Highlights from Colorado Buffaloes Media Day

CU Media Day is one of the best days of the year. With neutral questions and cliché answers filling the room, this day signifies the start of the new football year and all the joy of sports media to come.

Today was fun. Clichés are fun in a semi-ironic, “how vague can this answer be to this equally vague question” kind of way. A reporter starting a question with “Talk about...” is a great way to see which reporters you never want to have an intelligent conversation with. Optimism is also fun because every player was great in the spring and every player is about to have their breakout year. Asking someone questions they’re not expecting to hear is fun because you can hear their authentic answer that they have’t been coached to say.

The best part of today was seeing Mike MacIntyre get all giddy talking about Phillip Lindsay and Ryan Moeller. With Lindsay, Mac loves the way he fights, the way he leads the team by example, and he’s accomplished everything by working tirelessly for it. On the topic of emphasizing in-state recruiting, Mac spoke highly of Lindsay being a proud Coloradan, “If you cut Phillip Lindsay open, he would bleed black and gold, but he would also bleed Colorado. He loves Colorado, he truly loves to represent [the state].”

On Moeller, I’ll let Mac speak for himself:

“Ryan Moeller is a special young man . . . He was first-team all-conference last year on the special teams. What I think happened there was that he only played on 2 special teams, but he was dominant, and he made so many plays on defense in that hybrid spot. I think all the coaches said, ‘He’s gotta be All-Pac-12 somewhere,’ and [special teams] is where they put him. He’s got a great sense of humor, he’s been an excellent leader, and I’ve really grown to love and admire Ryan Moeller for walking on here, competing, being an unsung hero. He’ll be a hybrid again — at safety, outside linebacker and special teams — and #25 will be showing up all over the place, he’s fun to watch.

Someone asked MacIntyre about the Colorado State rivalry ending in the coming years. Mac said the schedule is out of his control — it’s for the AD and the President; he’ll just play whoever is on the schedule — but on the rivalry he said, “I enjoy playing them, I think it’s a good game. It’s a lot of fun to have 70,000 people there on a Friday night. It’s exciting for the state, it’s exciting for the high school kids in the state.”

I have slight speaking problems so I get really nervous if I have to speak to a group, but I summoned the courage to ask Mac three questions, two of which I struggled to ask because of my aforementioned speaking problems. The first question was “With the secondary depth, what roles will Dante Wigley and Nick Fisher play?” Mac said that they will both see a lot of time — Wigley as the third cornerback and Fisher playing lots of safety — and that he’s confident in their development.

The second question was, “Going back to Lindsay, with Sefo [Liufau] gone [to graduation] d-do you, uh, do you see him as a, uhh, natural replacement to be the team leader?” Mac answered that Lindsay has been a leader for CU the past three years (Ah dang, I knew that, why did I ask such a bad question?) and that he would step up to lead with the other captains, Derek McCartney, Rick Gamboa and Jeromy Irwin.

The third question was, “Can we be optimistic that we can see Javier [Edwards] on the offense, uh, offensive idea — I mean, will he be on offensive goal-line sets as a running back?” Mac retorted, “Oh, a Refrigerator back, is that what you want? No, you won’t see him on that at all. You might seem him on special teams but you won’t see him on offense. Don’t tell him that him either because he’ll be in my ear, he’s always in my ear ... he’ll probably read about this and be in my office tonight.”

I’m sorry, Javier, we’re on your team.