Buffs Elect Captains For 2018 Season

BOULDER — The 100-plus players on the University of Colorado football team elected their 2018 captains late Wednesday afternoon, and after the final votes were tallied, seven players earned the title of captain for the upcoming season.

Six are seniors, including inside linebacker Rick Gamboa, who was also a captain last year and thus becomes the 14th player in school history to be named a captain twice. He is joined by receivers Kabion Ento, Jay MacIntyre and Juwann Winfree, safety Nick Fisher and punter Alex Kinney. The seventh player elected was junior offensive tackle Aaron Haigler.

“I’m excited about the guys who they elected to be the captains for the 2018 Buffaloes,” CU head coach Mike MacIntyre said. “Their teammates did a great job in picking them out. This is something the players have always taken seriously, and this year they deliberated for 45 minutes. I actually told them four-to-six captains is an optimum number, and they asked if we could have seven, which is fine since they felt that strongly about this group. They’re going to do a great job and I’m really pleased with the players that they elected.”

The process has been the same in MacIntyre’s six-year tenure at CU: he explains in advance to the team what the desired criteria is for someone to be nominated for a team captain. The players then have a few days to consider who they want to nominate, and then in a full team meeting amongst themselves with no coaches present, they nominate and then visually vote on which teammates will be named a captain.

Gamboa enters his senior year 19th on CU’s all-time tackles list with 292 (145 solo); only 15 players in school history have recorded 300, and just five have been in on 400, both figures within his grasp. He is the sixth player under MacIntyre to be elected a captain at least twice, joining quarterback Sefo Liufau and tailback Phillip Lindsay (each three times), along with linebackers Addison Gillam and Kenneth Olugbode and receiver Nelson Spruce.

Ento redshirted last season but as a junior, averaged 21.8 yards per his eight receptions, which included two touchdowns.

Fisher, who is very active and desires to be a leader in the community, recorded the 11th 100-yard play in school history last fall when he returned an interception 100 yards for a touchdown against California (if scored like as in the NFL, it covered 109 yards).

Haigler has appeared in 24 career games, including 16 starts; his selection marks the ninth straight year that the captains have included an offensive lineman. Those include four players currently in the NFL: Nate Solder (2010), David Bakhtiari (2011), Daniel Munyer (2014) and Stephane Nembot (2015).

Kinney, a likely candidate for the Ray Guy Award as the nation’s best punter, is coming off a great junior season with a 43.8 average and a record 28 punts inside-the-20; the first punter to be named a CU captain since All-American Barry Helton in 1987, he had the best average in the nation last year over the final five weeks of the regular season (49.3).

MacIntyre, recovered from a foot injury that sidelined him in the spring, is currently 36th in all-time receptions (66) and 37th in yards (870); he’s looking to join the 17 players in CU history with 100 catches and the 28 with 1,000 yards.

Winfree overcame a season-ending knee injury in 2016 to make 21 receptions last year, with his top game against USC when he caught five passes for 163 yards and two scores. Against the Trojans, his TD catches covered 79 and 57 yards, the eighth time in school history had two receptions in the same game over 50 yards, and just the third time they were for touchdowns.

Story courtesy of the CU SID