They set out to 'Make CU Great Again' and paved the road to a signature win

Saturday, Nov. 23, 2013

The Trojans of Southern California waltz into Boulder and trounce the Colorado Buffaloes by a count of 47-29. Javorious “Buck” Allen notches three rushing touchdowns in the win.

“We’re on the verge of being able to compete,” says a young Nelson Spruce.

Saturday, Nov. 1, 2014

 A 20-17 halftime lead is spoiled as Shaq Thompson and the Washington Huskies outscore the Buffs 21-3 in the second half, leaving Folsom Field with a 38-23 victory.

“It’s going to take a while,” says a disheartened head coach Mike MacIntyre.

Friday, Nov. 13, 2015

A strong start by quarterback Sefo Liufau turns sour when the Buffaloes unquestioned leader breaks his foot late in the first quarter against USC. Cade Apsay’s effort is valiant in relief, but a chance at a game-winning drive falls short and the Buffs lose by three.

“It’s not enough just to compete. I’m over the moral victories,” explains a frustrated sixth-year senior in Jered Bell.

While all losses, of course, these three games have something else in common. All marked the seventh loss in each of Mike MacIntyre’s three seasons as head coach of the Colorado Buffaloes. Each one more heartbreaking than the last, it meant the Buffs would not reach their goal of bowl eligibility.

It meant that as the season concluded each year with another loss to Utah, underclassmen would make the dreadful 80-yard walk to the locker room, knowing exactly what was waiting there.

“That last game,” senior Chidobe Awuzie regrettably dredges from his memory. “Knowing that we’re not bowl eligible and seeing in those senior’s eyes that that’s the last time they’re going to play for Colorado Football… Tears in their eyes.”

Seeing a grown man cry can be a moving experience.

“You don’t want to go out that way,” Awuzie adds.

So they set out to make their senior year different, they set out with a goal to be leaders every single day, a goal to squeeze just a little bit more out of every player—one more rep on a hot summer day, one more hour of film study, a tighter focus.

As the gold script reads on their black hats, they set out to “Make CU Great Again.”

This would be no easy task, though. After all, these are many of the same players who were on that field in 2013, when just about anybody would tell you that “Colorado simply does not have Pac 12-caliber athletes.”

In some senses, they were right. MacIntyre and his staff have certainly brought the talent level up and MacIntyre has raised the talent level on that very staff. But there’s a whole lot more to it.

“It’s the same guys,” Liufau says with a laugh at the old notion. “We just put in a lot more work, and we’ve become closer as a team, on and off the field.”

“Over the Summer, that’s when we got the closest to each other,” he adds. “When the hard work and coaches pushing us kind of clicked. I think we’re kind of seeing it now in the season.”

“We’ve been Pac-12 level athletes,” Phillip Lindsay adds simply.

The Buffs could feel it, eight conference losses by one score or less serving as the catalyst to their belief in each other, emerging from the fire each time stronger than the last.

Proverbs 27:17: As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

“We don’t let things slide by anymore,” Awuzie says. “If somebody sleeping in a meeting. . . if somebody is late to something, we get on them real quick.”

The men Mike MacIntyre had put in place as the foundation of his rebuild turned into everything a coach could ever ask for.

“We were [his] first class so we really understood what he wanted out of us,” Awuzie explains.

Accountability, preparation, attention to detail. Players who would make plays, players who would win games. It all came to a point as MacIntyre addressed his team before they took the field for their first game of the season.

“You are my dream,” he told them, tears welling in his eyes. “You are my dream. I’m gonna show everybody my dream.”

Seeing a grown man cry can be a moving experience.

Mac’s dream team introduced themselves to the world with a 44-7 win over rival Colorado State, and that world began to realize that his dream was a reality.

Two weeks later, though, a cold splash of water broke MacIntyre’s reverie.

No, it wasn’t the loss to fourth-ranked Michigan but the casualties of the battle. Starting kicker, starting outside linebacker, starting quarterback. In years past it would’ve been their undoing. Not this time.

“No conflict, no story,” the head coach calmly told his team during the week following the game.

The cold splash merely another step in the forging process.

Saturday, Sept. 24, 2016

On a cool, 68-degree Fall day in Eugene, Oregon, four years of blood, four years of sweat and four years of tears all culminates into a moment that will last a lifetime.

