A Deeper Look at Tad Boyle’s Impact at Colorado

I know that stories about Tad Boyle’s success have been written to death and nobody questions that Boyle is good for Colorado basketball, but I’m going to go behind the scenes to show you the real Tad Boyle.

Boyle’s path to Colorado wasn’t always easy.

When Tad Boyle walked onto Colorado’s campus as the new head basketball coach four years ago, nobody knew what to expect. He had spent the past 16 years bouncing around different collegiate programs and working a myriad of different coaching positions before he set foot in the Coors Events Center. Hell, this guy started out a stockbroker and investment advisor for his first 10 years after college while he coached high school basketball on the side.

But in 1994, everything changed. After Boyle was involved in car accident that almost took his life, he decided it was time to make some changes in his life. He quit his job as a broker/investment advisor and pursued his dream of coaching college basketball.

When I talked to Boyle a couple years back about this life-changing decision, he said that his heart and his mind were in two different places at the time.

"“At the end of the day, when my head hit the pillow at night, I would be thinking about the team I was coaching and the young men that I was coaching. I wasn’t thinking about what the stock market was going to do the next day or about where interest rates were headed or the world economy, I was thinking about the young men I was coaching. That gave me the indication that that’s where my heart was, where my passion was:  helping young men.”"

He began his official coaching career that year at Oregon as an assistant coach, and stayed there for three years before moving on to Tennessee, where he worked as the director of basketball operations for a year. From there, he returned to assistant coaching for two years at Jacksonville State before earning a spot as the associate head coach of Wichita State in 2000.

He remained there for the next six years until he was finally offered a head coaching position at the University of Northern Colorado. In his four years there, he completely turned around a dying program.

Although his first Bears team only finished 4-24 during the 2006-07 season, his success slowly but surely grew once he gained his footing in the program. His 2007-08 team finished 13-16, and in 2009 he reached a division one milestone for the program when his team hit 14 wins (14-16). In his final year with the program, he led the Bears to the most wins in the school’s history: 25-8.

In 2010, Colorado offered Boyle his second and most successful head coaching position.

Mar 5, 2014; Stanford, CA, USA; Colorado Buffaloes head coach Tad Boyle reacts to a call during the first half of the game against the Stanford Cardinal at Maples Pavilion. Mandatory Credit: Ed Szczepanski-USA TODAY Sports

That’s when he grabbed the University of Colorado’s attention. By that point, CU’s basketball program had been suffering under head coach Jeff Bzdelik (2007-2010). Under his command, the Buffaloes saw three consecutive losing seasons after going 12-20 (2007-08), 9-22 (2008-09), and 15-16 (2009-2010). The Buffs were desperate for new leadership.

In Boyle’s first season with the Buffaloes, he broke a school record for the most wins in a single season (24). But the record-breaking didn’t stop there; he also helped his team win a program-best 18 home games. By the end of the regular season, their record earned them a spot in the NIT tournament, where they worked their way into the semifinals before losing to Alabama by one point (62-61).

But that was when the Buffaloes were still part of the Big 12 conference. The year after his inaugural season at Colorado, Boyle and the Buffaloes made the move over to a tough Pac-12 conference, where the Buffs enjoyed even more success.

In his next three seasons at CU, Boyle led the Buffs to three more 20-win seasons (24-12, 21-12, and 23-12 this past season).

In that same interview from a few years back, Boyle said, “All those stops along the way in assistant coaching positions and head coaching positions have given me a perspective of how special the University of Colorado is and how fortunate I am to be the coach here.”

Boyle is making a lasting impression in the program.

In Colorado basketball’s 113-year history, only eight teams have achieved 20+-win seasons, and only two coaches own two or more of those. Ricardo Patton (1996-2007) earned a pair in his tenure with the program, but he achieved those several years apart from each other in the 2002-03 and 2005-06 seasons. Tad Boyle owns four of those 20-win seasons, and he’ll be entering his fifth year at CU this year.

“Tad has done something few thought possible—turn Colorado into a basketball school. The Buffaloes have as much of an impact in their new conference as any other team transitioning to a new league and that is a credit to Tad and his staff.”

You do the math. No coach has ever done what Boyle has achieved in just four years, and it doesn’t look like he’ll be stopping any time soon.

The bottom line is Tad Boyle has a way of simplifying the game to a point where all of his teams, no matter what their range of talents are, can compete and make a name for themselves. He’s turning around the basketball program for the better, and he’s got an unlimited amount of potential for the long-run.

ESPN Senior College Basketball Writer Andy Katz couldn’t have said it any better:

“Tad has done something few thought possible—turn Colorado into a basketball school. The Buffaloes have as much of an impact in their new conference as any other team transitioning to a new league and that is a credit to Tad and his staff.” (Credit: University of Colorado Media Relations)