Idaho State HC and ex-Colorado QB’s controversial message on Buffs fans
Current Idaho State head coach and former Colorado football quarterback Cody Hawkins had a controversial message on Buffaloes fans that he shared with the Denver Post’s Sean Keeler (subscription required).
“I’d tell (Coach Prime) this: CU fans are the best in the world and the worst fans in the world,” Hawkins prefaced before saying, “Just because there are people who are in and around the program who are super supportive of the program, but there are people who are not (from the) Rock Mountains, there are fair-weather fans from California — they are going to be Buffs fans, but they’re not really Buffs fans.
“Because (of) the nature of Colorado you get a lot of (feedback similar to) major markets, that you get in L.A. or New York, even though the area isn’t that big. I’ve been a lot of places, and rarely do people get shredded like the Buffs players get shredded.”
Analyst on what went wrong for Colorado football under Cody Hawkins’ father, Dan Hawkins
Hawkins’ father, Dan, coached the Buffs from 2006-2010, winning just 19 games in 58 contests. The Buffaloes had just one winning season under the elder Hawkins’ time in Boulder. In trying to figure out why Hawkins didn’t work out, Ralphie Report’s David Gerhardt believes Dan being an external hire with no experience recruiting at the Power Five level did him in.
“Dan Hawkins had an excellent record at Boise State,” Gerhardt prefaced before saying, “The first difference between the two situations, though, was that he was promoted from within. He didn’t build that staff from scratch, like he did at CU. This is key. Yes, he hired Chris Petersen away from Oregon (they overlapped at UC Davis when Petersen was a player and Hawkins was a Coach), but most of that staff was built up by Dirk Koetter. This is something that bothered me slightly when he was hired, considering he would have to build a staff from scratch, but he seemed plenty able to do it. Looking back, we should have known better.”
That description of Hawkins does sound vaguely similar to the Colorado football hire of Deion Sanders, and even more eerily similar to Auburn’s Bryan Harsin in 2021 and 2022. Hawkins didn’t have a Travis Hunter to fall back on or a star QB son like Shedeur Sanders on his team, though, making him more Harsin — down to the Boise State details — than Coach Prime.