With the benefit of hindsight, Tad Boyle isn’t sure that what he has built over the past 12 years with the Colorado men’s basketball program would be possible in this day and age.
When Boyle was named the Buffs’ head coach in 2010, basketball players had to sit for one season after transferring, with very few exceptions. The push for college athletes being able to profit off of their name, image and likeness was still in its infancy. Conference realignment was occurring, sure, but in Boyle’s case, his new employer was soon to be headed to what appeared at the time to be greener pastures.
Over his 12 years in Boulder, Boyle has put together as impressive of a resume as any Colorado men’s basketball coach ever. His 254 wins are six shy of matching Sox Walseth’s program record for victories by a coach. The Buffs have made the NCAA Tournament in five of his 12 seasons at the helm and almost certainly would have secured a sixth berth had the 2020 tournament not been canceled in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. For reference, from 1969 until 2010, Colorado had crashed the Big Dance just twice.
Had he arrived in his current post a decade later, he isn’t sure things would have transpired in the way they have. A program that relies on player development needs continuity, the kind that can be hard to achieve in the sport in 2022.
“We were fortunate to get traction early,” Boyle said Wednesday. “I look back 12 years ago and if the rules were back then what they are today, it would have been a very, very different beginning to my career because everybody would have gotten in the transfer portal. It would have been like LSU this year, where a guy gets there and there's nobody there. Everybody's left. They've either gone pro or they're transferred out. Fortunately for me, that didn't happen.”
While beneficial to athletes who for too long were deprived of basic rights so many others in college sports got to enjoy, changes to rules governing transfers and name, image and likeness have fundamentally altered the way the sport functions.
For Boyle and his staff, NIL is something they handle on a case-by-case basis.
“I can tell you this – if NIL is one of the first things that comes out of their mouths that’s important to them, they’re probably not the kid for us,” Boyle said. “If they're talking about how they want a great college experience for their son, they want a great education, they want to play big-time college basketball, they want an opportunity to play at the next level, they want to get better every day, they want to get in the weight room, they want to do all the things that it takes to be successful and then NIL comes up, then we're talking to the right family.”
It’s not the only factor that has made the ground on which Boyle and so many others stand feel slightly unsettled.
The moves of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC and USC and UCLA to the Big Ten have once again made realignment an omnipresent concern in college sports. For Colorado, a member of a conference that will lose arguably its two most prominent members in a couple of years, those anxieties are magnified. Boyle said he is only asked so much about the uncertainty surrounding the Buffs’ current conference home, but whatever happens to the Pac-12 – which he believes will survive around its 10 remaining members – he’s confident in Colorado’s place in that larger puzzle.
“We're together until we're not,” he said. “If we stick together, I think our media rights deal will be positive because I think there's enough interest in our institutions, the Pacific Time Zone and the media markets that we all represent. I think the Pac-12 can be really, really strong going forward. Now, if I'm wrong and the Pac-12 doesn't stick together, the University of Colorado is going to land on its feet. We came from the Big 12. We represent the Denver media market, which is a significant one, the Mountain Time Zone, which, guess what? The networks that are carrying live college basketball and football, they want the Denver media market and they want the Denver time zone. We will be in a good, solid league at the end of the day. I'm not worried about that. I think our brand is strong. Our university’s strong. We’ll land on our feet. I believe that to my core.”
Boyle’s comments were a part of a 30-minute phone interview Wednesday between the Colorado coach and CU Sports Report. The transcript of the remainder of that call is below.
Heading into this season, you’re six wins away from matching the program record for wins by a single coach. If I would have told you that when you took over there in 2010, what would you have told me?
“When I took over here, I wouldn't have believed it. I remember driving around with a real estate agent looking at houses, my wife was, and I said you gotta keep it within a reasonable range because I could be fired in three or four years. When you take over a job, you’re not 100% sure. When you look back at the coaches who have been at Colorado, most of them have not left here on their own terms. It was daunting, especially going from Northern Colorado to Colorado. I had confidence in myself and our staff and what we could do, but you just never know…We really gained some traction. We parlayed that into some great recruiting classes. The rest is history. Here it is 12 years later, going into year 13. I'm very fortunate. I love Colorado as much today as I did when I was hired and obviously I'm in a lot different of a spot. I think I’ve got more solid footing under my feet. We've built something pretty special in my opinion.”
