Millennial Dave Logan? You laugh, but Mike Sanford takes that tag as a compliment.
“I’m kind of swagger-jacking some of the Dave Logan model, which is to be visible,” the new Valor Christian football coach, former CU Buffs assistant/interim and current radio and TV personality, told me Monday. “To be visible via the broadcasting world and the sports media in the Denver space while pursuing something you love, which is coaching.”
Logan’s set a high bar here for decades, from the gridiron to the broadcast booth to the general zeitgeist. It’s one thing to join him. Can you beat him? Because that’s the gig. That’s the remit.
“I mean, that’s a beautiful thing, is that the work starts now toward (that),” Sanford said. “(Logan’s) been the gold standard in the state. And I know this from 25 years ago when my dad was coaching at USC and Notre Dame, and he recruited the state of Colorado and had Mullen High School. … It’s been a longstanding deal.
“And so, yeah, it’s easy for me to say, ‘Yes, I can, I can beat him.’ But we all know the work that’s going to have to go in.
“But no question, the goal is to win a state championship. And whoever’s in the state championship game, I mean, it seems like it’s typically Cherry Creek and Dave Logan on one side of it, and then somebody else on the other side.”
Donnie Yantis was on the other side in 2020 and ’21 and couldn’t get over the line. He left in the winter of ’22 after a second straight defeat to Creek in the 5A title game.
Bret McGatlin, an upstanding rep from one of Colorado’s first families of coaching, was on the other side of the 5A championship against Logan in 2022. He couldn’t get over the line, either, and eventually resigned this past January.
Why not take a less stressful job, like lion tamer, mob informant or air traffic controller? Valor Football eats good men for breakfast, then spits out the bones.
The only bar that matters is that Class 5A crown Ed McCaffrey won seven years ago. The Eagles are 0-3 in title games since, while Logan and Creek have snapped up five of the last six 5A championships.
“If you look at a seven-year sample size (since 2018), if I’m not mistaken, two of the coaches were just two-year stints,” the 43-year-old Sanford continued. “Ed and Donnie were both two-year stints. And I think at the high school level, that type of lack of continuity, with Bryan Ritz, (Valor’s) head of school, that was almost priority No. 1 for him in conversations with me: my commitment and investment long-term in Valor.
“And then I reverberated that conversation (by saying), ‘I want to feel like Valor is invested in me just as much as I’m invested in Valor.’ And when we found that alignment, that’s what I think pushed this thing to go through.
“I think that the No. 1 thing was, continuity hasn’t been there. And I think Bryan, who’s new in his role … he just sees that the program needs to have consistency of leadership. And obviously that’s what he wanted to make sure I was committed to before he signed off on my hire.”
That commitment is for Denver, too. From 2005 to ’22, Sanford worked in nine different college campuses, becoming an FBS head coach at the tender age of 34 at Western Kentucky, where he posted a 9-16 mark over two seasons (2017-18). He spent more than a decade cruising the express lane in football coaching circles, working for David Shaw at Stanford and Brian Kelly at Notre Dame.
He also wasn’t even sure he wanted to get back into college coaching, where NIL and the transfer portal have rewritten the rules, and where Deion Sanders and Bill Belichick have become the new normal. But after dropping his oldest kid off for the start of ninth grade a few months back, he did a quick head count and realized this was her 12th school in nine years. There were offers, but Sanford didn’t want to uproot the family again.
“The timing,” he explained, “met the calling.”
Speaking of calling, Sanford says Notre Dame offered him its OC job a decade ago, sight unseen. And that Western Kentucky required just one interview to land that job.
Valor? Valor made him go through six.
“I think the concern (with) me was, ‘Have you dealt with a parent community?’” Sanford recalled. “And the thing that was so cool for me was not only have I engaged with parent communities in the last two years (via Carbon Valley Parks and Rec softball), it’s been my favorite part of coaching youth sports. … I’ve learned that the kids are always awesome. The kids are great. Parents can be a challenge. But parents can be a great benefit if proper protocols are put in place and communication is handled correctly. … Parents that are communicative and get out in front of it, ahead of it, I think that you end up engaging a really positive relationship. And that’s what I intend to do with the parents of our (players).”
College coaches have the portal. NFL coaches have agents. Prep coaches have to navigate Mom and Dad.
“If I’m going to do this, I want to be held to a standard where you’re competing at the highest level for the highest stakes,” Sanford said. “Not just be cushy and just kind of enjoy it.”
Cushy’s not in the cards. Sanford’s going to continue hosting on Altitude Radio five days a week and do Broncos postgame analysis on TV in the fall. And less than 17 hours after being announced as McGatlin’s successor, the new Valor coach held a voluntary workout for the Eagles at 8:30 Saturday morning to break the ice and get several balls rolling.
Which, I told Sanford, sounds an awful lot like how that Logan guy runs things over in Greenwood Village.
“(Dave) has been so good to me over the last three years,” Sanford said.
“Did he congratulate you on taking the job?” I wondered.
“No, we haven’t talked,” Sanford replied. “I would say our relationship’s been more like — in person, when we’ve seen each other, we’ve had great conversations. But yeah, we haven’t been on the kind of texting, calling (each other), you know, that type of place.”
Privately, New Dave respects Old Dave. A lot. But is this town big enough for two of them? For better or worse, we’re all about to find out.
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