Aw Shucks Sonny

Now I catch a number when before I caught a glare
Now I give a pound when before I got a stare
Now I guess I kinda got it goin on
I get a wake-up call on the norm…

The SG isn’t going to fawn all over coach Sonny Lubick after he was fired moved into the admin at Goat U here in Colorado. Plenty of over-the-top descriptions have been heaped on Tobacco Sonny over the past few days: messiah, legend, icon. Icon? Joe Paterno, Bobby Bowden, Eddie Robinson, Woody Hayes, there’s your icons. Sonny Lubick? Decent coach, hardly an icon.

Yes, the SG is forced to look through Black and Gold glasses and that may temper my sunny disposition (pun intended.) “Saint” Sonny and his “aww shucks, gee whiz” act was tired the last few years, his coaching had slipped extremely, his choices of assistants were almost laughable, and his recruiting was consistently in the lower half of the non-BCS schools.

Shouldn’t an “icon” been able to rectify that? How many times has JoePa and Bowden taken a “down” team (in those parts that means 7 wins) and elevated them back into the rankings?

And when we speak of those rankings, Sonny’s teams have finished there only twice: 1997 and 2000, at 14 and #17 respectively. All those bowls? A 3-6 mark in those, with one of the wins versus a losing North Texas team.

With his last half decade in steady decline, Goat Pumpers point to his miraculous “turn around” in his early years in the Fort. They don’t point to the heart of his 1994 and 1995 teams that were recruited by his predecessor Earle Bruce, and the fact that both of those teams were sufficiently pummeled in the bowl by a below-average Michigan in 94 and a stout K-State in 1995 (teams that CU beat in each of those years, respectively.)

His 1997 team was flush talent recruited off the 94 and 95 campaigns, in-state school boys included. That was a time when some young brash coach at CU was for all intents and purposes ignoring the Colorado HS ranks, allowing Goat U to harvest some of the state’s best. Throw in some outstanding assistant coaches, and Sonny and his media cronies were openly talking about a major bowl run in 1998 that never materialized.

Don’t forget Sonny isn’t a real “Saint” either; whether he’s cussing out a local “CU” reporter, calling his own AD “Mickey Mouse,” running up the score on teams, recruiting questionable character players, or allowing his loose cannon QB to spout off ad naseum while in school, or show up on his sideline acting like a jackass when out of school. All things that have been swept under the green rug in the Fort.

We know the Goats beat the Buffs four times under Sonny’s watch, but we also know his old-coot attitude cost him a win by running Marcus Houston up the gut and blowing the 04 game. His kicking gaffes might have cost him the 05 game; his lack of defensive adjustments allowed Joel Klatt to look like Dan Marino in the 03 game. Just this past year, his stubbornness in thinking Kyle Bell was Jamal Lewis probably cost him the Mile High Showdown.

So as the chief goat herder rides off into the sunset, us “arrogant” Buff fans shed no tears, perhaps offer a hearty handshake, and know that Sonny isn’t the Saint he’s cracked up to be.