Who is Tad Boyle?

After his first three seasons at Colorado, men’s basketball Head Coach Tad Boyle has led the Buffaloes through three consecutive winning seasons with a 69-38 overall record and a 29-23 record in conference play.

Head coach Tad Boyle looks up at the scoreboard during the second half of the Saturday, March 9, 2013 game against the Oregon State Beavers. Boyle has had a very successful career at CU. (Robert R. Denton/CU Independent File)

In his first season in the Big-12 conference, he led the team to the NIT in the postseason. The year after, the Buffaloes moved to the Pac-12 conference, and won the conference championship before making the second rounc of the NCAA tournament. During this past season, he led the Buffs to yet another appearance at the Big Dance.

Boyle’s basketball career began in the early ’80s when he played for the Kansas Jayhawks, where he graduated with a business administration degree in 1985. After college he immediately went to work for a private company, Coke Industries, in Wichita, Kan. He was with them for a year before deciding that he wanted to be a stockbroker and investment adviser.

He returned to his hometown in Greeley, Colo., to pursue this career. Dain Bosworth hired him as a broker, and he worked there for nine years while coaching basketball at Longmont High School on the side.

When Boyle realized that coaching basketball was his true passion, he said he decided that it was time for another career change.

“At the end of the day, when my head hit the pillow at night, I would be thinking about the team I was coaching and the young men that I was coaching,” Boyle said. “I wasn’t thinking about what the stock market was going to do the next day or about where interest rates were headed or the world economy, I was thinking about the young men I was coaching. Boyle said that he realized That gave me the indication that that’s where my heart was, where my passion was:  helping young men.

His college coaching career began at the University of Oregon, where he was an assistant coach for three years.  From there, he spent one year at Tennessee, two years at Jacksonville State University in Alabama and six years at Wichita State.

After Wichita, the University of Northern Colorado offered him a head coaching position. He led the Bears for four years before moving on to the University of Colorado.

“All those stops along the way in assistant coaching positions and head coaching positions have given me a perspective of how special the university of Colorado is and how fortunate I am to be the coach here,” he said.

When he became a father, his outlook on basketball recruiting improved dramatically.

“I became a much better recruiter overnight when I became a father,” he affirmed.  “There’s no question.  I understand what parents go through when they hand their kids off to us as their college coaches.  As a parent, I see the love and the hard work that goes into raising a child, and I’ve got a lot of respect for that.  It comes through in my recruiting because I build relationships with kids and families.”

Off the court, however, Tad Boyle is your average father.  Outside of college basketball, the most important thing to him is his family.

“I spend time with my wife and my three kids as much as I can,” he said. “They’re at that age that they like to do a lot of activities.  I have a son who’s 14 (Jack), a daughter who’s 12 (Claire), and another son who’s 10 (Pete), so I’m really busy with baseball games, basketball games, and volleyball games.”

After the past 19 years as a college coach, his family has grown to love the sport that drives his everyday career.

“Yes, in terms of support and passion and love for the game, they have it,” he confirmed.  “They might not have it to the depth that I have it and to the degree that I have it but certainly, it’s there.”

All of his children play basketball, although Claire and Pete think of it as more of an activity.  Jack, however, is starting to develop a real passion for the game.  As a father, it does not matter to Boyle if his kids have the same passion for the game that he has.

“As a father, all you can ask for as a parent (not just a father or mother), you just want your kids to be passionate about something;  whether that’s basketball or not, I really don’t care.  I just want them to be passionate about something.”

He has many interests outside of basketball, including playing golf, reading, watching Seinfeld reruns late at night, and watching other sports.

He has been a Baltimore Orioles fan since they won the World Series in baseball in 1969.  When it comes to the NBA, he doesn’t have a favorite team but likes to follow the Denver Nuggets and the San Antonio Spurs.  In football, he is a Kansas City Chiefs fan but enjoys watching the Denver Broncos as well.