The CU Buffs are still far from a successful season

The Colorado Buffaloes are a .500 football team in week nine, they’ve broken a 14-game conference losing streak, they’ve showed they can win a couple of ugly football games, they have improved their defense vastly and they fight their tails off from whistle to whistle every single game.

It’s not enough.

Why, you ask? Well lets go back to August 9th, I wrote a little something called “It’s time for Colorado Football to ‘walk the walk,'” the very first line of that column reads, “Bowl game, huh? They said it, not me,” and that brings us to where we stand today.

Mike MacIntyre and his team set the expectation for this season, they took a giant “bowl game or bust” sticker and stamped it on each and every one of their fancy new helmets, big enough for anybody who wears black and gold on fall Saturdays to see, and thus, right now, they sit far from a successful season.

Colorado Football has not walked the walk, not at all. 4-4 looks nice on paper but the fact of it is they are 4-1 in games they were supposed to win and 0-3 in games they weren’t. Even worse, maybe, is the fact that opportunities have been right there for them. Let’s go back to that Aug, 9. column again real quick:

“Four winnable games to start the season could give the Buffs a hole-shot, and a wealth of confidence heading into that conference schedule. It would be a safe bet to believe the Buffs will be in three conference games in the fourth quarter this year, and MacIntyre has said with strong conviction that they will win those games this time around. But anybody who’s ever penciled in wins on a Colorado Football schedule knows how quickly 4-and-0 can become 2-and-2, and so on.”

Well, the penciling-in-Buffs-wins-will-be-a-bad-idea ticket has cashed, but the Buffs-will-be-in-three-conference-games-in-the-fourth-quarter ticket has already cashed as well, unfortunately for CU, they only have one win to show for it. Let’s face it, Colorado should have at least five wins right now, at least, and the fact they don’t makes that .500 record a disappointment. They could be within reach of their goals, but they’ve failed to capitalize on their opportunities to do so.

What this all adds up to is the Buffs sitting at 4-4 with five games to play. Mathematically that expectation of a bowl game is still attainable, but those five games come against the first, second and third ranked teams in the Pac-12 South and the first and second ranked teams in the Pac-12 North (UCLA, Stanford, USC, Washington State and Utah), teams combining for a 26-9 overall record.

For the sake of argument, lets just say they Buffs are not going to go 3-2 against the upper echelon of the conference and fall short of the bowl game expectations, can they still have a successful season? I lean towards no because the phrase “successful losing season” feels like a bit of an oxymoron to me, compile that with the fact that they set the expectation themselves at bowl game and they have had every opportunity to put themselves in a position to get there and I’m firmly on no.

Here’s what they can do, they can show significant progress and that, in the eyes of many, would surely be considered some sort of success, but they still aren’t there. What they need is a signature win, a win that shows they are ready to be a serious part of this conference and they’ll have four opportunities to do so, a win over Stanford or USC at home or a win over UCLA or Utah on the road would get them there.

In my mind, with where they stand today there are five categories this season could potentially be filed into when all is said and done.

Failure: Zero more wins and uncompetitive in the majority of the remaining games. A series of blowouts to end the season would erase any of the slight momentum the Buffs have built thus far within the fanbase, on the recruiting trail and from a national perspective.

Slight progress: Zero more wins and competitive in the majority of remaining games. As detailed in the first paragraph the Buffs have taken a step in the right direction thus far, close games against elevated competition throughout the rest of the year would keep them on that new step, but the “W” column would still leave a lot to be desired and no other conference wins would make it easy for people to point at the win over a terrible Oregon State team as a bit of a flukey conference win.

Solid Progress: A win over Washington State and competitive in the majority of the remaining games. Look, I know Washington State is much improved this year and they could even be in the top 25 by the time the Buffs travel to Pullman, but if the Buffs were to beat them the narrative would likely be more about how WSU ‘coug’d it’ again. Would be a huge win and would get the Buffs two conference road wins on the season, but not a significant win.

Significant Progress: A win over Stanford, USC, UCLA or Utah and competitive in the majority of the remaining games. Any of those four games could be considered a signature win for Mike MacIntyre and that would be another step forward for the program. A win like that can go a long way towards helping people forget those lofty expectations you set before the year and the blown opportunities you had early in the season. A win like that will leave no doubts in anybody’s mind that the Buffs moving firmly in the right direction and give fans hope for next season.

Success: 7 wins.

I have to admit some combination of two more wins would be extremely, extremely close to a successful season and I would have no problem with somebody arguing it is, but unless they were able to get a waiver to go to a bowl game they will have still fallen short of expectations when they were obviously good enough to reach them. It would be hard to find anybody complaining about that season but the “what ifs” would run aplenty.

However you look at it, Colorado their work cut out for them in these next five games, their schedule over the rest of this season is amongst the toughest in the country and if they aren’t careful their progress thus far could be overshadowed. The Buffaloes have made a small step forward this year but they are still a long ways away from a successful season.