BOULDER — To have any shot of beating the Horned Frogs or Golden Gophers on the football field, the CU Buffs must first drive a stake through the heart of a vampire in their locker room.
How have the Buffs gotten ensnared in the trap of habitual losing? Why can’t a fine university find the right football coach to reverse its bad fortune? Is there a path out of the shadows for Colorado?
The Buffs think they have discovered what’s wrong. And the enemy is within the walls of the CU program.
“Energy vampires,” Buffaloes captain Brady Russell told me. “They suck the energy out of a team.”
A year ago, it was scary bad for a Colorado football team that lost eight games by an average of 20.4 points, then lost leading rusher Jarek Broussard, promising receiver Brenden Rice and three of four starters in its defensive backfield to the transfer portal.
But maybe we’re only beginning to discover how bad the losing vibe really was in the Colorado locker room.
The Buffs never recovered from a gut-wrenching 10-7 loss to Texas A&M during the second week of the season. Team chemistry quickly became a wet clean-up on Aisle 3. It was a mess. Consecutive losses to Minnesota, Arizona State and USC wrecked players’ spirit.
Russell recalls talking with linebacker Nate Landman, whose fire fueled the emotional heartbeat of the 2021 team, about how the weight of defeat crushed hope and optimism.
“Come Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, it just felt like the energy was being sucked out of you, all day long,” Russell told me, as we stood in a hallway of the CU football complex.
No wonder so many key Colorado starters bailed on the Buffs. Teammates of Russell walked out the door, seeking fresh starts with a new team where feeling like a winner seemed like more than an impossible dream.
“All the guys that left here, I’m just not going to assume they had bad motives,” said Russell, a tight end with 58 career receptions as he enters his sixth season during a tumultuous period in which he has endured a pandemic and worked for three head coaches, from Mike MacIntyre to Mel Tucker to Karl Dorrell.
“Whether leaving was right or wrong, that isn’t up for me to decide. Most of the guys that did leave, I know why they left. I know what their reasons were. So I don’t want to make assumptions … because it’s really easy to see someone leave and say: ‘Oh, that guy. He’s leaving. He’s giving up on the team, blah, blah, blah.’”
In a program desperate for any shred of good news, Russell is an inspiration. At Fossil Ridge High School, he was known primarily as a defensive end. He was repeatedly told big-time college football was beyond his skill level, with even his father, who played at Arkansas, suggesting that maybe walking on with the Buffs might not be the wisest choice.
Well, look at Russell now. In the week prior to Colorado’s home-opener against TCU, he was selected as one of the Buffs’ four captains by teammates. Russell views it as an honor because he considers being a leader an opportunity to serve others before himself.
“There’s going to be highs and lows, that’s part of leadership,” Dorrell said. “Some of the fun part of leadership is when you’re going through adversity. It’s picking guys up, getting them ready to play and answer the bell.”
The idea of football as family has been battered by the chase for personal riches available through college athletes’ desire to earn income from name, image and likeness, in addition to the temptation provided by the transfer portal to walk out on teammates at the first sign of adversity.
The Buffs “are closer to what a family would resemble now than it was in Years 1 and 2,” said Dorrell, entering his third season in charge of creating a winning culture.
Dorrell believes these CU players genuinely care about each other. But they do fight.
Are the fights the by-product of a burning desire to win, or a sign of the vampire?
“We’ve had issues — and this isn’t like a big issue — with guys fighting all the time. Guys fighting in practice,” Russell said. “While we’ve reined that in and got it under control, I personally like it because of the intensity and want-to inside everybody. We’ve cleaned it up, where we aren’t really seeing fighting on the field anymore.”
Football is a bottom-line business. Dorrell will be judged a success or failure based on wins and losses.
But for a program that has stumbled in the darkness for so long, maybe this team’s persistence in the search for any ray of hope and a stubborn refusal to splinter amid adversity should be the first measure of revitalization.
As a captain, Russell must first convince his teammates to not let the beast back inside the CU locker room.
“Don’t be an energy vampire,” Russell said.
Colorado might not beat the Horned Frogs from TCU or the Golden Gophers from Minnesota. The Buffs aren’t ready to win a conference championship. A daunting schedule will dare this CU team to fold.
So maybe the real question is: Can these Buffs be vampire slayers?
