Cliff Grassmick / Daily Camera file)
His Colorado tenure ended the way these things tend to for major college head coaches, with Ricardo Patton vacating Boulder amid an acrimonious split and on the heels of the worst year in his 11-plus season run as CU's basketball coach.
Eight years later a much different Ricardo Patton has returned to the Centennial State. Humbled by the trials of his profession while making what he describes as a concerted effort to enjoy the perks of his job a little more freely, Patton is back in the college game as an assistant to another prominent figure from the CU basketball program, Rodney Billups, with the new regime at the University of Denver.