CSU coach Mike Bobo as steady as his message

Don’t be fooled by the $1.35 million-a-year-salary, the staff of nine assistant coaches and about a dozen others he oversees, or the 120 players on the CSU football team who hang on every word he says.

Mike Bobo is no different now, said his wife, Lainie, than he was in 1998, when he was making $12,000 a year as a graduate assistant at the University of Georgia, where he had been the star quarterback the previous two seasons.

He gets his hair cut alongside students at a Great Clips not far from campus and quietly blends into the crowd when he slips out for a bite to eat. He offers a quick “How ya’ll doin’ ” in his thick Georgia accent and smile to everyone he passes, whether he’s walking across campus or through the corridors of the McGraw Athletic Center adjacent Moby Arena.

“He’s still the same guy, and he’s not going to change,” said Will Friend, who followed Bobo from the University of Georgia to Colorado State University to continue working for his closest friend. “That’s one of his best strengths. He’s going to be who he is.”

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Remember that image former CSU coach Jim McElwain often played up of the good ol’ boy from Montana, who just happened to know a lot about coaching and football? That’s the kind of guy Bobo is. The son of a high school football coach who had never spent more than six months outside of his home state of Georgia before accepting his first job as a head coach at CSU last December, when McElwain was lured away by Florida and a $3.5 million-a-year paycheck.

Mike Bobo, 41, is somebody you’d strike up a conversation with while waiting in line at the grocery store and, within a few minutes, be speaking to him like you had been friends for decades.

“Mike’s very down to earth,” Friend said. “He’s got a competitive streak, but he’s also a guy with a great sense of humor. He doesn’t think too highly of himself, so he’s easy to get along with.”

The more people get to know him, the more they like him. It’s always been that way, said Lainie, who met him in downtown Athens, Georgia, while both were students at Georgia.

He’s a family man who does what he can to spend quality time with his wife and five children — Drew, 11; triplets Olivia, Jake and Ava, 9; and Kate, 8, while working in a profession that doesn’t allow as many of those opportunities as he would like.

He brought three of his kids with him to a Saturday practice in August so Lainie could run the other two to their football and tennis practices. He’ll sometimes shoot baskets early in the morning with his two boys before he heads to the office and they go off to school. He was planning to catch a 6 a.m. flight home from a recruiting trip Saturday morning to make it back in time to see Drew’s team play in a championship football game.

He goes to church with his family on Sunday mornings before meeting with his assistant coaches in the afternoon. The best part of a bye this past week, he said, was the chance to get home for dinner with the family on a Monday night.

“I think what we’ve just tried to do is make that family time when we do have it,” Lainie said. “It’s precious, and we try to make it count.”

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Everything counts with Bobo.

He loves to compete, and he hates to lose.

Friend remembers a cookout with the Bobos at his house several years ago in Georgia.

After they got the kids settled inside to watch a movie, Friend and his wife, Carrie, played a game of corn hole — one of Bobo’s favorite leisure activities — against Mike and Lainie. When the Friends won, Mike Bobo insisted the couples play a game of darts against each other. Then a game of pool.

“We won two out of three,” Friend said. “I can’t remember how it was, but we were the champions.

“Well, we had to do it all over again. So sometimes, it’s better off just to let him win.”

That’s Mike Bobo. He’s determined to win, and he won’t stop competing until he does.

He was that way as a player, working his way up the depth chart for two years before earning the starting job in 1996-97. He’s No. 2 on Georgia’s all-time list for touchdown passes (38) and No. 3 in career completions (445) and passing yards (6,334).

And he’s that way as a coach. He moved up the ranks at his alma mater from graduate assistant to quarterbacks coach to coordinator of a Georgia offense that scored a school-record 537 points in 2014 and ranked among the nation’s top 15 teams in scoring, rushing offense, passing efficiency and fourth-down conversions.

Other opportunities had come along for him to become a head coach, Lainie said. But CSU was the first one fit him and his family.

“I think that he was just looking for a job that he felt would really be kind of the whole package,” she said. “A program that had a lot of history, that had a great opportunity to be successful, and then, on top of that, would provide a good community to raise a family.”

Wins have been harder to come by in his first season at CSU than he expected. The adjustments to a new coaching staff and new offensive and defensive schemes have taken longer than he expected.

The Rams, who have a bye this weekend, are 3-4 overall and 1-2 in the Mountain West.

“Any time you lose, in anything you do, it hurts,” Bobo said after a recent practice. “And me, I want to immediately get back out there. ‘What do we have to do to fix it?’

“To me, it’s always you’ve got to go back to work, you’ve got to work harder.”

Bobo said he’s tried to dial back his emotions a bit as a head coach. He’s not quite as animated as he was when he was an assistant. He’s more patient and offers more encouragement.

Senior tackle Sam Carlson said Bobo is the most personable head coach he’s ever had. Players know his office door is always open, and they’re comfortable popping in to talk about problems they might be having on or off the field or simply just to say hello.

“He’s relatable; he’s easy to talk to,” Carlson said.

Bobo’s also focusing more on the big picture, and his view of what CSU can accomplish is no different now than it was when he accepted the job 10 months ago.

“I believe in what we’re trying to do, and I believe this place can be special,” he said last weekend after a 38-23 win over Air Force.

His message hasn’t changed, and neither has he.

“Football is his job, and coaching is his livelihood, and he loves it,” Lainie said. “But when he’s with us, or if he’s just out eating breakfast, he’s just a normal guy. He’s just Dad. He’s just my husband.

Follow reporter Kelly Lyell at twitter.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news.