Buffalo Soldier

It was an hour and a half into the 14th and final spring football practice at Colorado last Thursday when Dan Hawkins gave the command. "Thirty-second utopia!" shouted the Buffaloes' new coach, and 80 players, plus several of his assistants, dropped to the grass like Deltas flopping onto the dance floor at the toga party in Animal House. "See yourself making plays!" yelled Hawkins. "See yourself making the pick, making the tackle! Envision 13-0! Feel the energy! Visualize it!" � Who knows what thoughts went through the players' minds as they gazed at the sky, but each would have been justified in thinking, We're a long way from Houston. � They were also 131 days and one coach removed from the catastrophic 70-3 defeat to Texas in the Big 12 title game at Reliant Stadium. That rout accomplished what a series of sordid episodes had not: got Gary Barnett canned. Hired in 1999, Barnett had coached the Buffs to 49 wins and one conference championship, and through scandals and controversies that included allegations of sexual assault by Colorado players and the use of alcohol and strippers to entice recruits during visits to Boulder. � Though no player or coach was ever charged with a crime, the school president resigned, the athletic director was forced out and the chancellor was shuttled to another job during the tenure of Barnett, but he, for the most part, was absolved of blame. He could not, however, survive the added embarrassment of the on-field debacle against Texas, finally getting fired on Dec. 8 (the blow softened by a $3 million buyout). Eight days later Hawkins was introduced as the new coach. "Let's throw a little Hawk love out there," he proclaimed at the press conference, "and let's get going."

Hawkins arrived from Boise State, where his teams won 53 of 63 games and four WAC titles in five seasons. His penchant for offensive pyrotechnics, positive reinforcement and Zen principles made for a cozy fit in Boulder, a liberal enclave once described by The Denver Post as being "nestled between the mountains and reality."

The reality for Hawkins, a logger's son from Bieber, Calif. (pop. 600), is that he was hired not only to win more games than Barnett did but also to serve as a kind of sorbet--to cleanse the palates of Colorado fans disgusted by the program's off-field failings. Says the Hawk, who has a fondness for nautical metaphors, "We've got to get this thing off the shoals, out of the mud."

How to chart that course? How to restore self-esteem to players who lost their last three regular-season games by a combined score of 130-22? Hawkins gave SI a front-row seat for his first four months on the job, starting with his initial team meeting, in which he drew on a variety of subjects, from the importance of triangulation at team meetings to the wisdom of Bagger Vance.

On a frigid Monday night in mid-January, the Buffaloes came in from the cold, small groups of them trickling into the clean, well-lighted atrium of the Dal Ward Athletic Center. Hawkins had spoken to them briefly in December, but this is his first full-squad meeting, so he will be addressing a team he has yet to win over. Jordon Dizon, a linebacker from Kauai, Hawaii, shows up in flip-flops, asking no one in particular, "How could it be so cold?" Dizon will say later that the firing of Barnett had left him and many of his teammates "upset and disappointed."

Hawkins says nothing, waiting with his hands in his pockets for the room to fall silent. When it does, he tells the players a study found that students who perform best tend to sit in a triangular area, the first row of seats comprising its base. "All you guys out there," he says, motioning to players beyond the triangle, "you're fringe guys. And if you're on the fringe, you might as well not even be here."

The triangle is quickly filled in, and then Hawkins congratulates the team for its 19-10 loss to Clemson in the Champs Sports Bowl on Dec. 27. Because when you follow up a morale-crushing, 67-point loss that cost your coach his job with a gutty effort in a narrow loss the next game, there is such a thing as a moral victory. "You guys really scrapped. You really battled," Hawkins says. While it is not his intention to boast, he says, he wants them to know that his Boise State squads were among the top offensive teams in the nation five years running. "You mix in some Boise State with some Pac-10"-- Hawkins hired offensive coordinator Mark Helfrich from Arizona State and poached receivers coach Eric Kiesau from Cal--"that's some serious voodoo, and we're fired up about unleashing it on the Big 12. We're going to shock some people."

Quintessential Hawk Moment I: Soon after, he screens a clip from The Legend of Bagger Vance. "There's a perfect shot out there trying to find each and every one of us," the mystical caddie Vance (played by Will Smith) tells the struggling golfer ( Matt Damon). "All we got to do is get ourselves out of its way. Let it choose us.... I can't take you there.... [I] just hopes I can help you find a way."

"Guys," says Hawkins, when the lights come back up, "this thing is way bigger than football.... It's about getting a hundred guys who believe in something bigger than themselves to go out there and just cut it loose. I'm kind of like Will Smith: I can't take you there, but I can help you find the way. This may sound corny, but I totally believe there's a reason I'm here. This is a great school with a great football tradition. And I don't care what went on before or what people think. But I know where we're going from this point on.

"This place chose me," he says, echoing Bagger Vance, "and I chose this place."