Jim Mora’s drive-bys are more like drive-ins. Grab some popcorn. Kick your feet up. Swap stories. Compare scars. Laugh hard.
“Think about this: I’m sitting in an office with a guy who was a coach for 25 years in the NFL,” Mullen High coach Jeremy Bennett told me Friday. “Having never met with him before, talking with him, it was like being with a buddy I’ve known for 20 years. It was comfortable. It was authentic.”
How authentic? Last Wednesday, Mora, the CSU Rams’ new football coach, popped his head into the football offices at Mullen just to say, “Hi.” Only as Bennett remembers it, that ‘pop’ lasted for about 55 minutes.
They talked shop. Mutual friends. The insanity of the transfer portal. Twenty minutes became 30. Then 40. Then 45. After 50, Mora glanced at his watch. Oh, crud.
“Coach, I gotta get going,” Mora said to Bennett. “My wife’s been out in the car this whole time.”
“Coach,” Bennett laughed, “she could’ve come in.”
“No, no, she gets it,” Mora said. “I just got caught up in the conversation.”
Time flies when you’re having a Rams run. Or a Rams Rush, in this case.
“And here’s the thing: We could have sat there for another hour,” Bennett recounted with a chuckle. “We would have just kept chopping it up.”
Mrs. Mora was left waiting, Bennett was told, because the couple planned to do some car-shopping in Denver on their way back to FoCo. Talk about Front Range multi-tasking at its finest. While we’re running errands, why not make new friends, build some bridges, while we’re at it?
“So I feel we’re going to see out of (CSU) better (recruiting) coverage in-state,” Bennett said. “I really do … it’ll be interesting to see how many ’26 guys (are signed) and how many offers are out in ’27. You can say, ‘We’ve got to see.’ But I think it is going to be better out of Fort Collins. I do.”
National Signing Day — like drive-ins, yes, it’s still a thing — falls on Wednesday. The Rams have just one in-state signee so far for the Class of 2026, according to the 247Sports.com database. They’re trying to improve on that number for 2027, for obvious reasons.
“We want Colorado kids to play in Colorado,” Mora told me by phone early in the week. “Now, they have to fit our profile. But the only way you find that out is if you spend time around them and build those relationships … (so) it’s not just a one-time thing. It’s an ongoing process.”
To that end, this past January 15, with the transfer portal spinning at about 50,000 rpm, Mora and CSU tried something a little different: They went hyperlocal.
The Rams had 11 staffers out on the highways, driving to and visiting with Colorado high school coaches as part of Operation: Ram Rush, posting updates to social media with the hashtag #RamRush.
Mora’s ‘pop,’ in fact, was the Rams’ second trek to Mullen in 13 days. Bennett said that was new, too. The Mustangs had been the first stop during CSU’s January 15 blitz for Dalton Hilliard, the Rams’ defensive backs coach.
“It was way, way different,” Bennett said. “It was apologetic. And not that they needed to be, but they understand (the dynamics).
“You hear (that) all the time, but for some reason, it just hit different. They understand they’ve got to take the top guys in Colorado to be successful — not only on the field, but in the community. You’ve got to recruit your backyard.”
And now, maybe, more than ever. Why? For one, open transferring and revenue-sharing for players have made Power 4 schools more inclined to swoop in and pluck smaller schools’ more finished products rather than develop their own. CU football coach Deion Sanders’ newest portal haul reads like a Group of 5 all-star travel team.
Part of the CSU football brand is baked into getting the not-quite-fast enough, not-quite-big-enough Colorado prospects that the Buffs traditionally take a pass on. Some of the best Rams teams of the last 30 years had enough chips on their respective shoulders, collectively, to fill the entire snack aisle at King Soopers.
Based on the 247Sports database, CU offered eight in-state recruits for the Class of ’26 and had one Colorado signee as of last Friday afternoon. They’ve reportedly got five in-state offers out for 2027. CSU has 12.
“(Sanders and I) know each other very well,” Mora said of Coach Prime. “But I’m not competing against anybody but our standard. We don’t spend one section of our day worrying about other people. We just do the best we can.”
Sanders has targeted players that the Buffs can plug-in-and-play immediately, be they freshmen or former Mid-American Conference/Sun Belt Conference seniors. CU has checked in on Mullen 3-star edge rusher Troy Mailo, 247’s No. 2 in-state prospect for the Class of ’27 — but so have about 25 other major programs.
In fact, local coaches will tell you that The Prime Method of transfers first + recruiting nationally has only opened doors for CSU’s new staff when it comes to Colorado kids. If they want to run through them. The Rams haven’t produced a class with more than two in-state prep recruits since 2023. They haven’t produced one with more than seven since 2014.
Mora, no dummy, has already noticed. CSU, per 247, had 23 in-state offers out in the Class of ’26 and a dozen so far for the Class of ’27. This after the Rams offered one for the Class of ’25, 13 for ’24 and 14 for ’23.
“Like I said when I took the job, you’ve got to try to win your state (by) recruiting high-school players,” Mora told me. “And the only way that you can do that is to get out and meet people and create relationships and build trust.”
Unlike his previous three predecessors, Mora’s already got one foot in several doors on that last front. His dad helped coach Dave Logan while the latter was starring at CU. His quarterbacks coach/pass game coordinator, Matt Mitchell, is the brother-in-law of Valor coach Mike Sanford. He’s known Legend coach Jake Heaps for years and the Pagano family forever.
“We want to be able to go and to see people,” Mora continued, “but it’s important that we try to get as many players and coaches as possible up to our campus to watch our spring practices and get with our coaches and exchange football ideas.”
And not just at clinics, either. Bennett says he landed a personal invite to Canvas Stadium. One he plans to accept.
“For all that he’s done, everywhere he’s been, for all the success he’s had in our industry, (Mora) didn’t treat me any differently,” the Mustangs coach recalled. “He just sat, and he talked to me like a ball coach. It was different.
“My staff was in there with us. And every one of them, when he left said, ‘Wow, what a great guy. That was cool.’”
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