University of Northern Colorado head coach Ed McCaffrey addressed during his weekly press conference the incident of offensive coordinator and son Max McCaffrey throwing his broken clipboard into the stands at the Montana State game Saturday.
Here’s what the eldest McCaffrey had to say:
I just want to take this opportunity to compliment coach (Brent) Vigen on his football program. What a great group of coaches and players. They’re so talented, but more than that, you know he’s a class act. I’ve known him for years. He’s recruited players that I’ve coached in the past. Other than them being really great at coaching and playing football — there’s nothing not to like about them.
They play football the way it’s supposed to be played. It was a great football environment, other than the scoreboard for us. The fans were great. Couple of them chanted out, “We love you McCaffrey” and “Go Broncos.” For those of you that did that, I really appreciate it. Thank you.
And at one point, to give you the landscape of how close everyone was, a fan yelled out to No. 7 (Ty Okada), “They can’t block you.” I didn’t say anything because they were right. We had trouble blocking him all day, but they’re a class act. The fans were great.
It was an incredible football environment for me and for our players. We were getting our butts kicked, and it was actually more jovial than anything with the fans that were behind our bench.
There was an incident where my son Max, coach McCaffrey, got upset at one of his play calls, because it didn’t go our way. He was only upset at himself and no one else, because, again, it was a cordial environment.
He slammed his clipboard against his leg in frustration at himself and a fan yelled, “Hey, we’ll take your clipboard.” He didn’t do it at first, but like — “Hey we’ll take it; throw us your clipboard.”
He’s like, “Are you sure you want it?” after that play call, and they’re like, “Yeah, yeah.” He lightly underhand lobs his clipboard to a fan that was in the stands who had his hands up calling for it. And for whatever reason, he put his hands down and it kind of sailed like a Frisbee over his head. It was a very light underhand toss, and it did strike a fan behind him, and it was unfortunate.
Max feels awful about it. It was a complete accident; kind of like if you threw your keys to someone and they didn’t catch it. They hit the person behind them. There was no ill will, no anger or frustration at anybody or the fans or anything. It was just a really bad decision by him to engage with fans, even though it wasn’t in anger. It was kind of in jest. It did strike someone, and for that, he is very sorry. I’m sorry that it’s taken away from discussion about our football program, and he has admitted it, he has apologized. He certainly has fixed it and will never do it again. So, it was an innocent enough mistake, mistake nonetheless.
But I just wanted to make abundantly clear the respect I have for coach Vigen, his team, the fans and that there was no anger, hostility whatsoever. We were a little bummed we were getting our butts kicked, but other than that, that was it. The fans are great, and it was just an unfortunate accident that we have admitted, fixed and corrected; certainly will never happen again. I think that is probably all we need to say about the incident, and kind of turn the page and move on.
The university also stated that it will have no additional comments on the situation. Montana State police logged it as an assault, but no further details have been released.
