Buffs Open Summer Session, Take Aim At 'Unfinished Business'

BOULDER — Summer vacation? Not for the Colorado Buffaloes. Not in this day and age of Division I football, and particularly not for a team that believes there's some unfinished business at hand.

For Mike MacIntyre's Buffs, summer means strength and conditioning. Summer means one more opportunity to prepare for fall camp. Summer means doing everything possible to be ready to hit the ground running when it comes time to put on the pads in fall camp and get ready for the season.

The new summer?

"Make it or break it," sixth-year senior tackle Jeromy Irwin said Monday morning. "That's when you figure out who's going to show up and put in the work. That's when you find out who really wants to win."

The Buffs know the importance of a strong summer session. A year ago, they used the opportunity as a springboard for a turnaround 2016 season, one that produced a 10-4 record, a Pac-12 South title and a bowl bid.

But last year's record won't score a single point this year. It's why Irwin and a majority of his teammates were on hand bright and early Monday morning for the first day of summer strength and conditioning — a day that for all intents and purposes also signaled the beginning of the 2017 season.

"There's no breaks from here on out," Irwin said. "Taking breaks gets you beat. There might be some discretionary time in there, but it's not going to be discretionary for us. We're not taking any breaks. We're going to be ready for this season."

The summer session, which coincides with CU's summer academic session, will last approximately six weeks. The Buffs will then get a few days off in late July before reporting for fall camp July 28 — only the third time in CU history that the Buffs have opened fall camp before August.

Then comes the Sept. 1 season opener against Colorado State in Denver (6 p.m.).

"It's here," Irwin said. "It's time to start getting ready for the season. We had four weeks of spring ball, but this is when the work really begins."

There's no doubt the atmosphere surrounding the 2017 Buffs is different than that of a year ago.

In 2016, the Buffs were quietly vowing to end a long stretch of losing seasons and a bowl drought that stretched over nearly a decade.

Now, they're facing an interesting set of circumstances: guarding against complacency from the inside while still facing doubts from the outside.

"You can get complacent really fast, especially when you go from having no success in the last five years to winning the Pac-12 South," Irwin said. "That's one of the things we're working on right now — the repeat mentality, trying to go farther than we did last year and perform at that level again. Even though we lost a good amount of good players, we have a lot of good up and coming players. We have to keep the mentality going."

The Buffs did indeed lose a number of key players, graduating eight seniors off a much-improved defense, along with a pair of offensive starters. It's one reason they aren't being included in many of the early top 25 preseason polls, and why they are still not being picked as a Pac-12 contender.

"We're CU — it's not surprising," Irwin said. "It's what happens when you only have a few successful seasons in about a 15-year stretch.

"But honestly, that stuff doesn't matter to us. What matters is what we believe and what we tell each other. At the end of the day, nobody really knows what's going on with our team besides the people who are on the inside. We knew what we could do last year and we went out and proved it. Now we want to come back and prove that it wasn't a fluke."

Irwin and his fellow captains — safety Afolabi Laguda, linebacker Rick Gamboa, linebacker Derek McCartney, tight end George Frazier and running back Phillip Lindsay — discuss summer plans regularly. Along with the required strength and conditioning workouts (which can also include some film study session with coaches), players can also host voluntary player-led workouts.

Those sessions can be ultra-important.

"We've got great leaders," Irwin said. "We meet and talk about what we need to get done — but most importantly, we're really good friends. We talk about what needs to be done and we do our best to make sure it gets done — and if it isn't good enough, like this morning at the workout, we make it clear it's not going to be that way again."

Irwin is one of just three players on the roster who signed with the 2012 recruiting class, the year before MacIntyre arrived. The other two, Gerrad Kough and McCartney, "grayshirted," meaning they didn't enroll until the ensuing January — making Irwin the only player on the roster who practiced under former head coach Jon Embree.

Irwin redshirted his first season in Boulder, then played in 2013 and 2014, stepping into the starting lineup as a sophomore. He suffered a season-ending injury early in 2015, and thus received a medical redshirt season. He came back to start 13 of CU's 14 games last season — and is now preparing to enter his sixth fall camp with the Buffs.

Irwin, a second-team All-Pac-12 selection last season, could have chosen to turn pro and quite likely would have found a home in an NFL training camp.

But he chose another year in the black and gold for two simple reasons.

"Obviously I'm trying to pursue my professional career, and this year's going to help me do that," he said. "But honestly, I feel like there's some unfinished business that we didn't take care of last year with our postseason performance. I want to continue to build on what we've built. We're not going to let this thing slide back."

BUFFS BITS: CU coaches, players and administrative staff welcomed a record 360 youth campers to their summer session on Monday. The camp, for youngsters first through eighth grade, runs through Wednesday and offers daily registration. … Freshman punter James Stefanou arrived on campus Monday, finished his paperwork for enrollment and will begin workouts on Tuesday. Stefanou, a native of Australia, will not only be the oldest freshman on the team, he'll be the oldest player on the team — he turned 30 in April. He's also a newlywed, having gotten married in early May. … For those interested in countdowns, Monday marked 88 days until the season opener vs. CSU and 53 days until the first day of fall camp.

Contact: Neill.Woelk@Colorado.edu