Meet the new Bob. Same as the old Bob?
“I’d just like to have 2.0 be a career that takes it to an even higher level,” Bob Stitt, the once and future Colorado School of Mines football coach, told me Friday. “There’s something out there that we’ve got to chase. And that’s a national championship.”
Baron Frankenstein has the keys to the castle again, looking to finish what he started 20 years and 2,000 fly sweeps ago. Stitt 1.0 built a football monster from scratch out of engineers and econ majors, guile and necessity, a roster that swallowed lightning and snorted thunder.
What Fisher DeBerry and Troy Calhoun did with the triple option at the Academy, Stitt did with the Air Raid in Golden, a program by football nerds, for football nerds.
Stitt 1.0 won 108 games at Mines from 2000-14, nabbed three Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference championships and became a cult hero, your favorite quirky coach’s favorite quirky coach.
The man from whom Mike Leach borrowed and Dana Holgorsen stole is back. He’s back because the beast is bigger now, a holy terror honed and chiseled by successors Gregg Brandon (2015-2021), Brandon Moore (2022) and Pete Sterbick (2023-24), whose resignation last month somehow brought the most successful football program in the Front Range full circle.
“That’s the bar, absolutely,” Stitt, the winningest coach in Mines history, said of the NCAA championship, where the Orediggers were routed to mark the end of otherwise brilliant 2022 and 2023 campaigns. “There’s a lot of work to be done.
“You’ve got to focus on the process with each game. But the end result is, you want to win it all.”
Turns out you can go home again — especially if you never really left in the first place. Stitt’s kept a house in Golden for years and was a regular at Marv Kay Stadium, usually surrounded by Mines alums, toasting bridges built and battles won.
After being fired from Texas State, where he spent 2019 as offensive coordinator, Stitt turned his mad-science lens on the private sector, becoming vice president at AuctusIQ, a sales performance and technology company whose offerings included personality assessments for athletes. Stitt loved staying ahead of the curve. He missed his coaches. He missed the chess. He missed the meetings. He missed the kids.
“I thought I’d get back (to coaching) in a year or two,” Stitt reflected. “It didn’t happen, and I started really enjoying my life. But I just had that itch to coach.”
He poked and nibbled at some jobs. Nothing took. Then, about 15 months ago, Stitt threw up a pair of Hail Marys. The first was to Mile High Prep, a franchise in the newly formed Prep Super League, an 11-on-11 spring football circuit for high school talent that tapped him as its inaugural head coach. Then an old friend, Bret McGatlin, at the time the head man at Valor Christian, approached him in November 2023 with an early Christmas present — a chance to call the Eagles’ plays in 2024.
“Man, I just got the bug (back),” Stitt said. “I enjoyed it so much, working with those high school kids. That’s what told me, ‘I’ve got to get back in.’”
Together, McGatlin and Stitt went 11-2 but were eliminated in the Class 5A state semis by Cherry Creek. When McGatlin resigned last month, Stitt says he wasn’t sure if he’d have a gig with the Eagles to come back to.
“I had every intention of staying with Valor,” Stitt recalled, “and then it looked like I wasn’t going to have a job at Valor. I was talking to my wife, I said, ‘I can’t believe we just won 11 games, and I might be unemployed again.’”
This time, kismet had Bob’s back. A few days after McGatlin’s departure from Valor went public, Sterbick, Mines’ second-year head coach, left the Orediggers to become the offensive coordinator at FCS power Montana State.
Mines announced it would conduct a search for Sterbick’s replacement. The next morning, Stitt rang up AD David Hansburg.
“Dave,” the old coach said. “I would definitely be interested in being your next head coach.”
“Stitty,” Hansburg replied, “I’m glad you called.”
Things snowballed from there.
“It’s not really the same job (as in 2000),” Stitt explained. “Mines has done a great job of making it a real Division II job. Back when I was there (in the early 2000s), you dreamed about being a program like a Northwest Missouri State or Pittsburg State or Grand Valley State. And now Mines is one of those programs.
“I don’t have to start over and I don’t have to bring anything or do anything other than coach those kids and manage the standard. There are no excuses now.”
Mines announced his return early Friday morning. But midday, while Stitt was heading out of town, his cell phone started pinging off the hook. Former players, mostly, circling those old, familiar wagons again.
“If you could see my phone right now,” the coach laughed. “It’s blowing up. They are fired up.”
“What are they saying?” I asked.
Stitt tapped on a text.
“‘Let’s (expletive) go,’” he laughed.
Stitt 1.0 planted seeds. Stitt 2.0 is here to plant flags. Thunder sang a little louder Friday from Lookout Mountain. Lightning whipped through the cold, dry air, just like old times. The beast of times.
