FORT COLLINS — The voice bobbed and weaved like a cornered boxer. Sentences that started as butter finished with the scrape of burnt toast.
Ali Farokhmanesh looked great Saturday at Moby Arena, wearing a calm smile and a white CSU polo. Dude sounded like holy heck.
“I mean, (I’m) yelling more than I was, talking more, just constantly talking,” the new Rams men’s basketball coach told me after his squad scrimmaged for the public Saturday, the warm-up act for a Homecoming football tussle against Hawaii.
“So I think that’s the biggest adjustment. That’s the biggest thing I had to figure out is how to get my voice to stay. Because the first event we did in downtown (Fort Collins), it was gone. I started like shaking up and down. I sounded like I was going through puberty again, like …”
“Pretty much,” he laughed. “If you can find something for my throat to fix that, let me know.
“I always joke with our guys, though, I’m saying our body language matters and how you respond to refs, how you talk to them. Well, then, I shouldn’t lose my voice because I shouldn’t be (yelling). We’ll see how it goes on November 3.”
As Peter Brady once sang, when it’s time to change, then it’s time to change. Farokhmanesh, 37, is re-arranging who he is and what he’s gonna be.
No Nique Clifford? No Niko Medved? No problemo. For now, anyway.
If CSU football feels a bit like a marriage that has lost its spark, Rams hoops is still ensconced in nuptial bliss. You’d be hard-pressed to find a heart in Fort Fun that doesn’t love Farokhmanesh. And Ali’s family.
Although a first-time head coach, Farokhmanesh is working overtime these days to stay out of his wife Mallory’s doghouse. The other night, she caught him falling asleep while watching practice film. All parties agreed he could pick it back up at 5:30 in the morning.
“I feel like I try to have a balance, right?” Farokhmanesh said. “Which you never really do, but you’re always fighting for. So, she does a good job of managing that with me, too. I think she helps me a lot with that.”
On the court, with a half-dozen new faces, the Rams’ lineup is a work in progress. Rotations are in flux. Medved’s fingerprints are still there, but with tweaks and tucks — some spread, some motion, constant movement.
Farokhmanesh was the boy genius with the whiteboard on the sidelines, feeding the Niko machine. On Saturday, that board was in the hands of assistant coach Cole Gentry. Besides work-life balance and trying to do too much all at once, the next biggest challenge for first-time coaches is delegating authority. Giving up the stuff they used to obsess over.
“I feel like I’ve done a pretty good job (with that),” Farokhmanesh said. “I’m not doing the subs right now. I’m not doing the baseline out of bounds (plays) now. Those are all things I did before. I’ve given up the board. But I’m still going to have a say in all of it. So, it’s giving it up, but it’s also like, you’re still involved. I don’t know. It’s just different.”
The Ali Era’s “soft” opening is a tricky one: The Rams play an exhibition at Creighton on Oct. 25 in advance of the Nov. 3 home lid-lifter against Incarnate Word.
Farokhmanesh and Jays coach Greg McDermott are both Northern Iowa Panthers, which is fun. Creighton just beat Iowa State in an exhibition by 13 this past Friday, which is … yeah, not so fun.
“And after what they did in Iowa State, I’m a little more nervous,” the Rams coach said. “If we want to be an NCAA Tournament team, you’ve got to play teams like that. Does that help us to just go scrimmage a D2 (school)? Does it? We’ll get something out of it. But I want to challenge our (guys), and I want to put them on a stage. Because if we want to play at the highest levels, we’re going to have to beat people on those stages and compete with them.”
Farokhmanesh, long one of Medved’s best teachers and recruiters, is already taking names on the recruiting trail. Reported 2026 commit Pops Dunson, a 6-foot point guard out of Douglasville, Ga., is the highest-ranked prep signee for the Rams this century, according to the 247Sports.com database.
“If you’ve got time, he’s in here working with you,” said CSU forward Rashaan Mbemba, who leads the Rams roster in returning minutes with 615 (19.2 per game) and returning points (7.0 per game). “And I think that’s something you’ve got to really appreciate. I mean, he has four kids, he has a wife. Being a head coach, a husband, a dad. Now he’s also like, kind of, for a lot of guys, he’s the first person to talk to. As a team and as a community, we really appreciate that.”
And they show it. Veteran Ram staffers noted a bigger crowd than usual for an open scrimmage, buoyed by Homecoming weekend and more than mild curiosity. CSU president Amy Parsons sat at midcourt with athletic director John Weber throughout the scrimmage as green-clad alumni came and went.
Afterward, while players sat at a long table under one of the baskets, providing autographs for fans, Farokhmanesh hung back. The new coach shook hands, smiled for cell phone pictures and signed posters for wave after wave of kids.
“Here you go, buddy,” Ali said to one.
“What’s up, dude?” he said to another.
A towheaded tyke in a green Rams getup approached nervously.
Farokhmanesh disarmed him with a grin and scribbled away on his poster.
“Can I get a ‘Go Rams?’” the coach asked.
“Go Rams,” he replied.
Hey, when fate hands you a honeymoon, best enjoy it while it lasts. That goes double for the voice.
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