Boulder, CO—The Colorado Buffaloes fan base is proud to have had a good, winning football team for the first time in almost 20 years under the direction of Coach Prime. However, from 1982 to 1994, another Coach in Boulder turned Colorado into a football powerhouse in the late 80s and early 90s.
William (Bill) McCartney (Coach Mac) was born in Riverview, Michigan, and knew from childhood that he would be a coach. He played college football at the University of Missouri. Once he was done, he went back home to Michigan and began his coaching career coaching high school basketball before making the transition to coach high school football as an assistant coach, then later landing a head coaching job in the high school ranks. After eight years of coaching basketball and football, McCartney received a phone call from the Univeristy of Michigan's Bo Schembechler asking him to come in and be his defensive ends coach for the Wolverines.
Ann Arbor, Michigan, was one of the top programs in the country, and McCartney loved coaching the Wolverines. After two years as the DE coach under Schembechler, McCartney was named the defensive coordinator. With one of the top defenses in the country, little did Coach Mac know that he was about to receive a job offer that would change college football forever.
The University of Colorado football team was the worst in the country in the BIG 8 at the time, and no one feared the Buffaloes. The Big 8 was also run by the Nebraska Cornhuskers, their head coach Tom Osborne, and the Oklahoma Sooners and head coach Barry Switzer. On June 9th, 1982, Bill McCartney was named the head coach of the Buffaloes, and that day he introduced a rivalry, Coach Mac, in the 30 for 30 by ESPN "The Gospel According to Mac," talked about why he created the rivalry he said "I'm from Michigan, Michigan and Ohio State, Oh how I hate Ohio State…. So when I got to Colorado, I said "who's our rival, who's the team we can't get out of our minds?" One of the players spoke up and said Coach, we don't have one. "I looked at the bigger picture, and we are a neighboring state to Nebraska, so we identified Nebraska, and I got up and said that in a press conference, it drew laughs." Said, Coach Mac. This was because Nebraska and head Coach Tom Osborne came in and would kill Colorado regularly.
One of the things that caused concerns was that he was a very open Christian man; some people of Boulder were not fans of the religion, and football was not mixing. His first three years were terrible, but then Coach Mac made some recruiting moves to shake up the city of Boulder—bringing in athletes like Greg Thomas, Eric Bienemy, Kordell Stewart, Sal Aunessee, JJ Flanigan, and others. Boulder was a predominantly white culture, and most of the players he was recruiting were intercity African Americans and were considered "thugs," similar to what the University of Miami (FL) in the 80s was doing. He was going and getting players like national recruits, and he did home visits and would sit down with the mother. Coach Mac said, "Because a lot of the time in the inner city family household, it's a single mother, and the mother wanted to know her son would be safe with you." he would tell the recruit to get lost, and the recruits would come back in, and Coach Mac and his mother would be reading the bible. Then came step two of his plan. Get them on campus. Coach Mac planned to get the recruit on campus because the minute they see the Flatiron mountains and the scenery, they will not want to go anywhere else, not Lincoln or Norman. They would go after the same players Nebraska did, and Coach Mac said, "I CAN SELL BOULDER OVER LINCOLN," and a lot of times, he did just that.
Once Coach Mac got his guys in Boulder, it was off to the races for the Buffaloes. Coach McCartney was 93-55-5 in his college coaching career. In 12 years in Boulder, Coach Mac led the Buffaloes to three Big 8 championships, coached the school's first Heisman Winner in Rashaan Salaam in 1994, and the Buffaloes made two national championships runs, winning one in 1990, but they shared the title with Georgia Tech. Back then, the coaches poll also decided who won the national championship as well and if you were #1 in the AP poll, you won the national championship, but if you weren't #1 in the coaches poll, you shared that national championship with the team that was number one in the coaches poll. In this case, Colorado lost by one vote to Georgia Tech in the Coaches poll, and that one vote came from Nebraska Head Coach Tom Osborne because Colorado had been a real competitor to them, and Oklahoma was now in the Big 8. Coach Mac made all Colorado fans hate Nebraska, and Nebraska fans began to hate Colorado, and nowadays, they can not stand the black and gold. Coach Mac always said, "I RATHER BE DEAD THAN RED."
Coach Bill McCartney passed away on January 10th, 2025. Coach McCartney was the savior of Colorado football, and now the torch has been passed to Coach Prime to get the Buffaloes back to college football dominance. The 30 for 30 "The gospel according to Mac" is available for streaming on ESPN+ to learn more about the history of Colorado football and Coach Mac.
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