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Knudson: McElwain Brings in Pacesetters

By Mark Knudson, The Mtn. Insider
February 2, 2012

I’d buy a used car from Jim McElwain.

It remains to be seen if McElwain is the man to turn around the sagging fortunes of Colorado State football, but there’s little doubt that he has no doubts. Confident, calculating and probably exhausted, McElwain met the media on Wednesday to introduce his first class of signees on National Letter of Intent Day.

Signing Day has never carried the significance in this part of the country that it does in other places, notably the South and Midwest where it’s very nearly a state holiday in some locales. Still, recruiting being the lifeblood of every college football program, bringing in young talent is the first step in fixing what has been ailing the CSU program.

McElwain had very little time to construct a full class of recruits following his hiring in mid December. It’s doubtful he’s gotten much sleep since taking the job - and logging almost 10,000 air miles - while pulling double duty as the new coach at CSU and the offensive coordinator for the National Champion, Alabama. He became the Rams headman full time after the final gun on January 9 and spent the last three weeks going a million miles an hour to try to catch up.

He and his yet-to-be-fully-introduced coaching staff put together something of a mystery class.  You didn’t find a lot of info on the newest Rams-to-be on any of the recruiting web sites. Those guys only had CSU bringing in less than half of the 24 players they ended up signing. Unlike the players McElwain helped recruit for the Crimson Tide the past four years, none of these guys have a bunch of stars next to their names.  There are a few that started their college careers at other major college programs, but no one that the big schools were fighting over leading up to signing day.

That didn’t sway the always upbeat McElwain. This class, he noted, “will always have a special piece of my heart, because they’re the ones that first saw the vision.”
 
How good are they? That’s all guesswork at this point. But they all have one key trait, according to the coach. “It’s all about being a pacesetter,” he said. “They’re all winners.”

McElwain started out by poking holes in the standard “this is a great class…” coach speak.
 
''There's a lot of ball coaches right now sitting up there telling you how great their recruiting classes are,'' he continued.  ''I hope this class is great. I'm really excited about the guys that are part of this class, and I'll tell you how good they are in about three years; that's how it is, and that's how it should be, because they need to develop in everything we ask them to do.”

Each new Ram is being instructed to leave his ego at the door. It’s all about the team going forward.

''This is not about an individual who we sign; this is about a group of Rams,'' he added. ''This is about a group that is going to come in together and bond with the rest of our team to help our program and our university be successful, and that's what I'm really excited about.''

You can tell right away that there’s something different about this guy. Instead of standing behind a podium and scrolling through the name, rank and serial number of each new recruit, he clipped on a cordless microphone and worked the room full of media types like he was Tony Robbins. Part informative, part motivational and ever educational. That’s Jim McElwain.

Like his new recruits, the proof will be in the doing – the winning, actually – for the new head coach.
See all of Mark Knudson's blog entries HERE.