Stephens: Mike Bobo’s tears inspire CSU football team

A wedding. A funeral. The birth of a child.

It’s not often a grown man will let himself cry.

Imagine the reaction from a room full of college football players as they witnessed their coach, Mike Bobo, shed a tear while discussing his family and faith.

Respect.

While no players were against CSU hiring Bobo as its football coach in December, there was a sense of “here we go again.” For 10 seniors, Bobo was their third head coach at Colorado State University. But in the nine months since he was brought on board, the Rams thought they’d bought in to his style of coaching, his passion for his players.

They were wrong. What sold them was seeing him cry before the start of preseason camp.

This wasn’t only a man they wanted to play for. This was a man they wanted to be.

“If a grown man can stand up in front of his team and cry, I will lay down anything and go fight with him,” senior safety Kevin Pierre-Louis said. “Growing up, my father always told me, ‘Men don’t cry.’ When you see that, it brings a soft part out of you to make you ready to go to war with that person because they shared something very deep.

“It will take me a lot to cry in front of anybody, and once I reach that point, I’m in a serious moment. I take that very seriously that he shared those tears ... I was already bought in, but now I’m more strongly engaged to go to war for coach Bobo.”

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What exactly Bobo said is sacred to the CSU meeting rooms. What’s not a secret is the passion he has for his players, a group of guys that, all things considered, he hasn’t had a lot of time to build personal relationships with. After he was hired, it took about a month before he could start meeting his team because the players were still on winter break.

But he made the time. He had to.

Bobo knew the situation he was walking into. He’d be the third coach for his most experienced players, after Steve Fairchild and Jim McElwain, and that last guy had a bit of success before leaving for swampier pastures. If he wanted to them to know he cared about their well-being, he’d have to prove his interest in them didn’t end when they walk off the field.

“You’ve got to get to know these guys. There’s got to be a trust factor. They have to know me more than just on the field getting after them. They have to know who I am as a person, who my wife is, who my children are. I have to open up to them,” Bobo said. “For them to trust us as coaches, they have to believe in us.

“Is every player on the team going to come up and give me a hug? No, not at all. … We’re going to be hard on them, we’re going to demand on them, but at the same time we’re going to love all of them. It might hurt their feelings sometimes when you’re honest with them, but they’re going to respect it.”

By no means has fostering relationships with members of a new roster been easy. His best player didn’t even want to talk to him the first time he reached out.

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“I remember getting a call from him,” said wide receiver Rashard Higgins, a 2014 Biletnikoff Award finalist. “I was at my girlfriend’s house and some number came up, and it was like Georgia, and I was like ‘Who is this calling me?

“I told my girlfriend to answer it and she said, ‘It’s Mike Bobo.’ I said, ‘Play like I’m asleep.’ I didn’t want to talk to him.

“I kind of just ducked that call.”

When Higgins returned from Texas after break, he met Bobo in person and admitted he wasn’t really asleep (Bobo knew). Now Higgins doesn’t know why he was so nervous to talk to his coach; he can’t stop praising the man.

And neither can anyone else.

For insight and analysis on athletics around Northern Colorado and the Mountain West, follow sports columnist Matt L. Stephens at twitter.com/mattstephens and facebook.com/stephensreporting.