CU coach Dan Hawkins: Dead man talking… and talking… and talking…

CU Buffs coach Dan Hawkins’ news conference yesterday, excerpted in the Boulder Daily Camera clip above and viewable in its entirety below, began with an opening statement that lasted more than twenty minutes, and it seemed longer. Hawkins is a smart guy, and he’s got to know that he’s not long for his job, given a miserable 2009 campaign marked by humiliating defeats (hello, Toledo) and a quarterback controversy complicated immeasurably by his reluctance to put his son, Cody, on the bench and keep him there. Still, he seems to think he can cajole fans and alumni and the press and CU’s administration into keeping him around despite a dispiriting record of underachievement — and he can’t. If he’s not handed his head at season’s end, former CU quarterback-turned-Mile High Sports Radio host Joel Klatt will lead a pitchfork-and-torch-wielding mob straight to Folsom Field and start wreaking a lot more havoc than the Buffs have on the field.

There’s no pleasure in watching Hawkins try to stay positive as his obituary is already being written. His exuberance made him seem like a good choice when the Buffs hired him, and he deserves credit for not turning sour when things didn’t work out. But it’s over. Just because Hawkins refuses to lay down doesn’t make him any less dead.