Colorado School of Mines head coach Bob Stitt. (Andy Cross, The Denver Post)
BOULDER?? At halftime the Buffaloes trailed Stanford 35-0. The Colorado offense had 12 yards rushing, 19 yards passing and two screaming first downs.
A Buffs faithful follower for 40 years grabbed me and said, "Do something, Woody."
OK.
The Buffs have been outscored in the past five Pac-12 games 261-51.
Enough, already.
I'm making a public, passionate pretty-please plea to athletic director Mike Bohn and coach Jon Embree:
One major piece to solving the puzzle is 30 minutes away from Folsom Field south on Colorado 93.
Give Stitt a chance.
Hire Bob Stitt as offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach.
Next season, the highly imaginative, successful Colorado School of Mines coach should be given full control of the CU offense and redshirt freshman quarterback Shane Dillon.
I don't care if Stitt is coaching Division II, Class 4A or Pop Warner. With computer geeks and chemical engineers, he has produced one of college football's most envied, dynamic offenses that has been studied and copied by major-college coaches throughout the country.
The Buffs were humiliated Saturday. Sorry if you've heard that before.
Someone asked me if this was the worst-coached CU team I've covered.
Well, I wasn't around when the Buffs won only one game in 1890 and 1891.
But the coach wasn't fired.
They didn't have one.
It seemed they didn't have one ? or their 10 ? against Stanford.
Only 30,000 folks actually showed (forget the announcement of paid attendance). A guy stood outside the stadium beforehand trying to scalp tickets. There's an optimist. The season finale vs. Utah may draw 300.
This season the Buffs have tried a hurry-up offense, a run-and-hide defense, a no-huddle offense, a no-brainer defense. Nothing works.
Embree even quietly brought in Dick Tomey ? a former longtime head coach (Hawaii, Arizona and San Jose State) ? as an occasional unofficial adviser to the staff. That move didn't help, either.
I'm on record stating that Embree deserves four seasons in Boulder. It's difficult to defend that decision, but Bohn and his superiors at the school are committed to Embree through 2014. The primary boosters and alumni aren't so dedicated.
But no one is committed to coordinators Eric Bieniemy and Greg Brown for long. Both could be short-timers.
The experiment with Bieniemy as a coordinator ? whether he's on the sideline or in the press box ? is a failure.
Bienemy's game plans must be drawn on an Etch A Sketch, and he has no idea what to run, when and how ? or why. It's a sensitive subject since Bieniemy was a great and popular tailback at CU ? and a finalist for the head coaching position ? but he should be the running backs coach and a recruiter, but not a coordinator.
Embree won't want to demote his close friend, but he can't keep him at the expense of his own job.
Brown's situation is more conflicting. He hasn't been able to utilize his schemes or flex his philosophy the past two years as a result of multiple injuries and a multitude of freshmen. Still, though, the defense has not made one ounce of improvement.
It just gets worse and worser and, like a sweater, worsted. If the Cardinal hadn't gotten down to playing walk-ons and run-offs Saturday, the Buffs would have been torched for 50-plus in a fourth straight game. They missed the mark by two.
Embree had nothing much of value to say afterward. He could have given his postgame quotes at halftime. He reluctantly acknowledged that all assistants would be re-evaluated at season's end. The rest of us don't have to wait until then.
The nice guy's head coaching stint is in danger. As a young man, he wanted to work in TV. Embree will get that opportunity soon if he doesn't shake up his staff.
This is, no hyperbole, the most awful major-college football team in the entire nation. This is, no lie, the worst CU team in history.
And I used to think Chuck Fairbanks' 1980 Buffs (1-10), Bill McCartney's 1984 team (1-10) and Dan Hawkins' mess in 2006 (2-10) were the pits I'd watched. However, 2012 is the nadir. There is no Iowa State to save the Buffs this year.
"We just weren't good all the way around," Embree said.
The Buffs are out of their league.
CU doesn't have a good quarterback on the field this year ? and hasn't managed an all-conference QB since Koy Detmer (1996). Shane Dillon, the 6-foot-5 freshman who is redshirting, will be someone special if Stitt, who has turned physicists into All-Americans, is his teacher and coach.
If Bohn wants to remove the tarnish from the Golden Buffs, he should take a drive to Golden.
Woody Paige: 303-954-1095, woody@woodypaige.com or twitter.com/woodypaige
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