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Path To Victory

Under Sonny Lubick\'s guidance, Colorado State is now a consistant winner
by: Scott Kraft
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While there is no such thing as an easy head coaching job in football, some present as more challenging than others.

In 1993, one of the more challenging jobs available was to be the next head coach of the Colorado State University Rams. The facilities were among the worst in the Western Athletic Conference (now the Mountain West Conference), with no signs of improvement on the horizon.

Colorado State had seen its struggles on the field as well. Prior to 1993, the team had played in only two postseason bowl games in school history and had just a handful of winning seasons in the last 20 years.

Sonny Lubick was up to the challenge, and accepted the job as head coach prior to the 1993 season. Lubick was familiar with Colorado State, having served as an assistant from 1982-1984.

Since departing the school, Lubick spent three years as a Stanford assistant before joining Dennis Erickson’s staff in Miami as the defensive coordinator. While with the Hurricanes, Lubick won two national championships as part of one of the elite college programs in the country.

Achieving that level of success as a coordinator at a program like Miami can often lead to head coaching opportunities at large conference Division I-A programs. But this was Colorado State, where attendance and support were low, and the school was languishing in the MWC under the wide shadow cast by Colorado, which had won a championship in 1990.

Yet while it was easy for people to look at Colorado State and see a track record of mediocrity on the football field, Lubick saw an opportunity to run a program.

“We were having a lot of fun at Miami, we had a good staff and I was fortunate to have players like Russell Maryland and Cortez Kennedy,” Lubick says. “It was fun, but it seemed like I had this desire to be a head coach and this opportunity came up. I looked at the fact that I was an assistant here previously. A lot of people didn’t know what Colorado State was. I knew it would be a real challenge.”

In fact, Lubick has said in the past that he thought he might be like a lot of past CSU coaches - come in, spend his four years and then leave.

But a funny thing happened on the way to Lubick’s “four and out” plan at Colorado State. The team started to win quickly, and kept winning.

“I came in, accepted the challenge and assembled a good staff,” Lubick says. “Part of the reason I think we were successful was that I learned a lot about winning while I was at Miami.”

After his 1993 team went 5-6, Lubick had the Rams firing on all cylinders. The 1994 team went 10-2 and earned a trip to the Holiday Bowl. The 1995 team went 8-4 and also finished its season at the Holiday Bowl. While the Rams lost both season-ending bowl games, by the end of his third season Lubick had taken Colorado State to as many bowl games as the program had been to in its first 100 years of existence. Even Lubick is at a loss to explain precisely how it happened so quickly.

“The reputation I had at Miami was probably helpful, but we got to winning early - I don’t know why. My second year, we were 7-0 and had a huge game, our first televised game, and a chance to go undefeated,” Lubick says.

To put that in perspective, consider that Lubick is one of only two coaches in Colorado State’s history to have a winning percentage over .500 at the school and, despite the fact that he has won almost 69 percent of the games he’s coached in 9 years as head coach, the school itself has won only 47 percent of its games in its history.

Teaching players how to win

When Lubick arrived in Fort Collins, he was greeted with a culture of losing unlike anything he had seen at Miami.

“The kids had never known how to win. There was a defeatist attitude that allowed them to slide downhill,” Lubick says.

His staff got the players to believe they could win. That the first loss wasn’t the end of the season and they could rebound and play winning football. The results came through almost immediately.

“We won the last three games of my first year. We’ve never had a losing season since then,” Lubick says. “You have to have talent - better talent. But success builds on itself.”

Achieving sustained success in a non-major conference is a credit to the coaching staff. Colorado State won’t land players of the same caliber as major conferences. It becomes incumbent on the coaching staff to take the players they do recruit and make them better.

Lubick believes it’s important for the coaches to communicate well with the players and take a consistent approach. Noting that “everyone’s got good players,” Lubick says building a winning football team has a lot to do with effective communication skills.

“In the old days, it was about how tough you could be, or how hard you could be on the players or the assistant coaches,” Lubick says. “That will work for a while, but not for very long. People have got to believe in you and you’ve got to believe in them. You’ve got to show the players you care about them.”

Practically, Lubick figures there are 118 teams playing in Division I-A. Of those teams, there are maybe 10 in a given season with the talent, resources and coaching to compete for the championship.

“Why does one team win? There is something extra in their talent, their chemistry. You lose that, and you’re tenth and not first. You can go up and down. Look at Florida - they were up, then down, then up again,” Lubick says. “It’s like any organization. You have to get good people and treat them right. You have to get assistant coaches who treat the players with respect and consistency. Not one way one day and then another way the next day. This is so much a people business.”

Lubick credits the combination of talent and chemistry for a lot of his success. He knows that when it comes to tradition and size, Colorado State won’t compete with programs like Michigan, Florida or Miami.

Despite that, he says, small schools win games, sometimes lots of games. Small schools beat big schools. During his tenure at Colorado State, Lubick has beaten programs from major conferences. He took his team on the road to play Arizona, ranked sixth in the country, in 1994, and came out with a victory.

Winning and raising expectations

Nothing will spoil a college football fan or booster, or a university, quite like success. Lubick says that after his first season at Colorado State, when the school won five games, “they thought we were pretty good coaches.”

