Tad Boyle officially was a former player, and he had not yet embarked on a collegiate coaching career now in its 31st season when the legendary Bill McCartney era of Colorado football reached its apex in 1989 and 1990.
In 1989, Boyle was only four years removed from the end of his playing days in Kansas. Not yet bitten by the coaching bug and back in his home state working in Boulder, Boyle already understood one thing. If McCartney was giving a speech somewhere, Boyle was going to make sure he pulled up a chair.
Like everyone even remotely associated with Buff Nation, CU’s veteran men’s basketball coach offered his condolences as well as memories of McCartney, the leader of the 1990 national championship squad who passed away last week.
“He was such a great speaker, such a great orator,” Boyle said. “It was powerful. I remember coming to Buff Club luncheons when coach Mac spoke. He’d introduce his coaches, or he’d introduce his team. Maybe his quarterback or offensive linemen. Whoever he was talking about, just to hear him speak, anybody who’s done it, remembers it. He had an ability to connect with people in a group setting. I’ve never experienced anybody like that in my life, before or since.”
With last year’s departures from CU by former women’s golf coach Anne Kelly and former cross country coach Mark Wetmore, along with the previous retirement of former ski coach Richard Rokos, Boyle in recent years has jumped from the fifth-longest-tenured coach in the athletic department to the second, trailing men’s golf coach Roy Edwards.
When Boyle, a Greeley native, returned to Colorado after graduating from Kansas in 1985, McCartney had not yet started winning over Buffs fans with the on-field results (although football’s 7-5 mark in 1985, one year after finishing 1-10, offered the first hint at what was to come). Boyle worked in Boulder through the CU football glory years, and left for his first collegiate job at Oregon in 1994, the same fall when Rashaan Salaam won the Heisman Trophy and McCartney’s Buffs competed for yet another national title.
When Boyle returned to lead the CU men in 2010, those glory years were long past, but it was well before age and illness began taking a toll on McCartney. Boyle asked to meet with McCartney soon after taking the job, and in those early years he asked McCartney to speak to his team on several occasions. McCartney always obliged.
“I’m saddened, No. 1. As everybody is. He was such a great man. He meant so much to this community and this university,” Boyle said. “When I first got here I reached out to him and asked to meet with him. He was gracious and I sat down with him and picked his brain about recruiting, how he built his program. He was great. I still have my notes. I met with him the first three years I was here.
“I think the number one thing he said is how important recruiting is, and making kids understand how special the University of Colorado and Boulder is. How safe it is, how clean it is. Only he could talk in his cadence when he’d get going — and convincing parents that you’re going to take care of their sons when they’re away from home for the first time. That was one of the biggest takeaways. And just the passion that he had, and the belief that he had that this is a special place. That’s really what we’ve tried to do in our recruiting efforts since I’ve been here. He believed it in his heart, and I believe it in my heart. I think if you don’t believe it in your heart, people are going to figure you out. To have him in front of our team, it was powerful. He really helped me in the beginning.”
Women’s basketball assistant Shelley Sheetz was on her way to winning the Big Eight Conference Player of the Year award for CU at the start of that same 1994-95 school year. She recalls McCartney’s influence soaking into the entire athletic department, even as she played a part in the national ascension of the CU women’s team under another legendary coach, Ceal Barry.
“I was here when he was coaching the football team and watched how he carried himself, watched how he navigated the team,” Sheetz said. “He was just a great guy. During my playing days here I had a lot of interaction with him. And then when I’d come back, he would always remember me and say hi. The guys loved Coach Mac just like we loved Coach Barry. It’s just how they both conducted their programs, and how they ran their programs. The standard was the standard, and it was built on toughness.”
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