Rockies’ Relationship

Plenty of tradition remains at Colorado, even without E.B, Embo and Doc. A 1,300-pound buffalo, for example, still does its pre-football game dash around the Folsom Field turf, rousing fans and freaking out opponents.

But the herd thinned considerably when Eric Bieniemy and Jon Embree, former Buffalo players who had become key assistants, bolted for UCLA last winter. Popular strength coach Doc Kreis joined them after being driven out by Colorado Coach Gary Barnett, and it was as if three hard-boiled ranch hands had ridden off the range to a Hollywood back lot.

“They bled black and gold and they believed in black and gold,” Colorado receiver Jeremy Bloom said. “They’ll walk on the field and remember how much people in Colorado loved them.”

Yet Bieniemy, Embree and Kreis will be wearing UCLA blue, and the players Bieniemy pumps up with his trademark pogo-stick antics will be on the visitor sideline.

“It will be very strange,” Bieniemy said.

His jersey, encased in glass, is prominently displayed on the wall of Colorado’s Dal Ward Athletic Center, a reminder of the school’s 1990 national championship. Fittingly, the all-time leading Buffalo rusher wore No. 1.

Embree is equally drenched in Boulder lore, as a tight end who ranks among Colorado’s all-time leading pass catchers, and as an assistant for 10 years, a rock of continuity under Bill McCartney, Rick Neuheisel and Barnett.

And Kreis was so entrenched in Boulder that his family still lives there -- in the house where JonBenet Ramsey was killed.

Bieniemy and Embree had NFL careers before becoming coaches, and on game days at Folsom it was as if neither had quit playing.

“E.B. and Coach Embo, there’s nobody quite like those two on the sidelines,” Buffalo receiver D.J. Hackett said. “They get everybody fired up.”

Kreis was equally beloved, and some believe his popularity posed a threat to Barnett and got him fired.

“That hurt everybody,” Hackett said. “We had strong feelings about it. But Coach [Barnett] told us we’d get over it and we have.”

Other Bruin coaches have Rocky Mountain connections too: Coach Karl Dorrell served two stints totaling six years as a Colorado assistant in the 1990s and was a Denver Bronco assistant the last three years. Defensive coordinator Larry Kerr and assistant Brian Schneider spent the last 10 years on the Colorado State staff.

Barnett said he plans to greet his former assistants with hugs and ignore the touchy circumstances of their departures.

“It’s going to be an emotional game,” Bieniemy said. “I helped recruit a lot of those kids. I am very, very close to that entire coaching staff. I might go to the wrong locker room by mistake.”

Embree gets weepy recalling the friendships he forged with Colorado players. He helped safety Medford Moorer through the shooting death of Moorer’s father in Los Angeles in 2001. And the Buffalo receivers he coached are now considered the strength of the team.

“I hope they go 11-1,” Embree said, and the loss, of course, can come Saturday. UCLA players have their own reasons for wanting to beat Colorado, not the least of which is last season’s 31-17 loss to the Buffaloes at the Rose Bowl.

They also want to give Dorrell a victory in his first game.

“The coaches want to show why they left Colorado for UCLA,” tailback Tyler Ebell said. “But our team is motivated no matter who we play. It’s a whole different team with a whole different outlook.”

Embree and Bieniemy are filling in Bruin players on subtle tendencies of their adversaries and trying to create favorable match-ups. Barnett admitted he must change his audibles because of his former coaches.

Not only do Embree and Bieniemy know the intricacies of his system, Barnett is concerned about Kerr and Schneider, who devised Colorado State defenses that helped defeat Colorado in 1999, 2000 and 2002.

“They virtually know everything about us, from personnel to what we do,” Barnett said. “On the other hand, we don’t have anything on them, except we know they will run the same defense they ran for years at CSU.

“Our defense is doing its best educated guess about what we might see. UCLA gets hard cold film and facts. It sort of makes it a push. We have the experience of playing one game (a 42-35 victory over Colorado State last week) and getting the jitters out, and that is offset by the lack of information we have and the wealth of information they have.”

Barnett politely declined to share the information he has about the coaches who left. Others close to the Colorado program say he gave Embree his blessing, was peeved at Bieniemy and pushed Kreis out the door.

“Karl and Jon are best friends, and even when Karl interviewed for the Cal opening a year earlier, I knew Jon would have gone with him,” Barnett said.

Bieniemy, 34, was another matter. He was a high school assistant and an NFL has-been with a criminal record who had been banned from his alma mater when Barnett hired him on a probationary basis as running backs coach in 2001. Months into the job, Bieniemy was arrested on drunk driving charges, and still Barnett stuck with him.

“Because I knew Eric, I wasn’t going out on as far a limb as most people projected I was,” Barnett said.

“Eric was in the right place at the right time. I needed a running backs coach and he was hanging around here.”

Bieniemy earned the last few credits toward his Colorado degree while coaching and gained a reputation as a fiery leader and excellent recruiter.

Barnett figured he’d stick around, but Bieniemy, who attended La Puente Bishop Amat High, left for UCLA so that his 8-year-old son with cerebral palsy had greater family support.

“When 90% of your family is based in L.A. and San Diego, you tend to make decisions based on family needs,” Bieniemy said. “This takes a lot of stress off my wife, we have a lot of family helping us out. In Colorado we had a lot of extended family, but it wasn’t the same.”

Neither Kreis nor Barnett will discuss what led to their fissure, but everyone agrees that past relationships are unlikely to color the outcome Saturday.

“Coaches don’t play,” Embree said. “Players play. And they are playing for their own reasons.”

Toward that end, he will not allow the Bruins to be buffaloed.

The sign in the visiting locker room that points out that the stadium is 5,300 feet above sea level, making breathing difficult? It will be covered.

The rowdy fans seated only 18 feet from the sideline, so close they are almost breathing down the necks of opposing players? They will be ignored.

And there is Ralphie, the buffalo who charges around the perimeter of the field as the Colorado players take the field. UCLA, like all visiting teams the last several years, will remain safely in its locker room until Ralphie’s run is done.

But although the Bruins are focused on launching the Dorrell era appropriately, Colorado has its own idea of a proper sendoff.

“There are no hard feelings against them from this team,” said Bloom, the Buffalo receiver, “but we want them to leave with a Colorado victory.”