This past Saturday, Wyoming Football Coach Craig Bohl coached his last game in the Brown & Gold at the Arizona Bowl. Due to the strange timing of holidays, print schedules, press deadlines and other such voodoo, I’m writing this column several days before the game knowing that it will not be read for several days after it. Somebody’s gotta run the press and print it.

Welcome to the continued obstacles of print journalism. The world is continuing on the path of a hands-free, sealed off, work-from-home society. But, no matter how advanced or seemingly advanced we get, there will always be the need for someone to get their hands dirty. For the rubber to hit the road. The person who fixes your car, or pumps your sewer, or sorts your mail. Yes, machines continue to advance but especially in rural Wyoming, I’d rather stick to a guy (or gal) with their name on their shirt.

So as I was thinking about how to best approach this timeline I thought I would go with the timeless approach of Coach Bohl who wraps up a ten-year tenure and rides off into the sunset to drink Manhattans and smoke cigars supposedly.

I am very much an old-school football fan. I like a guy or a group of guys who controls their part of the field. In fact, they own their part of the field and it doesn’t matter if you know what’s coming, you can’t stop it anyway. This leads to decreased morale, desperation, mistakes and the general despair of the opposing fans. I love that kind of stuff.

A lot of concepts these days irritate me. Like lining up in the Pistol set on fourth and short. Or running sideline-to-sideline when you need a yard. What happened to common-sense, straight-line physics?  Over and over again. Well, that’s why I appreciated Coach Bohl for the vast majority of his efforts in Laramie. He was team over individual, common-sense over trends. Gut instincts over analytics (one of my least-favorite words right now).

Did it always work out?  No. Sometimes it was downright maddening to be a fan or a columnist. But the guy had a knack and a habit for finding guys who fit the Cowboy mold and forming them into players. Whether they were from Casper like Logan Wilson, or Firebaugh like Josh Allen or Sacramento like Carl Granderson. Yeah, there are more than a dozen players in the NFL like those guys. When Granderson got to Laramie I remember he was listed at 6’ 5” 190 pounds. He currently plays at 261 for the Saints and recently signed a $52 million contract extension.

Other guys got a great start from UW but didn’t stick it out and that’s fine, but that doesn’t mean Bohl didn’t do his job. I think of Isaiah Neyor who didn’t play football until his senior year of high school and signed with Wyoming at one of their satellite camps out of San Antonio. No other offers. In his sophomore season he had almost 900 yards and 12 touchdowns for the Pokes before hitting the portal. That’s his business, but he had no football future before Bohl and the Cowboys.  A lot of players on the team and over the last decade can say that. Most-famously the guy on the cover of Madden 24, Josh Allen.

So as Bohl rides off to his retirement chapter of life, I wish him well because while there will likely be some things that carry over with Coach Jay Sawvel, I can’t imagine things lining up with an old-school junkie like me ever again.

As a column written out of time for perusal at any time, I hope people can appreciate him for what he was. Timeless.