Deion Sanders was running through some Colorado football stats the other day — like leading the Big 12 in sacks or being one of just five teams nationally with four different receivers recording a 100-yard game.
“Three-plus turnovers in three straight road games for the first time since Moby Dick was a minnow,” Sanders joked.
“Road wins back-to-back for the first time since I had a curl,” he said, laughing.
Colorado is 5-2 and will host Cincinnati on Saturday (10:15 p.m. ET) in a game with significant stakes in the Big 12 championship race and a possible automatic bid to the College Football Playoff. It will take place (again) in a sold-out Folsom Field and broadcast (again) on national television (ESPN).
“We have earned where we are,” Sanders said. “We actually feel like we’re better than what we are. Because we are just starting to see the fruit of the work and the understanding of the expectation that we have for ourselves. Forget what others have for us, but what we have for ourselves.”
Sanders arrived in Boulder to much fanfare and much criticism. He made no apologies about essentially running off players he didn’t believe in and bringing a new roster (“my Louis’”) through the transfer portal.
There was a lot of bold talk and brash goals. The Buffaloes were a television hit right away, but there was plenty of backlash at a program some thought hadn’t proven a thing. They started fast last year, but finished 4-8.
Well, here we are, and with each successive strong performance, Coach Prime’s way is looking like a winning way. There are five games left in the 2024 season, so in terms of final record, anything can happen.
Yet any judgment of Sanders’ Colorado program has to be done with the backdrop of what he inherited — the worst major program in the country.
The 2022 Buffs went 1-11 and struggled to draw much of a crowd or any national attention. It wasn’t just the program’s 16th losing season in 17 years, it was non-competitive. The Buffs lost those 11 games by an average of 32.4 points. They gave up 50 more touchdowns than they scored.
Sanders would become their ninth head coach — full-time or interim — since 2010.
Now they boast both a thrilling, two-way Heisman Trophy candidate (Travis Hunter) and a likely first-round pick at quarterback (Shedeur Sanders) and are actually being asked if they wish they didn’t have to be on national TV so much because they’d get an earlier kickoff slot.
“Once upon a time [we] were begging to be on television,” Coach Prime said. “We are not going to turn our noses up for being on national television.”
Anything Deion comes with preset opinions — often passionate — on either side. That’s always how he has been. He does things differently.
Yet it’s worth noting that Colorado would have been thrilled with any coaching hire who in a season and a half could turn around a mess of a loser into what it has become. Revenue is up. Merchandise sales are up. Season ticket sales are up. Applications are up.
It’s the work of Sanders, who went unapologetically into the portal, believing he could build a team that way despite the doubters.
Now Colorado isn’t just good, it appears to be getting better. Consider that CU isn’t just leading the Big 12 in sacks, but that 16 of them came the past three weeks as the defensive line has gelled in a way many thought was impossible with short-term rentals.
“We kind of know what we are doing,” said Sanders, who previously coached a prep school in Texas and FCS Jackson State. “I know it didn’t seem like we did that early on. We’ve been doing this for a while. Building teams since I was at the youth level, went and made something out of nothing in the ’hood in Dallas.
“We kind of know how to work the landscape a little bit,” he continued. “And now it’s coming to pass and we are excited about it.”
Unlike other coaches, Sanders does not prioritize high school recruiting — CU has just eight commits from the Class of 2025. He’d rather load up on the transfer portal at season’s end and be selective with young players. He expects a big haul this December because he is no longer selling a concept of success in Boulder.
“Winning does help with recruiting,” he said. “The overall thought process of people joining something that’s successful. People don’t want to join something that is failing. They want to join something that is successful.”
As for bringing in dozens of high school recruits, he doesn’t see the point. He only wants guys who have a chance to hit the field right away.
“Why would you pull 30 kids out of high school when 30 kids are not going to play?” Sanders said. “I know last year, we may have played arguably the most freshmen in the [conference].”
All of this got Sanders a lot of attention — some good, some bad. So far though, no one can argue it hasn’t worked at a place where nothing had worked for most of the last two decades.
Can he keep it up when Shedeur and Hunter go to the NFL? No one knows, but replacing that kind of talent is what all good programs have to deal with. Will he stay at CU forever? No one knows, but any coach who turns a 1-11 team into a winner this quickly would have options to leave too.
Right now, Coach Prime is all about CU. He spent time this week shaking hands with some of the campus grounds crew out of appreciation for their work.
“This campus is unbelievable, a few of us walk around it every day and I was just talking about how beautiful it is,” he said. “These grounds are impeccable.”
A season and a half into this experiment, the grass is pretty green right now in Boulder.
