SANTA CLARA, Calif. _ Then and now, the darkness is real. Through their faith comes the light.
This story has less to do with the Colorado Buffaloes rumbling through a football season for the ages and into the Pac-12 championship game Friday against the Washington Huskies at Levi's Stadium. It has less to do with luck, the kind of uncanny good fortune that extends from the Buffs winning the coin flip 11 times in 12 games, to The Rise serendipitously unfolding in the same season Stanford, Oregon and UCLA dipped into hard times.
No, CU's improbable ascension from Everyone's Homecoming Game to conference title game has everything to do with something else, an intangible fewer and fewer people take seriously, in part because the advanced metrics crowd can't put a number on it.
Faith.
The man who saw it then _ as the swift, spectacular, fifth-in-Heisman-voting quarterback _ sees it now. There's no better source on Colorado's rise than Darian Hagan.
"When I think of where we are today and where we came from, it's the same thing that coach (Bill) McCartney had," Hagan said in a quiet conversation outside Folsom Field.
The quarterback then, when Colorado went 20-0-1 in Big Eight games and often closed seasons with Oranges and Fiestas, was Hagan. The running backs coach now, when Colorado is thinking in Roses, if not the college football playoff, is Hagan.
His journey, too, has been shaded with darkness. Six years ago his son, DeVaughn Levy, committed suicide at 19. How did Hagan outlast the darkest time a father can endure?
"Faith. I got through it with faith," said Hagan, whose Christian beliefs mirror those of CU's coach, Mike MacIntyre, just as it mirrored those of McCartney. "My friends and family encouraged me. But it was prayer and not turning my back to my beliefs.
"What I've really been holding onto through this season is coach (Gary) Barnett's deal: 'Through the darkness, champions emerge.' That's believing in your foundation. That's belief. You're going to have ups and downs in the road, but you have to persevere. Coach MacIntyre preaches all the time: 'Keep fighting. You're going to fall down, but how you respond is the sign of your true character.' "
Now Hagan opens his Flatirons-sized heart to help boys become men. The greatest example is Phillip Lindsay, a tailback whose spirit is the soulful equivalent of his wild hair.
"Coach Hagan is one of the realest people you'll ever know," Lindsay said. "I'm going to stay connected to him for the rest of my life. He's like my uncle, my dad, raising me."
This was a real sentiment from veteran observers who have been around the Boulder block more than a few times: CU would start with losses to Michigan, Oregon, USC, Stanford, UCLA and maybe Arizona State (picked ahead of the Buffs in the media's preseason poll), and MacIntyre would be fired during the bye week this season. Then the school would search near and far for the next sacrificial lamb to lead a program that could win big way back then, but way back then wasn't the robust Pac-12 now.
Instead, CU lost just twice in 12 games; MacIntyre is the program's second league coach of the year since McCartney (Barnett won it in 2001 and 2004); No. 9 CU probably goes to the Rose Bowl with a win against No. 4 Washington, to the four-team college football playoff with a whole bunch of help from other games and other teams elsewhere.
For this season, at least, then is now.
The central aspect of CU's rise is faith. That's not something you can recruit. Belief in a staff, system and self must grow organically, and how do you grow anything when all the seniors have witnessed are two conference wins over their first three seasons?
"It's the same thing as our teams with (McCartney)," Hagan said. "We were not a team that had a lot of superstars."
They had a few, though. Nine Buffs were chosen in the 1991 NFL draft, for example. That's right, kids: Nine.
"We had some, eventually. But we played for each other. We didn't play for selfish reasons. We had a common bond," Hagan said. "The difference is that our teams, we played for Sal Aunese (who died in 1989 from cancer). These guys play for each other. They're not playing for the coaches. They're not playing for the fans. They're playing for each other. That's what matters. That's the common theme."
I'm not certain if it's Hagan lifting up ambitious young men like Lindsay or the other way around. It's probably both. What I know is that each one relies on the other.
"I believe in the lord. The lord will never forsake you and will never put you in situations you can't handle," Hagan said. "I've been through highs. I've been through lows. My son committed suicide. When your son commits suicide, this game of football and the ups and downs you go through, the game of football is very minute.
"But I have faith in our guys. That never falters."
Two years ago I sat with Hagan in the Dal Ward Center at the north end of Folsom Field. Maybe CU one day can rise again, I said. He told me I was wrong.
"There's no maybe about it," Hagan said, then added, "It's coming back. Coach MacIntyre is the right guy at the right time for the University of Colorado."
Just this August I stood with MacIntyre in the same spot. He told me I was wrong.
"We're going to be good," MacIntyre said.
The lesson was no different than the life lessons MacIntyre, Hagan and a selected coach will present to the entire Buffs team at the start of daily meetings: Never underestimate the power of a person's faith.
"Today in meetings the lesson we had was (about) how life goes in a full circle, how everything started with them and now it's evolving into what it is now," Lindsay said.
Lindsay is the Pac-12's fourth-leading rusher with 94.7 yards per game. He's a Denver South guy, the "Tasmanian Devil," as MacIntyre calls him, who plays every snap like they will take away his scholarship if he doesn't hit somebody. He's Hagan's kind of guy.
"You can't keep that kid down," Hagan said.
They are close enough _ coach and player _ that Hagan has welcomed Lindsay's family into their film sessions, close enough that Lindsay almost fell to the floor from laughter when he saw a photo of Hagan's freshman-year Jheri curl, close enough that Hagan routinely stops by Lindsay's classes to make sure he's in attendance.
"He hates when I get lazy," Lindsay said. "We're like his kids."
They are close enough that Hagan is prone to pop in one of his own highlight tapes.
"Coach Hagan was a bad dude," Lindsay said.
"He was fast, he was quick, he was smart. I want to follow in his footsteps," he said. "He was a legend here, and he will forever be a legend here. We walk around and people ask for his autograph before ours. He signs more autographs than us!"
Hagan thinks about Sal, his teammate, every day of his life. He thinks about DeVaughn, his son, every day of his life. Now he impacts a new generation of Buffs every day of his life. Through the darkness the light found his faith.
