The Prime Effect: How Deion Sanders is Rebuilding Colorado Football
Thirty-three years ago, Bill McCartney led the Colorado Buffaloes to a 10-9 victory over the formidable Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the Orange Bowl, winning the school’s first — and only — National Championship in football. Just a couple of hundred miles away in Atlanta, the young two-sport phenom Deion Sanders was starting to make his name in the NFL and the MLB. While Deion’s career only excelled afterward, going on to compete in Super Bowls and World Series, eventually ending up in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the Colorado football team would begin to decline from elite to mediocrity, to irrelevancy, to just outright not good. For the Buffaloes, it had gotten to the point where they only won one game in the 2022 season. But it was at that point that things began to change.
On December 3rd last year, Deion Sanders was signed and hired on at the University of Colorado in Boulder to be their next coach. He had recently finished a successful two-year stint coaching at Jackson State University, leading the SWAC school to the Celebration Bowl — which acts as the defacto National Championship for HBCU teams. While trying to rebuild a team that previously went 1-11 the season before is a daunting task for any new coach, Sanders at least had the head start of having a large number of transfers from JSU and the rest of the country, including his two sons and former #1 recruit Travis Hunter. To say that expectations were mixed would be an understatement. Could FCS HBCU talent translate to Power 5 FBS football?
All those questions would be answered in week 1, as they took on the Horned Frogs of TCU, a school that just competed in the National Championship only 8 months earlier. To everyone’s surprise, Colorado managed to go into Fort Worth, go blow for blow with the 2022 runner-up, and beat them.
To say they were the talk of the town was an understatement. A lot of talk started as praises, but it eventually went sour. After starting 3-0, they went into Eugene to face the Oregon Ducks, who handed the Buffs an unforgiving 42-6 shellacking. Almost in an instant, the public opinion on Colorado and Sanders seemingly switched; the “fun” and “flashy” new team on the block suddenly became “overhyped,” “fraudulent,” and in some cases, “classless.” The growing dislike was seen as a product of sports media outlets providing heavy coverage on the team throughout those first few weeks, but it still calls into question how there could be such a sudden change in public opinion, especially when Colorado isn’t the only school that does what they do.
Quite frankly, Colorado is a rebuilding team. While bringing in a new coach and a load of star talent helps, there are obviously still gaps that need to be filled and developed on the team — one prime example being the offensive line. Again, this is a team that was just 1-11 just last year. When you consider how Colorado is still currently a rebuilding team, it might be harsh to heavily criticize a team having a hard time going up against top-10 teams and dropping games, such as the double-OT loss against Stanford. It would be like expecting a tutor to bring a student from straight F’s to straight A’s in just a week or two — it’s something that needs time. However, for being only half a season into the rebuild, being 4-3 with a difficult but manageable shot at bowl eligibility versus only 1 win a year ago is definitely a success. Depending on who stays on for year 2, we could see a big leap from the football program down in Boulder.
