CSU football coach Jim Mora: ‘The people here don’t know how to win’

CSU continues to slide toward depths of defensive ineptitude rarely seen in major college football, and its first-year coach, Jim Mora, pointed his finger at the culture around the program.

In the wake of a calamitous 73-7 shellacking at the hands of a previously 1-8 Washington State side, Mora turned his ire beyond the moment, saying that learning how to win is “a real problem here and has been for many, many years.”

“The place I came from (UConn), they’ve won (18) national championships in basketball, so the whole school knew how to win,” Mora said in his postgame press conference, with quotes posted via The (Fort Collins) Coloradoan. “We have to teach people around here how to win.”

To his point, Colorado State is headed for its eighth losing season in the last nine years. The Rams have been to just one bowl game since losing the New Mexico Bowl at the end of the 2017 campaign; for that matter, CSU hasn’t won a bowl game since Jim McElwain was its head coach in 2013.

Nevertheless, when he’s making a comparison across other sports, it’s worth noting that CSU has a volleyball program that is currently undefeated in conference play and has made 26 of the last 31 NCAA Tournaments, and its men’s basketball team has been to the NCAA Tournament in three of the last five seasons, winning its first-round game twice.

Indeed, CSU has programs that “know how to win.” Football hasn’t been among them, at least not since McElwain left for an ill-fated stint at Florida.

But while the Rams have struggled under Mike Bobo, Steve Addazio and Jay Norvell prior to Mora’s arrival after a successful stint at UConn, they weren’t surrendering 73 points to a hapless foe, either.

CSU’S DEFENSE HAS GOTTEN WORSE OVER THE SEASON

The Rams are 3-7, including a 1-5 mark in PAC-12 play. They’ve allowed an astonishing 56.5 points per game against foes in their new conference. Mora stripped play-calling duties from defensive coordinator Tyson Summers during the first half of the Rams’ Oct. 3 game against Oregon State; in the five games since then, they’ve allowed 56.6 points per game.

Saturday’s game was the nadir. The Cougars entered the contest averaging 15.5 points a game against FBS competition. They surpassed that total three minutes and 33 seconds into the second quarter.

The Rams never stopped Wazzu. The Cougars settled for a field goal as time ran out in the first half, then stopped themselves on the final drive of the game, kneeling out the final three plays and ignoring their fans’ chants to go for 80 points.

“You have two choices. You can quit and run and hide or you can keep fighting,” Mora said when asked what his message to the players was after the game.

“Some guys have identified that maybe they’ve already decided to run and hide.”

Mora added that there weren’t “many” players doing that, but after 10 games, he’s learned that his task is more profound than he expected.

“It’s a much bigger fix than I thought it was,” Mora said. “Much bigger. I never expected it to be like this.”

So big that he made a statement that by its implication was a shot at the entire CSU athletic department of which he’s a part.

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