Big Mac Comeback?

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http://www.denverpost.com/recommended/ci_15968639

Kiszla: Want to win? Hire Bill McCartney
By Mark Kiszla
The Denver Post
Posted: 09/02/2010 01:00:00 AM MDTUpdated: 09/02/2010 07:53:36 AM MDT


"A football coach is a football coach. I've been out of it 15 years, and it never goes away. I think maybe I can still do it." - Bill McCartney, on returning to coaching (Denver Post file photo)Should we poke the Buffaloes with a stick and wonder if Colorado football is dead?

Hey, don't even think about burying the Buffs, at least not in the presence of Bill McCartney, the greatest coach who ever prowled a CU sideline.

"Colorado football is a sleeping giant!" McCartney declared Wednesday, with the same evangelistic zeal that once lifted his team to No. 1 in the land. Ask what joining the Pac-10 means to the Buffs, and Coach Mac exclaims: "It's a bo-NAN-za!"

This happens late every summer, sometime between the time when shoulder pads begin popping on the practice field and bratwursts start sizzling in the stadium parking lot.

McCartney gets the itch to coach again.

Does he dare scratch it?

"I think like a football coach. I smell like one," McCartney said. "I never stopped missing football."

Twenty years after leading the Buffs to a national championship, Coach Mac sounds so fired up that he could lead players out of the tunnel and race Ralphie to the 50-yard line for the season opener against Colorado State.

Somebody should talk to this man about a job.

Or is McCartney too old to update his playbook? Are his eyes too weak to study film? Didn't Mac recently celebrate a birthday?

"Yes," McCartney replied. "The big 7-oh. But, you know, my mom is 100. So the genes are good."

No football coach in CU history can match the 93 victories McCartney produced for the Buffaloes. We'd say it was a crazy pipe dream to believe he might ever win another game on a college campus except for one thing:

Not long ago, on a trip down South, Coach Mac stopped to chat with reluctantly retired Florida State coach Bobby Bowden and specifically wanted to discuss the feasibility of a man in his 70s leading adolescent athletes. Can a grandfather who hums Sinatra tunes relate to the hip-hop generation?

"So I asked Coach Bowden," McCartney recalled, " 'Do you know all your players names? And can you truly be razor sharp?' "

The answer blew him away, as Bowden began ticking off the starters on both sides of the ball from his teams at West Virginia . . . in the 1970s.

When McCartney shocked CU by walking away from the job after the 1994 season, he was a coach who gave up the thrill of victory at the height of his powers.

"I got out for the strongest of personal reasons. I wanted to be a better husband and a better father. As a football coach, I realized I was never really home even when I was at home," McCartney said. "Football is intoxicating. It's compelling. But it's not as important as your family."

While famous for his devotion to the Christian group known as Promise Keepers, the middle of McCartney's life was dedicated to becoming a better man.

All these years later, is it too late to return to the game he loves? Has football changed too much for McCartney to catch up?

"Oh, no. If the game is in your blood, it never passes you by," said McCartney, insisting the spread offense run to perfection at Florida by quarterback Tim Tebow is the natural evolution of the option attack the Buffs adopted and refined years ago.

At a time when pension funds turn to dust and peeking at a 401(k) statement can be instantly depressing, we all wonder if retirement is a vanishing part of the American dream. Like it or not, is 70 the new 50? Coach Mac could be inspirational to every baby boomer who ignores

that gray in the mirror while dressing for work.

What's age got to do with it? Dan Hawkins doesn't turn 50 until November, but his record is 16-33 at Colorado.

At 69, Bill Snyder returned to coach football at Kansas State in a stadium that was already named in his honor.

Joe Paterno has won more than 30 games at Penn State since his 80th birthday.

"A football coach is a football coach. I've been out of it 15 years, and it never goes away," McCartney said. "I think maybe I can still do it."

McCartney is not 100 percent sure coaching is in his future. So let's just say: He won't rule it out.

Would any college football team in the country be willing to take a chance on a septuagenarian coach with a national championship on his resume?

If the team truly wanted to win, the decision would be a no-brainer.

Hiring Coach Mac would be a bonanza.