This story originally appeared in Mile High Sports Magazine. Read the full digital edition.
Maybe John Wristen should have just told people he was going to Disney World.
From January through August, the head coach at Colorado State University-Pueblo kept getting asked the same question over and over again.
“It was tough to manage everyone going ‘Congrats on winning the National Championship! What are you going to do now?’” Wristen says on the phone from his office on a cold December morning.
Flashback about a year ago and Wristen and his ThunderWolves had finally broken through. They were the Division II National Champions after knocking off Minnesota State University, Mankato by a final score of 13-0 on December 20, 2014. Wristen and his team had reached the mountaintop after three straight years of tough playoff losses. They had won it all.
But this brought with it the million-dollar question: What’s next?
Of course ever since Phil Simms said he was going to Disney World after beating the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXI and capturing MVP, it’s become the go-to answer for what’s next (and a genius marketing campaign for one of America’s biggest empires).
The pithy response also avoids answering the question of what’s really next.
Wristen struggled with that notion for a while entering the 2015 campaign. How do you top a national title? The coach eventually had a breakthrough.
“It was stressful for me, but finally I said, ‘Screw it, I’m just going to worry about us and what we have control over.’ What came of it was we ended up taking everyone’s best shot,” Wristen says.
And that the ThunderWolves did, but it didn’t stop them from having another incredible season under Wristen.
CSU-Pueblo finished the year 12-2 overall, including a perfect 9-0 record in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference for the fourth time in the last five years. They bowed out of the playoff field against Grand Valley State with a tough 31-7 loss in the D-II quarterfinals on Dec. 5, ending hopes of repeating as champions.
Here’s a secret though: With or without that loss, Wristen was going to be the Mile High Sports Magazine Coach of the Year. In fact, he probably should have been it last year, but a little thing called a press date came and went before the ThunderWolves’ championship was won. In fact, Wristen could have been the winner in 2011, 2012 or 2013 too. He’s that good.
So while we could dive into things like CSU-Pueblo’s streak of seven straight games scoring 40-plus points in 2015, it’s more important to learn how Wristen made this level of success the norm and not the exception – in a very short amount of time.
***
Joe Rosenbrock still remembers what Wristen’s assistants told him back in 2010.
He was a sought-after recruit and a stud linebacker from Brush High School with a lot of college options. His choice ended up becoming an easy one.
“When I went on my visit to Pueblo, the aura about everything was different. The coaching staff told us, ‘We’re going to win a national championship and if you don’t want to win one or put in the work to win one then don’t come here.’ I liked that attitude – they knew where they wanted to go,” Rosenbrock says just two days after his college football career ended with this year’s loss.
Of course that national championship promise became reality for Rosenbrock and his teammates. As a junior in 2014 he led the team with 107 total tackles on their path to winning it all.
Rosenbrock is one of many recruits who heard the pitch from Wristen and his staff since the defunct program was brought back in 2008. Yes, defunct, as in it hadn’t existed for some time. Wristen loved inheriting a blank canvas.
“In coaching you never get to start something from scratch. You never sell your kids on a start-up business. This is as close as you can get to it and I was just jumping at the chance to do it. I’d be the only guy to blame on this thing if it went wrong. I could start it from ground level, develop it and continue to make it better,” Wristen says.
The quick turnaround has been spectacular. Wristen went 4-6 in 2008, 7-4 in 2009, 9-2 in 2010 and has won at least 11 games each of the last five years, including a bonkers 44-1 RMAC record.
He does it with a philosophy that hasn’t changed.
“I want to find guys that have a burning desire to go get their degree, have a burning desire to do the right thing off the field and finally I want a bunch of kids that can come in and have some fun. We spell fun around here W-I-N,” Wristen says.
And win Wristen does. Not just in 2015 and for several years before, but what should be for several years to come. Make no mistake about it, John Wristen earned the award this year, but it’s been a long time coming.
The next time he wins a national championship, maybe he really should just go to Disney World – or at least tell people that.