Mike MacIntyre had already answered a dozen questions from the media following a mid-August practice when he agreed to spend a little extra time walking and talking with a reporter.

The course covered a couple hundred yards through the dirt parking lot outside the Colorado football practice fields, over Boulder Creek, up a steep hill -- all too familiar to any current or former Buff -- to the northeast gates of Folsom Field.

The topic of conversation was MacIntyre's plan for rebuilding the proud college football program he now oversees.

When asked for the nuts and bolts of his plan for bringing the Buffaloes back from 1-11 laughing stock to Pac-12 Conference title contender, MacIntyre deadpanned, "How long a walk is this?"

It's a big job no doubt.

Colorado football coach Mike MacIntyre pays extra attention to details as he attempts to rebuild the Buffs.
Colorado football coach Mike MacIntyre pays extra attention to details as he attempts to rebuild the Buffs. ( CLIFF GRASSMICK )
It's one that already overwhelmed MacIntyre's two predecessors Jon Embree and Dan Hawkins. It's a challenge some in the college football world believe he was crazy to try to tackle. No winning seasons in seven years. One bowl game in that span. Facilities lagging behind the competition. In-state recruits fleeing the sight of black, silver and gold.

If MacIntyre doesn't succeed, the CU program is in real danger of becoming known as a place where coaches go to die. Some might say it already is.

So how is he going to fix it all and restore the Colorado brand to the respect it carried throughout the 1990s and early 2000s?

"Everybody says it, but it's true," MacIntyre said. "It's setting the culture the way you want it.

"You've got to get the young men to believe in that and start doing it on a 365-day-a-year basis, 24 hours a day. Once they start doing that and start buying in to everything and caring about each other, then when recruits come and other people start seeing it, they come in as freshmen and they get with the upperclassmen and they understand the culture and it reverberates and the next class comes in and it reverberates. You just keep growing.

"That's how you ultimately change your program. It's the young men in your program and it's everybody around your program that have hands on those young men to help guide them. Then it's how you practice and your work ethic and your focus. All of that goes hand-in-hand."

MacIntyre believes he and his staff are already well down the road toward establishing that culture. He watched numerous members of last year's team depart during the offseason for other programs, other sports or other pursuits all together. Some of them might have been successful if only they stuck with it. Others needed to go and MacIntyre wasn't above cutting ties with them once he believed he had given them every opportunity.

"I would probably say accountability," wide receivers coach Troy Walters said when asked to name the biggest challenge CU coaches found when they were hired. "When we got here, guys were kind of doing their own things. It wasn't a team, family culture. 'We're in this thing together.' It was guys here and guys there. So I think that is the No. 1 thing we're trying to accomplish is just bringing everyone together and understand this is a team and a family and we're only going to go as far as the team."

Support will be pivotal

The assumption is that since MacIntyre was able to turn around San Jose State, he ought to be able to conquer the ghosts haunting CU. The Buffs have won national titles and Heisman Trophies in the past after all.

In some ways, MacIntyre feels like he's already ahead of where he was three years ago when he took over at San Jose State and eventually turned a moribund program into a top 25 team with a bowl win.

Back in 2010, some around San Jose State were talking about disbanding the football program all together. The Spartans were serving penalties under the NCAA's APR system that included limiting practice time each week.

While there might be a few kooks on campus who would like to get rid of the CU athletic department, the Buffs face no threat of being phased out and they are succeeding with APR. In fact, CU leaders have shown they are eager to put a more competitive product on the field by investing in MacIntyre and his staff by doubling the football coaches' salary pool from what it was when Embree was coach. They also are beginning the process of raising money for $170 million in facilities improvements.

Colorado football coach wants to Buffs to feel like a family.
Colorado football coach wants to Buffs to feel like a family. ( CLIFF GRASSMICK )
 And they hired a new $700,000-a year athletic director to lead the charge in raising that money.

"A little bit of the difference here is there is more people at this point, eight months into it, concerned and believing that it can be successful," MacIntyre said. "At San Jose State, it was a program that was on lifeline. They were even thinking about dropping. There weren't as many people concerned.

"... I just feel more of a swell, more support, more passion by more people. Nothing against the other place. It's been done here before in a big-time way. They want to do it again. I think the other thing that is different is they have moved into the Pac-12 and everybody wants to show that the move was beneficial to the university and will help the university."

Defensive coordinator Kent Baer spent three seasons with MacIntyre at San Jose State and could have stayed there, maybe even as head coach if he had wanted, as opposed to coming to Boulder.