Behind a cast of characters molded by the culture created by MacIntyre, the Buffs overcome the loss of leaders and the loss of a 16-point second-half lead to pull out the program’s biggest win in a decade.

As Ahkello Witherspoon intercepts a pass in the end zone with the game on the line, the coach who built all of this is once again overcome.

He realizes he finally has his signature win. He thinks of how far they’ve come, notably the time Oregon took a knee on the goal line to avoid putting up 60. He thinks about Witherspoon’s parents, “his dad, Lucky, and his mom, Bobbie.” He thinks about the times the senior corner came into his office to talk about whatever life had thrown at him on that specific day. He, as always, thinks about the life lesson his young men have learned on this day.

“I thought about all of this stuff in the last minute.”

After seeing his team take the knee this time, the head coach meets his men in the locker room.

“You’ve been to hell and back,” he tells his team after the validating win, tears streaming down his face.

This time, he’s not alone.

“I was in tears of joy,” Awuzie recalls. “When I was a freshman, players like Chidera [Uzo-Diribe], Jered Bell, Parker Orms—a lot of people that I looked up to—we were getting blown out. I hope they know that we won that for them.”

1,200 miles from Autzen Stadium in downtown Denver, a man clad in black and gold takes a moment from the celebration. He sits down, buries his head in his hands and begins to shed tears of his own.

As he looks up, eyes as red as cabernet, he can only muster a few words.

“We’ve invested so much.”

It’s that investment that makes it all mean what it does. For everyone. It’s when that extra rep pays off. It’s when sticking with the team through 94 losses in 11 years pays off. And it’s when the night you slept in your office pays off.

In MacIntyre’s words, “If you put that much time into something, it’s going to be emotional. If it’s not, why do it?”

Seeing a grown man cry can be a moving experience.

“He’s so invested in us as players, this team and every game,” Liufau explains of his coach’s emotions.

“That puts a lot of,” he pauses and smiles. “A good feeling. I’m kind of losing the words right now. It’s a good feeling to know that he’s so invested in us. It makes us work that much harder and play well on Saturdays for him because he puts in so much for us.”

“It means a lot. ‘Coach Mac’ has been a father to a lot of us,” Lindsay adds. “Coach Mac has spent a lot of tireless days trying to get through to us, trying to find ways for us to understand that we’re a special team and that we’re a special group of kids. To see him be able to show his emotions is a great feeling. He deserves it. We’re going to keep on making him proud and doing what we’re here to do—win football games.”

One of Mike MacIntyre’s greatest influences, Bill Parcells, once gave the then-aspiring head coach advice that has stuck with him to this day, “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.’”

Much of who he is comes from his greatest influence, his father. How to care for his players, how to care for people, that it’s okay to be emotional.

George MacIntyre passed away in January of this year at the age of 76 after a long battle with multiple sclerosis. He never did get to see his son coach a game in person but his legacy lives on in the devotion his son shows to his players as they attempt to leave a legacy of their own.

“We’ve been thinking about it for a long time now,” Liufau says of that legacy. “This senior class and this team, we want to be that group that leaves it all out there and turns this program around.”

“We know Colorado is a big-time college football program, that’s why we came here,” adds Awuzie. “We wanted to reinstill that into everybody in the community, in Boulder.”

That community wanted nothing but the same.

In mid-October of last season, as the coach was going through some of the toughest times of his life—both his mother-in-law and his father in the hospital nearing their last days—he dreamed of a moment.

“I’d like to get the win and walk through the door with a smile on my face and the dog is not the only one smiling in the room.”

On Saturday, as the Buffs traveled home, singing the fight song until they were blue in the face, “Mac” was about to see another dream come true. He got much more than that.

As the buses pulled up underneath the Flatirons long after midnight, MacIntyre and his team emerged to see not the smiling faces of their families but the smiling faces of that community. Underneath the moonlight, they were greeted by a more-than-substantial group of fans there to thank them for the reminder of what Colorado Football should be.

They didn’t know what to do other than to thank them back.

“I’ve never seen something like that,” Awuzie says with a reflective smile. “They’re really sticking behind us. They really believe that “The Rise”… is really real.”

A group of men set out to ‘Make CU Great Again’ and finally gave them something to believe in.