he did not know what his employers intended to do, he hoped to remain the leader of the Rams.

“Like I told them [the team] in there [locker room], we are really, really close to being really, really good,” Bobo said. “It is a bottom-line business, I know that and I think we all know that. We didn’t get it done enough this year, 4-and-8 is disappointing, but I can’t say enough about our football team. They didn’t fall apart and they played hard every week.”

While Bobo was not wrong about the team’s effort, and there may be a strong argument that the Rams were a much improved team in 2019, the reality is that CSU cannot afford to continue being content with mediocrity. Since the 2015 season, the Rams have gone 28-35 overall, which is bad but not awful. Despite having the league’s best facilities and one of the highest-compensated head coaches, though, CSU football has repeatedly come up short in the games that matter most.

Under Bobo, the Rams are a combined 2-8 against Air Force and Wyoming and 0-10 against Boise State and Colorado. In the last five years, CSU has also lost three bowl games and really only come close to making the Mountain West Championship game once (2017) — and even that might be a stretch, considering CSU finished 1-3 in the final four conference games before losing 31-28 to Marshall in the New Mexico Bowl.

Following the 2017 loss to the Thundering Herd at Dreamstyle Stadium, Bobo told reporters that the performance was a microcosm of the entire season. If that sounds familiar, it’s because Bobo said the exact same thing after losing his fourth consecutive Border War last week.

The unfortunate thing is that Bobo essentially repeating himself verbatim makes sense because, over the last couple of seasons, CSU has been living the same nightmare on repeat. Basically, it goes like this: at some points of the game, CSU will look competitive — dare I even say dangerous. Examples include Warren Jackson ‘Mossing’ an opposing cornerback or Trey McBride running through multiple defenders at a time. No matter how many plays the Rams make, though, they always find a way to come up short. When the offense balls out, the defense will lay down. And when the defense looks stout, the offense becomes incompetent. You get the picture.

The 2017 and 2019 seasons were filled with these types of games. 2018 was somewhat of an outlier, but it’s really been the same story throughout Bobo’s entire CSU tenure. Right off the bat, in Bobo’s first season (2015), he lost a pair of winnable games to Minnesota and Colorado. Both went to overtime but CSU was -2 in the turnover margin in each respective loss and simply couldn’t execute in crunch time in either game. CSU has basically been doing the same thing ever since.

Obviously, it should be mentioned that losing Collin Hill for was not an ideal situation this year. Any time a team loses its starting quarterback, it is going to greatly impact their ceiling for success. Factor in an unpredictable running back that can’t seem to hold onto the football and a variety of other key injuries to players like Warren Jackson, Toby McBride and Rashad Ajayi, there are logical reasons why the team struggled that cannot be blamed on Bobo.

That said, heavy is the head that wears the crown — and even if Bobo is not responsible for the injuries or snowy weather, nobody is going to feel sorry for him.

For three years now, I have defended him at length and pointed out that in a profession full of jerks, Bobo is refreshingly both genuine and admirable. I’ve talked about how he recruits well, how he’s a brilliant schemer on offense and that, if given time, the program should turn the corner. For three years this was my stance because I genuinely believed it to be true.

Honestly, a big part of me still does believe Bobo has the potential to be a successful head coach. He is one of the most unlucky individuals that I have ever followed in sports and the impact of constantly having to replace staff members in the early years often gets understated. Considering he actually wants to stay in Fort Collins right now, if the school does make a change and he goes on to have success somewhere else down the line, it will probably be even harder to stomach than Jim McElwain’s recent run at Central Michigan.

The problem is that bringing him back is a tough sell to the fans — maybe even impossible — and their opinions matter much more than mine. If Joe Parker doesn’t want to completely lose the fans altogether, it seems like the only choice for him now is not if but when they are going to make a move. Bobo’s $5.5 million buyout before 2020 makes things complicated but the athletic department does not have time to sit on their hands either — not with the early signing period just around the corner.

CSU went all-in on Bobo back in 2017. It was bold decision that could have paid off but ended up backfiring in the end.  This time around, the admin needs to know when to fold their cards and walk away from the table.