Baer said he has never worked with a coach with a better work ethic than MacIntyre in his four decades in the sport. That, mixed with the tradition and history of CU, was more than enough to convince Baer that he could help MacIntyre resurrect the Colorado program. The blueprint might be different, but he believes they can do here just as they did at San Jose State.

"Mac knows," Baer said. "He's firm. He's positive and he's demanding. He knows football. He knows offense. He knows defense and he knows the kicking game. I think the staff that he has hired has done a great job buying into his system. I don't see anybody ever fighting the system. Sometimes you get on a staff and the guys don't get along or they don't totally understand and they want to do it their way no matter what. I think that was a real selling point to me."

MacIntyre has the support of his bosses and his assistant coaches, but most important to any rebuilding project is the support of the fans. Ultimately, the voices of people in the seats on Saturday afternoons or nights in Folsom Field are the ones who decide whether a coaching staff is getting the job done.

CU fans are all out of patience, but they're going to need to muster up some reserves to allow MacIntyre the time he needs. This is the Pac-12 and not the Western Athletic Conference of the past few years. It's likely going to take him longer to produce an 11-2 season in Boulder against the likes of USC, UCLA, Arizona State, Oregon, Oregon State and Washington than it did at San Jose State.

Earning that patience with consistent improvement will be key to MacIntyre's success or failure here.

"I really believe that if he didn't think it could be done, he wouldn't have come," Baer said.

The MacIntyre way

During his introductory news conference in December, MacIntyre introduced CU fans to his slogan. It was a breath of fresh air after the tenure of each of his predecessors ended with those coaches complaining about all the things they didn't have at CU.

"No excuses, no regrets," MacIntyre said.

The men who work with MacIntyre say he is a detail-oriented grinder who doesn't leave things to chance. But he's not necessarily stuck in his ways or committed to one style of getting the job done. He embraces creative, innovative thinking in a competitive and demanding way.

"That's one thing good about coach Mac, we spend a long time talking about what we need to do to win the game," offensive line coach Gary Bernardi said. "Do we need to throw the ball 60 times or do we need to run it 70. We spend a long time talking about that from Sunday to Thursday or Friday."

Perhaps the most vital part of MacIntyre's plan for rebuilding the Buffs centers around recruiting. Again, it is a part of the game in which MacIntyre attempts to out-work the competition.

He cares little about recruiting rankings. Sure, he wants many of the four and five-star players that every other school in the nation is pursuing and he believes he will get his share as Colorado shows improvement.

But he built San Jose State into a winner by finding good players that other programs had overlooked. Hawkins and Embree attempted to do the same thing in their stints as head coach in Boulder and both brought some good players to Boulder, but both missed more often or took chances on players with questionable character.

Almost every member of MacIntyre's staff evaluates every recruit and they tend to project what each player will become, rather than viewing them simply as the player and the position they are in high school.

"The one thing I think we do a really good job of is the evaluation of kids in high school," Baer said. "We really don't care who is recruiting them or how many stars they have. That doesn't mean anything to me. It means zero. We look and project and say, 'Wow, we think this guy can be really, really good some day.' Now, you'd love to get some of those five-star guys, but a lot of those guys never pan out."

MacIntyre is going to have to find more success doing that here to get the Buffs back on track. The reality is, not many four- and five-star players are interested in a team that is 4-19 the past two years and hasn't been to a bowl game since 2007.

When he starts to win some games, it should become easier to land bigger fish through the beauty of the CU campus, the vibrant Boulder community, the quality of education offered and the chance to play in the Pac-12.

When those players arrive in Boulder to begin their college careers, they find a support system designed to teach them how to succeed on and off the field.

"Everything is mapped out," Walters said. "Everything is specific. Everything we do, there is a reason behind it. We don't do anything just to do it. Whether it's a practice period or the practice schedule itself or the whole day's schedule, there is a purpose and a reason. We're very organized and pay attention to detail."

Colorado isn't in as deep a hole as San Jose State was when MacIntyre took over because it isn't facing the academic problems the Spartans had three years ago. Another aspect of this rebuilding job that is different is the fact that MacIntyre began the process at San Jose State as a rookie head coach surrounded by coaches with whom he was working with for the first time, including three defensive coaches who were in their first season as full-time college coaches.

MacIntyre now has three years of experience as a head coach and he brought most of his staff with him from San Jose State. The familiarity and experience together should help MacIntyre avoid some of the same problems he encountered in bringing the Spartans back from the dead.

"I will make you proud, I promise you," MacIntyre said to former athletic director Mike Bohn in December. "We will work tirelessly, we will work correctly, and we will work with passion. I think as you get to know me, you will say one thing about Mike MacIntyre, he has passion. You might say some other things, but you are going to say that I have passion."

And he has a plan.
