When it comes to debuts, you won’t find a more highly anticipated one than Deion Sanders kicking off his Colorado coaching career this Saturday. It’s not primetime for Prime Time, but it will be the marquee matchup for FOX’s Big Noon telecast when the Buffaloes travel to No. 17 TCU.
There are numerous storylines.
Colorado, a current member of the Pac-12 but a future member of the Big 12, will be taking on an opponent who will be a conference rival next year. TCU is fresh off a surprising trip to the College Football Playoff where they lost in the title game to Georgia.
But the reason your average sports viewer will be tuning in has everything to do with Sanders.
We’ll see how much of an impact Coach Prime can make on the field in Year One. Off the field, it has already been a success if your criteria are media attention, ticket sales, and merchandise sales for a team that went 1-11 last season. Sanders took a non-traditional path to a major conference job. He went from an inexperienced hire at HBCU Jackson State to a splashy hire by a Colorado program desperate to be in the national conversation.
Sanders attracts camera crews. Always has since he was a charismatic All-American cornerback at Florida State in the late 80s. He has remained in the limelight for decades by putting together a Hall of Fame career as the greatest shutdown corner in NFL history and with his TV career as an analyst and personality. Now, he’s looking to elevate himself further by energizing a once-proud program.
His methods are unconventional. You must take a different approach when you’ve been down for as long as the Buffaloes. Roster turnover happens after a coaching change, especially in the age of the transport portal.
However, even by those standards, the upheaval in Boulder is staggering. Colorado returns only 10 scholarship players. That led to some criticism of Sanders for pushing out a record number of players. If college football is amateurism with student-athletes, this is a cold, business-like way to operate at an academic institution.
However, those objections will quickly die down if he wins. The Sanders Extreme Transfer Makeover will include players like his son quarterback Shedeur Sanders (formerly of Jackson State), cornerback/wide receiver Travis Hunter (Jackson State), cornerback Omarion Cooper (Florida State), safety Myles Slusher (Arkansas), defensive end Derrick McLendon II (Florida State), and wide receiver Jimmy Horn Jr. (South Florida).
Will this microwave strategy work? In basketball, you can refurbish a roster and get positive results quickly. However, in football, you’re dealing with many more players (85 scholarship athletes). Generally speaking, some continuity is required for success. Players must know each other, the coaches, and the offensive and defensive systems. And yet, Sanders believes he can build a competitive squad as fast as you can prepare instant ramen noodles.
At Colorado, everything will be brand new. This is going to be either a failed experiment or a revolutionary change in team construction.
Sanders took over a Jackson State program that went 4-8 in 2019, the season prior to his arrival. He went 27-6 in three seasons. So, he has experience in producing immediate results. But he’s also facing a meat-grinder of an early schedule with three of his first five opponents being ranked: TCU, No. 15 Oregon, and No. 6 USC.
For someone who has made a career out of being a luminary, the glare of the national spotlight will shine on Sanders. Win or lose.
