GOLDEN — The Don Quixote of the Fly Sweep still dreams with eyes wide open.
Impossible dreams. Crazy dreams. The latest hits every time Bob Stitt looks out a window at the Harold and Patricia Korell Athletic Center and onto the north side of Marv Kay Stadium.
You see an empty, modest row of gray bleachers. Stitt sees double-decker seating. He sees a line of luxury boxes sandwiched between those decks. He sees a hospitality area on top.
“Cozy is nice, when you can see the field,” the Colorado School of Mines icon and prodigal football coach tells me on a Tuesday visit to his office. “Now we’re getting so many fans that they’re eight-deep on the concourse and no one can even see the game.
“And I have a dream of, on the visitor side, of doing a double-decker, similar to what we had at Montana, where we can get about 7,500 seats on that side … and then we can get that (capacity) to over 10,000. And we can fill it. And that’s something that I think about all the time.”
“Have you floated this to David Hansburg?” I asked, referring to the Orediggers’ athletic director.
The dreamer grinned.
“Not yet,” Stitt replied.
Well, then. Consider it pitched.
“But it’s my dream,” Stitt continued. “Those are the things I think about: How can we be the best in the country? And right now we’ve got a nice stadium. I want to have a great stadium. I just dream big. That’s just the way that I’ve always done.
“Why can’t we have 13,000 seats? I know we can pack that thing. On most campuses, the stadium is the crown jewel. We’ve got a beautiful facility. We’ve got great facilities in other sports as well. And I just think that we’ve outgrown the stadium. We need to add.”
You see college football as a beast that’s been ripped apart by hubris, federal courts and common sense. You see a sport that’s being sewn back together by television networks as a Frankenstein for profit. A baby NFL.
Stitt sees Mines picking right back up where he left it in 2014, having turned an RMAC doormat into a Division II dynasty. He sees the Orediggers soaring above the noise and below the radar. Same as it ever was.
“We’ve lost one kid to the (transfer) portal since it all started (Blake Doud) and he’s going to be the starting punter for Alabama this year,” Stitt said. “It’s different, yeah.
“Kids stay here. We have a culture. They care about each other. They want to get this degree. And it is an old-school environment, which I love. It’s the same type of culture that we had when we started this thing 25 years ago.
“When recruits come on campus for our camps, we have our players work in the camps. One of the things that they mentioned that they loved about the camp was how much camaraderie we have amongst our players and how they treated them as well. We’ve got great people in our program. People make the place.”
It starts at the top. Stitt, 61, still talks about Mines with a lilt in his voice. He gives tours of the Korell Athletic Center with a spring in every step. The eyes have the proud twinkle of a loving parent. In Golden, he’s two parts Sid Gillman, one part Walt Disney.
“I don’t know if I would have taken the job had it been the same job from 2014,” Stitt explained. “But this is a great job now because of what David and his staff have done.”
The dreamer remains a great story, a football survivor. Montana fired him as head coach in 2017. Texas State fired him as offensive coordinator in 2019. A year before that, he was a 54-year-old offensive analyst at Oklahoma State, sharing a dorm room with a 27-year-old.
“And (I’m) staring at the ceiling,” Stitt recalled, “and going, ‘How did I get here?’”
His ceilings are swankier now. Family photos line the first shelves you see in his office, just inside the doorway. A framed portrait of his 10-year-old pug stares back from over his right shoulder.
“Most head coaches, when they come in, they’ve got a five-year plan. I had a five-month plan,” Stitt said. “I want to be able to get this team in five months ready to roll. All that matters is 2025.
“Our seniors don’t have five years. Our juniors don’t have five years. I may not have five years. I want to win now … and that’s what I’m working for. The mind is a powerful thing. You’ve got to get these kids to believe and believe in each other. Believe in themselves.”
Mines’ home opener is against Washburn on Sept. 13, just like old times. He’s got a vision for that, too. He just drafted a letter to send out to everybody who played for him from 2000-14 to come back. The plan’s for them to form a human tunnel for the current Orediggers to run through as they enter the field.
“I think that would be the neatest thing in the world,” Stitt gushed, still smiling. Still dreaming.
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