T-Pain and Mike MacIntyre have very little in common.

MacIntyre is a 50-year-old football coach from Miami; T-Pain is a 30-year-old rapper from Tallahassee. All T-Pain does is win, win, win, no matter what; MacIntyre, not so much.

Coach Mac has been fighting an uphill battle since arriving in Boulder. He took over a football program that was utterly devoid of talent for reasons outside of his control. Colorado’s football facilities were light years behind the rest of the conference and the previous two coaching staffs failed miserably on the recruiting trail. This left MacIntyre facing a total rebuild.

The overhaul has been slow but there have been signs of improvement. Over the last two years the Buffs have lost eight games by seven points or less and they are starting to garner national attention on the recruiting trail. Their new football facilities look great. They’ve landed multiple four-star recruits in the last couple of years and it looked like they had lured coveted graduate transfer Davis Webb to Boulder.

Those are good indicators of a program turning the corner but truth be told they are moral victories.

In Division I football there is only one stat that matters, the win-loss record (ask Christian McCaffrey). MacIntyre is 10-27 as CU’s head coach and he’s only won two conference games; that’s simply not going to cut it. Now, there are whispers that MacIntyre needs to lead the Buffs to six wins this season or he’s gone. It’s a make-or-break year for MacIntyre and Wednesday he received the worst possible news.

Webb, the Texas Tech graduate transfer quarterback, is reneging on his commitment to Colorado and headed to Cal. This is a big blow for a team that’s struggled to get consistent quarterback play for quite some time now (maybe since Joel Klatt).

Heading into his fourth season, MacIntyre will once again be searching for answers at his most important position. It’s unclear if returning starter Sefo Liufau will be healthy enough to play this season as he recovers from a Lisfranc injury (it’s also unclear if CU is committed to Liufau being the starter).

Behind Liufau, CU has little to no experience. Redshirt freshmen Steven Montez, who looked impressive in the spring game but has never taken a meaningful snap, is the most likely candidate. Unless CU can find lightning in a bottle at the quarterback position finding six wins on their schedule is no easy task.

The Buffs host Idaho State, Oregon State, Arizona State, UCLA, Washington State and Utah. They’ll travel to Michigan, Oregon, USC, Stanford and Arizona. CSU is a neutral site game.

That’s a brutal road schedule, outside of Arizona. MacIntyre and his staff are going to have to take care of business at Folsom Field, an equation they’ve yet to solve.

Colorado’s season can’t once again be defined by ‘transition’ and moral victories are a thing of the past. In his fourth season, MacIntyre will be facing his biggest challenge yet (and that’s saying a lot considering where this program was four years ago). He needs to decide which quarterback can take his team to the next level, all while knowing that he is coaching for his job.

Mike MacIntyre has taken some promising steps in his first three years at CU. He took over a program that was coming off of a 1-11 season. Not only were they 1-11, but they weren’t even competitive. Couple that with the talent cupboards being totally bare and you can see why the cards were stacked against anyone who took over this program.

Since arriving on campus MacIntyre has slowly solved the competitiveness problem and restocked the Buffalos with talent. The next step is wins and the pressure is on to take that next step this season.

The addition of Davis Webb would have been a huge upgrade and significantly improved CU’s status in the Pac-12. Webb deciding that Cal was a better situation for him is an unfortunate blow for a coach facing the most important season of his CU tenure. This is a season in which CU needs to win, win, win no matter what.