I recall reading on this board a while ago the opinion that CU fans should not expect more than 7 or 8 win seasons in any given season. This has been festering with me for a while now.
If you follow college football at all, you know win/loss records ebb and flow in a cyclical way that follows a sine curve. That sine curve has amplitude (the extremes or highs and lows), and frequency or period (the number of ups and downs over some time period), and also the location of the central axis of the curve (called the mid-line). That mid-line can be positively or negatively biased around some axis, in our case the axis we are talking about the average number of wins for a P5 D1 football program.
My definition of a blue blood program is one where the win/loss curve has low amplitude, long periods/low frequency, and a very positively biased mid-line. Conversely, the worst programs also have low amplitude and long periods/frequency, but the mid-line is very negatively biased. Stepping stone programs have high amplitude, and high frequency of ups and downs as good coaches come and go, with a midline that vacillates around the average. Second tier programs also have high amplitude, but have low frequency, and in terms of mid-line they also tend to stay close to average.
CU is a second tier program. We have shown that we can rise to the highest heights of college football, and we have shown that we can fall to the lowest lows (high amplitude). We have also shown over time that we have a fairly long period/frequency in that when we are on a winning (or losing) trend, that trend can last for some number of years; and the midline seems to hover around the D1 average for wins per season. What this tells me, in terms of what to expect as fans, is that when CU is on the rise it is very reasonable to have very high expectations for performance (10+ wins), and conversely, when CU is falling back, we should know that the likelihood exists that things are going to be quite grimm (1 win...). Put differently our expectations should reasonably ebb and flow as the win/loss cycle ebbs and flows.
Why do I bring this up? Because when fans put limits on what CU can accomplish e.g. saying we are only really consistently good for 7 wins, and therefore we should expect no better in recruiting, or in coaching performance, it puts a cap on what we might be able to achieve. and relegates us to average. CU has been on the rise sine 2015. We have some momentum - while our W/L record is not great, recruiting has been better than it has been in years. With the right coaching we can push the trajectory of the program back toward positive and we can keep climbing. Otoh, if we get the wrong coach, we are in danger of permanently adopting a different curve that more closely approximates that of the worst programs in football, and this would be extremely hard to come back from. For that reason this coaching hire is one of the most important in my time as a CU football fan. This is not a time for people to be using limiting speech. This is the time to have the highest expectations for the program in the context of the next coach.
Also worth considering/discussion is why can the program not sustain success?...why do we fall so far when we fall? And, it is important to note how the recruiting scandal broke the sine curve, and pushed this down period to almost fifteen years.
If you follow college football at all, you know win/loss records ebb and flow in a cyclical way that follows a sine curve. That sine curve has amplitude (the extremes or highs and lows), and frequency or period (the number of ups and downs over some time period), and also the location of the central axis of the curve (called the mid-line). That mid-line can be positively or negatively biased around some axis, in our case the axis we are talking about the average number of wins for a P5 D1 football program.
My definition of a blue blood program is one where the win/loss curve has low amplitude, long periods/low frequency, and a very positively biased mid-line. Conversely, the worst programs also have low amplitude and long periods/frequency, but the mid-line is very negatively biased. Stepping stone programs have high amplitude, and high frequency of ups and downs as good coaches come and go, with a midline that vacillates around the average. Second tier programs also have high amplitude, but have low frequency, and in terms of mid-line they also tend to stay close to average.
CU is a second tier program. We have shown that we can rise to the highest heights of college football, and we have shown that we can fall to the lowest lows (high amplitude). We have also shown over time that we have a fairly long period/frequency in that when we are on a winning (or losing) trend, that trend can last for some number of years; and the midline seems to hover around the D1 average for wins per season. What this tells me, in terms of what to expect as fans, is that when CU is on the rise it is very reasonable to have very high expectations for performance (10+ wins), and conversely, when CU is falling back, we should know that the likelihood exists that things are going to be quite grimm (1 win...). Put differently our expectations should reasonably ebb and flow as the win/loss cycle ebbs and flows.
Why do I bring this up? Because when fans put limits on what CU can accomplish e.g. saying we are only really consistently good for 7 wins, and therefore we should expect no better in recruiting, or in coaching performance, it puts a cap on what we might be able to achieve. and relegates us to average. CU has been on the rise sine 2015. We have some momentum - while our W/L record is not great, recruiting has been better than it has been in years. With the right coaching we can push the trajectory of the program back toward positive and we can keep climbing. Otoh, if we get the wrong coach, we are in danger of permanently adopting a different curve that more closely approximates that of the worst programs in football, and this would be extremely hard to come back from. For that reason this coaching hire is one of the most important in my time as a CU football fan. This is not a time for people to be using limiting speech. This is the time to have the highest expectations for the program in the context of the next coach.
Also worth considering/discussion is why can the program not sustain success?...why do we fall so far when we fall? And, it is important to note how the recruiting scandal broke the sine curve, and pushed this down period to almost fifteen years.
