When someone known for some significant achievement or an accomplished career, either of which brought him or her a measure of fame, a typical reaction is to recall how you knew them and what you remember of your interactions with them.
That was the case for me when I learned that the most successful football coach in the history of the University of Colorado died late last week.
I met Bill McCartney in person only once, a decade after he retired as CU’s head man on the sideline at Folsom Field.
I was writing a book about one of McCartney’s players—Jay Leeuwenburg—and Coach Mac met us in a Boulder coffee shop.
I wanted to know about his decision to offer a scholarship to a high schooler who had type one diabetes. In addition, McCartney told me about his own recruitment to CU and how he turned around the moribund football program.
It was June 1982 when Chuck Fairbanks resigned to become a head coach in the new United States Football League. In three seasons at CU, he had won only seven games, going 3-8, 1-10 and 3-8.
Fairbanks untimely departure left CU without a head football coach only 102 days before the season opener.
Michigan’s legendary Bo Schembechler called CU Athletics Director Eddie Crowder and recommended McCartney. Six days into CU’s search, McCartney was called. It was a Sunday evening, and McCartney flew to Colorado the next morning.
The late Fred Casotti, then Crowder’s assistant AD, was assigned to chaperone McCartney before his job interview.
“About 15 minutes before I was going to go before about 15 people from all over campus,” McCartney told me, “I said to Fred, ‘What do you think my chances are?’
“He said, ‘Coach, it’s third and long. You better make a big play.’”
McCartney went before the group that was prepared to interrogate him and told them he’d like to make a statement before he took their questions.
The statement, he recalled, took 20 minutes, covering his background and time at Michigan, his philosophies and values, and what he’d bring to Colorado if he got the job.
After that, no one asked a question.
Later, while waiting to meet with CU’s president, McCartney again asked Casotti: “What do you think my chances are?”
This time, according to Coach Mac, Casotti said: “Coach, fourth and short. You just need to make a first down.”
Forty-eight hours after that first call from Crowder, McCartney was offered the job.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
McCartney went 2-8-1, 4-7 and 1-10 in his first three seasons. But, unlike these days, he wasn’t fired. Instead, new Athletics Director Bill Marolt signed McCartney to an extension—when the Buffaloes were 1-7.
In the 10 seasons that followed, CU won 86, lost 30 and tied four. Included were three 11-win years, three conference titles, and a national championship in 1990.
Explaining the time required to build a consistent winner, McCartney said to me:
“When you want to build a skyscraper, the higher you want to build, the deeper you have to dig. You have to have a strong foundation.”
That foundation was the recruiting class of 1987—only a dozen players but all “hand-picked,” McCartney said.
Half of that small class—Alfred Williams, Eric Bienemy, Mike Pritchard, Joel Steed, Kanavis McGhee and Jay Leeuwenburg—played a combined 699 games in the National Football League.
“When I was recruiting,” Coach Mac said, “I would say there are other schools that have won more games, others that have better academics, others that might have a better campus. But not all three in a package, like the University of Colorado.
“I truly believed what I was saying. I never had a kid say to me, even once, ‘Coach, you oversold me on Boulder.’”
In Leeuwenburg’s case, McCartney had to look past a disability most coaches were unwilling to overlook.
“Jay had that sparkle in his eyes and that bounce in his step,” McCartney told me for Yes I Can! Yes You Can! “You knew that one day he would lead if things went well.”
Leeuwenburg became a three-year starter at center (on three straight Big Eight champions and the ’90 national champs), a consensus first-team All-America center in 1991, and a nine-year pro.
Of his college coach, he said: “He really came across as genuine.”
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Denny Dressman’s 17th book, a collaboration with Kansas City artist Anthony High titled Black Baseball’s Heyday – Capturing An Era in Art and Words, will be published next spring. You can write to Denny at dennydressman@comcast.net.