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If the Colorado football team hopes to turn heads this season and make an unexpected run in a bowl game, it’s going to need some young players to step up in the rushing business.
However, it will require strong leadership from a handful of veterans who will be out of college in other seasons and, in many cases, exploring life after football.
Two years ago, the NCAA made the unprecedented decision to grant all student-athletes in every sport an extra year of eligibility from the 2020-21 school year due to the violence and often shortened pandemic seasons.
For CU football, that means there are 14 players on the roster who are ineligible in 2022. This group includes key offensive talent such as Daniel Arias, Brady Russell and Alex Fontenot. veteran defenders Terrance Lang, Quinn Perry and Isaiah Lewis; And like former Baylor receiver RJ Snead, he conveys.
“I think when I first got here, it wasn’t my plan to be here for six years,” Lang said. “Everything happens for a reason. When they told us we were going to get an extra year because of Covid, then I was like, OK, I have more opportunity to put more things on tape at the college level. I thought I’d take advantage of that opportunity.
“We’ve got something to prove. Basically, it’s our season. Everybody here has experience. We’ve got big guys and we’ve all put in the work. It’s time for the results to shine. We want to walk away feeling like we’ve been paid for our work. We’ve got something to prove this year. That’s the biggest thing. I I think this year, as a Colorado culture, it’s the first year that I feel like we have this culture. We have a level as a team. And everybody is held to that standard. I think this is the year.
Lang, Lewis, Fontenot, Russell, Maurice Bell and Jaylon Jackson all arrived at CU in 2017, on the heels of the program’s best season in more than a decade, and remain the final link to Mike McIntyre’s coaching tenure. Their six-season run in Boulder has coincided with big changes in the NCAA landscape, beyond the Covid-shortened 2020 season and the socially distanced meetings and practices that preceded it. In addition to the arrival of the Neill era, transfer rules were loosened to facilitate player movement.
Many classmates from the 2017 recruiting class followed that path. But for those who remain at CU for one more season, the goal of turning the program around hasn’t changed.
“I want to finish what we started,” Bell said. “Coming in, we all had the goal of putting Colorado back on the top of the map. I am a person who likes to finish what he starts. I don’t want to take the easy way out and pass it on. Everyone has their own reasons for moving, but for me, I feel like there’s a reason to be here. It never crossed my mind to move or transfer. I have unfinished business here.
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