LARAMIE, Wyo. — The football forecast in Fort Collins hasn’t looked partly Sonny in what feels like forever.
“They fired me in 2007,” Sonny Lubick, the greatest football coach in modern CSU Rams history, laughed when I reached him by phone a few days back. “And I believe that there’ve been four coaches (since). Haven’t figured it out yet.”
Nope. And it’s five coaches since 2007, actually. Five if we don’t count interims — a club Tyson Summers joined when Jay Norvell was let go in advance of Saturday night’s Border War showdown with Wyoming.
“The thing is, I don’t know (the problem),” Lubick continued. “It’s hard to (pinpoint) … if it was just one thing, it would be easy to fix. But it’s not like that.”
Louis Matthew Lubick, who turned 88 years young in March, is still a fixer at heart. He’s feeling good, getting his steps in, slinging steaks, watching multiple games every weekend from afar.
Although, like the rest of us, he’s found CSU games awfully hard to watch as of late.
“I knew after he got beat (by Hawaii), things were shaky,” Lubick said of Norvell, who was fired last Sunday after four seasons and an 18-26 record.
“Now your backside is on what I guess I would call the hot seat. When you coach like that, it’s hard. Those never work out. When you’ve got your own pressure on yourself … ‘We’ve got to win four or more games or we’re gone.’ You can’t do that. It’s hard.”
Harder still: Keeping talent around Fort Fun once you’ve actually identified and signed it. Under Lubick, from 1996-2007, the Rams saw 20 players drafted into the NFL, an average of almost two per year. It’s a club that featured some big-hitters: Joey Porter (1999), Clark Haggans (2000) and Joel Dreessen (2005), to name a few.
In the 10 NFL Drafts from 2016-2025, CSU had seven guys taken. Canvas Stadium has become a $220 million monument to mediocrity. The Rams built it. People came. Titles haven’t.
“Are you puzzled?” I asked Lubick.
“We all are,” he replied.
For one, the rules have changed. The Rams are fighting uphill against a system where the decks are being stacked higher and higher against them.
True, CSU has the best football stadium and football facilities in the Mountain West. But as you pine for Sonny’s salad days, ask yourself this:
Would Porter, Haggans or Bradlee Van Pelt — a seventh-round choice of the Broncos in 2004 — have stuck around to finish their eligibility in FoCo if there had been a transfer portal and NIL money a generation ago?
Bigger schools see their smaller peers as football and basketball farm systems. The blue bloods are bidding right now to snap up the Rams’ best players, while athletic director John Weber has to come up with ways to pay them. Above him, higher-ed belts are tightening everywhere, from the federal level on down.
“I know this: It’s pressure-packed,” Lubick said. “It’s an important hire.”
Especially now. Which is why Weber is doing the right thing by hiring a search firm, by listening to voices who know what he doesn’t. The last time CSU didn’t use a firm on a football coaching search, it landed Steve Addazio.
Lubick, by the way, was a big Norvell fan. Although he says he’s seen the good in each of his successors — even The Daz, whose tenure was tempestuous, turgid (4-12) and terse.
“I wasn’t surprised in the end,” Lubick said of Norvell. “He’s (been) more than good to me. And their staff was, (as well).”
A few days before the Rams hosted Fresno State at Canvas on Oct. 10, Lubick visited the football offices. CSU eventually put together its most complete game of the season against the Bulldogs, forcing four turnovers and rolling to a 49-21 victory.
“I just went over there to tell him to keep going,” Lubick recalled. “I wished him good luck and hoped things go well. (Norvell) appreciated me coming by.
“He’s a good person. He’s trying to do the right things for the players … you gotta win, I guess.”
You gotta. You gotta keep Canvas full, or pretty close, on a regular basis. You gotta re-recruit your roster, every year. You gotta pay them what they think they’re worth.
You gotta have a QB who can finish drives. You gotta have a defense that can snuff them out. You gotta keep all this afloat with television money that, even in the Pac-12, will probably be a sixth of what Purdue or Rutgers are pocketing from the Big Ten.
When it comes to coaching searches, Lubick does come a lot cheaper than most consultants. Just saying.
“You don’t want to hear that from me,” Lubick cracked. “Whatever I say is the opposite (of what will happen) …
“They did (ask me) one time. And I think it helped. I tried to give my honest opinion. I just want the best thing for the school. I don’t know why they wouldn’t (ask me).”
Well, there is at least one reason. That would be Matt Lubick, Sonny’s son and a former CSU assistant, a candidate who’s logged time at Ole Miss, Arizona State, Duke, Oregon, Washington and Nebraska. And who’s currently the co-coordinator of a Kansas offense that went into the weekend averaging 32.4 points per game with a QB, Jalon Daniels, who sported a touchdown-to-interception ratio of 18-to-2.
“If they ask me, ‘Who should be the next coach?’ They know what I would say,” Lubick said. “That would hurt Matt, probably. It’s better that I stay out of it.”
Twelve years.
Four coaches.
Haven’t figured it out yet.
“If you’ve got a good QB, or a decent QB, you have a chance,” Lubick said. “Then (Norvell) lost that (Hawaii) game, that’s what …”
A pause.
“I probably talk too much,” Lubick said. He laughed again. “My wife says, ‘Be quiet.’”
