It goes without saying that since Mel Tucker has touched down to Boulder, gotten settled and brought his coaches in, he and they have very much established a reputation of being effective, personable recruiters.

Cole Lourd, a 6-foot-1, 185-pound QB from Beverly Hills, Calif., has been on the receiving end of the Buffs' genuine and honest recruiting methods.

He's yet to receive an offer from CU but speaks highly of his dealings with the Buffs thus far.

Lourd was part of a large crew of recruits from southern California in town for the Washington game, with recent commit Montana Lemonious-Craig sticking out among that group.

Right now, Lourd has offers from Florida Atlantic, Middle Tennessee State and William & Mary. While Colorado has yet to offer, but Jay Johnson and Will Peagler have been in steady contact with him since early September, having first gotten on his radar in the spring.

He had a lot of good things to say about his business dealings with the Buffs thus far, a school he said increasingly sticks out in terms of coaches' conduct, candor and transparency.

"Recruiting doesn’t necessarily start when you get an offer," Lourd said. "They’ve done a great job of building a relationship with me."

Here's how Lourd broke down how Johnson and Peagler have gone about doing that."

"UW, Washington State, schools like that, they’ll send me a million letters and stuff, but it’ll just be graphics or something, not a handwritten letter," he said. But coach Johnson and coach Peagler, they’ve done a really good job of always responding to my film, my texts (and) if I have any questions."

"You’ll here from some people in spurts — if you have one big game or get an offer, coaches will talk to you quickly. But coach Johnson and Peagler have stayed transparent with me — being friends, in a way, just not (interacting with me) as coaches. They talk to me about how my day went, how my classes are doing — not always asking about football and just being personable."

Lourd's mom, grandfather and great uncle are all University of Texas alums, while his dad went to LSU.

Recruiting often has as much to do with pleasing mom and dad as it does with connecting with the athlete themselves. In that regard, Johnson has also gotten off to a good start.

"When coach Johnson came by in the spring, I liked him a lot," Lourd said. "I felt a personality match. He spent five years as the (offensive) coordinator at Louisiana-Lafayette. He knows the whole Louisiana life and he and my dad got along really well. It was a whole personality match. He’s a good dude and I could see myself playing for him.”

Getting back to the transparency element, Lourd indicated that Johnson has been straight as an arrow throughout the whole process of contact — as of now, while he likes the former's film, Johnson is going to wait until further evaluations can be done this upcoming January and then consider dishing out an offer.

"Some coaches will say one thing to your face and then completely disregard it," Lourd said. "Coach Johnson has been very upfront with me throughout the whole process, which I like. Transparency and having the trust from a coordinator is something I look for. I don’t have an offer from Colorado yet. They’re just saying they want to take their time with everything and that even though my film looks good and I’m high on their board, they want to go through and look at all the dudes on their board."

This weekend, Lourd was in Death Valley as an unofficial visitor for the LSU/Texas A&M game.

He mentioned UCLA as another team talking to him often, but indicated a desire to leave Los Angeles and go to school somewhere new.

At the end of the day, Lourd receiving an offer from the Buffs is a possibility that likely won't become definite until the opening months of 2020. But it should go without saying that Colorado has laid good groundwork to be in a spot where if Lourd is offered, the Buffs will stick out of the pack.

So that's a plus, as is Lourd's overall perception about the direction of Colorado football.

“From the schools I’ve been in touch with, I’ve tried to watch their games as the season progresses, and (with) Colorado, you can just tell good things are going to happen. I feel like they have it going in the right direction and once everyone can get a year under their belt in the system, only good things are going to happen.”