Whether starting a new business or re-branding a product that has seen better days, you have to sell to investors and clients a vision that the future is bright. For the past 10 seasons, the Colorado Buffaloes football team has had a sales pitch that didn’t resonate with recruits or fans, and the results have led to a decade of losing, ways both on the recruiting trail and on the field.
But, suddenly, the Buffaloes are receiving strong interest from four-star recruits, and fans, whether casual or diehard, are turning their heads and wondering about “The Rise Is Real” talk.
While the 10 losing seasons hangs over the program, and while the University of Colorado still has to show improvement to keep the staff and recruits intact, the fact is that people are taking notice of what is going on in Boulder.
The groundwork for this product re-brand truly began the day Rick George was hired as athletic director. George recognized that Colorado was well behind the pace of other Power-Five schools — non-Power-Five schools, too, for that matter — in many of the four key elements of college football: facilities, money, signing and coaching.
In terms of coaching, Mike MacIntyre is still up for debate, but George has made major improvements in the other three areas, starting with the athletic facility upgrades — the creation of the Champions Center, updating and modifying Dal Ward and building an innovative indoor practice field (IPF).
Now, there is little doubt that CU’s facilities rank amongst the best in the Pac 12, with the Buffs regularly mentioned just below Oregon’s.
Unfortunately that vision was falling on deaf ears, even with the IPF nearing completion. The Buffs recruiting class heading into the 2016 calendar year was pedestrian at best, with the Buffs’ top commit being South Plantation product Johnny Huntley. Besides Huntley, only high school teammates and fellow CU commits Anthony Julmisse and Ronnie Blackmon had multiple Power-Five offers.
Something changed with the calendar switching from 2015 to 2016, though, as recruits that had very little interest in CU, or had CU down their list, were suddenly considering the Buffs. While CU had improved its recruiting efforts in 2015, the simple fact is that they were not hitting with Troy Walters as recruiting coordinator before his departure for the University of Central Florida. The hiring of Buffs alum Darrin Chiaverini to replace Walters and become co-offensive coordinator with Brian Lindgren in mid-December 2015 gave the Buffs a new vision and direction heading into 2016.
Chiaverini took to social media to generate buzz and had his fellow assistant coaches use social media to generate that buzz, too. Recruits saw Chiaverini preach the Buffs’ football mantra: “The pride and tradition of the Colorado Buffaloes will not be entrusted to the timid or the weak.” He stressed that this group of recruits would create their own legacy, and he used phenomenal photoshop work to show CU’s pride and tradition, with images of everything from past national award winners to showing the beauty of Boulder and the facilities to the uniform “swag” that generates a buzz.
Chiaverini also used an old Alec Baldwin quote from the movie Glengarry Ross — “Coffee’s for closers only” — when it came closing out his last group of recruits, and he earned that coffee.
The Buffs landed a national four-star commit in Beau Bisharat to end the recruiting cycle, and they landed two JUCO players, too — Drew Lewis and Juwan Winfree — that had previously played at Power-Five schools (Washington and Maryland, respectively), along with Pookie Make and Caron Baham, both high three-star guys with multiple Power-Five offers.
Chiaverini coined the phrase “Rise Up” in January 2016, and it slowly evolved into “Rise of the Buffaloes” in early February. “…is real” was added in early April, before being condensed into the phrase that has been used since mid-April: “The Rise Is Real”.
Many may look at the “The Rise is Real” and make a joke of it, but the fact is the Buffs are starting to win off the field, on the recruiting trail. The Buffs are being mentioned with the likes of Michigan, USC, UCLA and even that ugly N-word (Nebraska). Prior to 2016, whether it be due to lack of effort or the wrong message, the simple fact was that the Buffs could not attract interest from top-end recruits consistently, and they sure weren’t mentioned in the same breath as those aforementioned schools.
Numbers don’t lie, and these two numbers resonate with me: Of the 2016 commits that came on board after the 1st of January to today’s current 2017 commits, the amount of Power-Five offers is at 89 (not including CU), compared to only 75 combined Power-Five offers for the 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 classes up to December 31.
The Buffs have aggressively pursued these athletes unlike ever before, and it can be heard in the interviews these four-star recruits are giving, where they say CU was in the mix of their top five schools because they have shown the most love and have been the most aggressive.
The Buffaloes’ 2017 recruiting class currently sits between 30th and 37th, depending on which of the three major recruiting services you use — Scout, Rivals and 247.
Ultimately, the Buffs’ “Rise” comes down to on-field results, and there is a significant amount of trepidation about them going from doormat to even middle of the Pac (pun intended), from doubters to even the most loyal of fans.
The product the Buffs have been promising is showing tangible results already on the recruiting trail, and that is the vision the Buffs had to sell before the 2016 season. With summer winding down and fall camp around the corner, the Buffs are days away from hosting a team BBQ on July 24th for current players, family, staff and 2017 commits and prospects.
The next step, though, will be showing that the off-the-field work can translate to on-the-field success. Whatever the 2016 season holds, the Buffs are showing that they are committed to doing everything possible to ensure “The Rise is Real!”
