Catching up on CU recruiting

Well it's been a while. But that's what happens when former teammates come to visit. And when it's someone of Charlie Melvin's stature and notoriety, all you can do is take a few days off work, let your family know that you love them, tell your liver to suck it up, and let loose. We probably could have greatly helped out the Commish over at Slushy Gutter with his summer drinking quest. But we don't know him, and stayed on the south side of Denver the whole time. Sorry Commish. So I was out of contact with the sports world for several days and here's what I missed: - The final Finals game was boring. A french dude won MVP. What has happened to the NBA when a foreigner wins MVP of the regular season, and a different foreigner wins Finals MVP? What is going on with American hoops? (I'm looking at you HS basketball coaches.) Is it too much to ask to teach the kids how to shoot a jump shot, correctly feed the post with a hook pass, or to get into triple threat position? Oh well. At least our guys can dunk better than theirs. - The Rockies had another 4 game winning streak and even took the series on the road against the Red Sox. I'm telling you, we are going to be good enough to barely almost get in the playoffs this year! (I'm going to be the last one back on the Rockies bandwagon this season. I've just been let down too many times to completely believe. I love them, but sometimes I hate that I love them.) - A dude from Argentina won the US Open. This seems physically impossible to me as I had always believed the contact between club and ball would automatically cause all Argentinians to flop. Okay, so here's the main reason for my post. After perusing through the last few days of the CU recruiting message boards, it seems that recruit interest in CU is nearing an all-time low. In fact, one of our WR verbal commits (Chance Blackmon) de-committed last week, only to be begged back into a soft verbal. The problem was that after committing to us some bigger schools like Tennessee and Texas A&M developed interest and were able to talk him out of CU. How could they do that you ask? It's simple. They tell him that CU sucks. This is the problem we are going to have with recruits until next season starts. The damage done by last year's 2-10 debacle of a season goes beyond our embarrassment as fans. Coach Hawk can do an amazing job of selling recruits on the fact that we are building towards something special, that these kids can be a part of bringing CU back to national prominence, that they will play early and often and be a big factor in the process. It's all true. But then the next team can simply say "Why would you go to CU? They're terrible. Did you know that they were 2-10 last year and lost to a 1AA school?" And it works. How do you counter this? Hawk needs to land one huge recruit this off-season and that tactic will topple. Landing someone like Jon Major (who has CU in his top 10 list now, he is in the process of narrowing down his top 20) would help. Or even better would be Darrell Scott (#2 overall player in the nation according to Rivals, #1 RB) or Julio Jones (#3 overall player and #1 WR). Both are considering CU along with the top programs in the nation. By landing one of these three, other top players will look at CU with a more open mind. They would start thinking "If someone like Darrell Scott chose CU over Florida, USC and Texas than maybe I should consider them." It will only take one. If Hawk can't pull that off in the off-season, than the start of next season will be absolutely crucial. We can't afford another down season. We HAVE to beat CSU. Beating ASU on the road would be huge. Pulling off the home win against Florida State on national TV would be absolutely enormous. Win 2 out of those 3, and being competitive in all of them, will be a lot of ammo to use against opposing recruiters who will tell kids to look at last year's record. Personally, I'm a believer. We have interest from 10 players on Rivals top 100. We have a good '07 recruiting class and a year in Hawk's system. (By the way, have you heard how big Ryan Miller is now? He's up to 320 lbs and is about to grow out of his size 18 shoes! That man is going to be an animal for us for the next few years, so enjoy him!) Hawk is determined to rebuild our program. And as hard as it is for me to say this following last year's 2-10 disaster season, I'm extremely excited for football season to start. September 1st against CSU is going to tell us a lot about where our program is going. Now if I could just find something to do for the next 6 weeks to keep me entertained. **Update - Chance Blackmon has officially de-committed from the Buffs, citing distance from home as his reason. Whatever. Good riddance kid.