Now, a 7-5 showing in 2001 was considered a bit disappointing, even though it culminated with a Liberty Bowl victory. The problem is, it came on the heels of four seasons where Colorado State won at least 8 games a year, including a 10-2 season in 2000 and and an 11-2 season in 1997.

It is, in part, a product of a tougher schedule, which won’t get any easier in 2002 when the non-conference schedule includes games at Virginia and UCLA, and a neutral site game against Big 12 champion Colorado.

The school has responded to the success of the program. Known for having some of the worst facilities in the MWC, Colorado State opened the $8.5 million McGraw Athletic Center in May 2001. For the first time since he became head coach, Lubick had a place where his entire team could meet other than the gymnasium. Overall, the facilities are still among the worst, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Colorado State players believe they can win the games, and the Rams are now recognized as one of the most successful programs in the country.

And Lubick is recognized as one of the best coaches. Currently ranked 20th among active Division I-A coaches in wins, Lubick has become a bit of a celebrity in Fort Collins, including such perks as a reserved seat at the local Subway, bobble-head dolls of the coach available for sale, and a town known as “Sunnyville.”

The other difference between the present and the past is that “Sunnyville” comes with expectations of success. And Sonny Lubick stands ready to meet the challenge, knowing he created it in the first place.

How the Mountain West Was Won

Sonny Lubick talks about building a winner, staying on top, and sticking around to see it through

When the Colorado State University football program began its quick turnaround under Sonny Lubick, the coach had options. Bigger schools, such as the University of Miami and USC began calling on him for interviews. The chance to take on a school in a large conference, maybe take a step closer to winning a national championship, was beginning to present itself.

At the same time, Lubick was becoming a hero to long-suffering Colorado State fans. The school was establishing itself as a force in the conference - first the Western Athletic Conference and later the Mountain West Conference - every year. Expectations were rising, and the coach found himself in a good situation.

Far from talk of winning, Lubick values the relationships he’s built over the years. Getting invited to the wedding of a former player, who then double-checked to make sure he would be there. Or an unrestricted NFL free agent who used to play at Colorado State who called “out of the blue” to ask for advice about his next move.

Lubick’s tone of voice betrays his good feelings about the players who’ve played for him. He talked about how much they gave of themselves for his teams, themselves, the coaches and the school.

We asked Lubick about his run at Colorado State, as well as other opportunities that have presented themselves over the years.

Q.: When you went to Colorado State, the school had been to two postseason bowl games in its history and wasn’t even on the map. By your second season, Colorado State was bowl-bound as a conference champion. Did you expect it to turnaround so quickly?

A.: Not in a hundred years. Tradition wise, we are a long way from Miami. They can boast championships. And Florida was coming on at the time. Those schools had the tradition and the resources.

Colorado State had averaged three wins per season and had an 0-11 season previous to that. We didn’t expect it to come together that quickly. I learned a lot about winning at Miami. The players expected to win. Here, we got the players to win when they hadn’t won in years. We went from five wins right up to 10, and we’ve won at least seven ever since.

Q.: This is your second head coaching job. How is it different than when you were at Montana State from 1978-1981?

A.: I think, as I got a little older, I was able to coach some more talented players at Miami than at Montana State. I was a little young there, and I didn’t really know how a big-time program operated.

When I was at Miami, we competed against and beat teams like Florida State. That gives a coach a lot of intangibles and confidence. When athletic directors and universities look to hire coaches, they look to successful programs to try and get head coaches from them. So I could say I’d been at Miami for four years and won two national championships. Miami helped me a lot more than I helped them.

Q:. When Dennis Erickson left Miami, you were considered for the head coaching job. How did that go?

A.: Well, there was talk after Erickson left for Seattle that I was being considered. We had some nice talks and I think I was being seriously considered. But, in the end I decided to stay here.

Q.: Other schools have been interested in you too, most recently USC. Is it ever tempting to take one of these jobs?

A.: Sure, there is tremendous temptation. It has to be the perfect fit for the university and for myself. One thing that happened really well here was that everything clicked very well and my staff fit right in.

Maybe on the other side, the schools interested in you liked a lot of the things about you as a coach.

Q.: Colorado State isn’t known for the best facilities, but recently opened a new athletic facility. How do your resources stack up against other schools?


A.: The battles here are different than at a lot of other schools. Sometimes it is frustrating to fight for the little things, like projectors for the assistant coaches. Other schools have all the new equipment they need.

It’s a battle here, because you want to spend more time coaching. We’re not talking extras, but necessities. At Miami or Stanford, they never worry about money to recruit. They’re never worried about resources. Here, we watch everything a little bit.

Q.: What are some of the greatest things about your job, other than the winning?

A.: The winning is just a by-product of the job. The best part is being on the football field from 3-5:30 every day to watch players develop. We’ve got about 18 or 19 players in the NFL right now.

It’s nice to watch the players grow. To see the walk-ons make the team and be a part of something good, to help people be successful.

It’s the relationships that make this job worthwhile. With winning, it’s a nicer feeling to walk off the field after a victory than a loss, but it’s fleeting. By the time you take a shower and get out of there, you’re already thinking about next week.

People are the same way. They want to know what you can do next week.






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