Colorado wide receiver Nelson Spruce, center, celebrates his touchdown catch with teammates Alex Wood, left, and Tyler McCulloch in the second quarter of an NCAA college football game against Colorado State in Denver on Saturday, Sept. 1, 2012. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

The Colorado football program is hosting a marrow donor registry drive Friday at Balch Fieldhouse on the west side of Folsom Field from noon to 6 p.m.

The Buffs are joining forces with Be The Match and the Bonfils Colorado Marrow Donor Program to encourage the public to help saves lives. Participating requires simply completing some brief paperwork and submitting a cheek swab.

“I got involved with the Marrow Donor Registry at San Jose State,” CU coach Mike MacIntyre said in a press release. “About 12,000 people a year look on the registry and only about 5,000 find matches, and this is a last resort. You could save a life.”

Once a person is registered, they are candidates to help save lives until age 61. Healthy, young adults are needed most.

Many of you thought I was wrong or making a big deal out of nothing. Yet, here we sit with Embree’s firing being discussed on ESPN and now CNN. National columnists have weighed in over the past few days since Embree’s firing and it only seems to be getting more and more attention.

It’s an issue because this is a sport with a lengthy history of poor performance when it comes to giving black coaches equal and fair opportunities.

It’s an issue because every fair and accurate assessment of the program at the time Embree was hired pointed toward the task taking longer than two years no matter who was coaching.

Sure, Embree’s program got worse and he made some mistakes choosing to surround himself with inexperienced coordinators and using an offensive scheme without the talent to make that scheme work. But he also recognized those errors and was going to address them in the offseason with a scheme change and new assistant coaches.

He wasn’t even given the chance to make those adjustments. He wasn’t even given the chance to go through two full recruiting cycles.

Now people at CU and some fans of the program are actually surprised about this backlash? Seriously?

If I saw this coming, why didn’t CU officials? Did they really think the chancellor could sit in front of the cameras and say, “We didn’t hire Jon because he’s African-American and we didn’t fire Jon because he’s African-American.” And everybody would just say, ‘Oh, OK then.”

It’s too bad CU’s reputation is being dragged through the mud again after the disastrous football season. It didn’t have to be this way. But it was easy to see this coming.