Coach Prime's honeymoon phase is over and the luster is gone. Colorado needs to win now
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ATLANTA — On Thursday night, Deion Sanders will start his fourth season as Colorado's football coach. And now we will finally get to judge him for exactly that.
Not as the ratings machine who drew sold-out crowds and celebrities to the sideline in Boulder. Not as a soundbite promising to do things that sounded good but were impossible to deliver. Not as a reality show or a cancer patient who, amidst a genuine health crisis, parlayed his diagnosis into an endorsement deal in the way only Coach Prime could pull off.
Now, in Year 4, he's just a football coach running a football program that needs to win some games and win them soon.
"We better win," Sanders said at Big 12 media days. "We're going to win. I love what I got. I love what I see."
And the rest of us? Well, we'll start to see when Sanders returns to a city where he was once an icon, bringing his team to Georgia Tech.
Sanders' relationship with Atlanta is a delicious subplot, of course. In 1989, the Atlanta Falcons drafted him No. 5 overall and he immediately became a huge star as one of the NFL's best cornerbacks and a centerfielder who played 292 games for the Atlanta Braves.
But the era of Prime nostalgia has less to do with his current situation than it ever has.
All the excitement around Sanders' first two seasons at Colorado, when his team was a true phenomenon that broke through the college football bubble and into the mainstream culture? It's gone.
The players like Travis Hunter and his son, Shedeur Sanders, who carried Colorado to nine wins in 2024 despite a deeply flawed roster? They're in the NFL.
The recruiting momentum that had Colorado competing for players who never would have otherwise considered going to Boulder? It seems to be in the rear-view mirror.
Colorado went 3-9 last season and won just a single game in the Big 12. Sanders changed out much of his staff, including both coordinators. Just like every other coach, Sanders in Year 4 no longer gets graded on a curve. The attention he's bringing off the field no longer matters. It's time to produce.
"I'm thankful that God didn't allow my neck to go back and look all the way back, because that would be a tremendous pain right now," Sanders said. "I'm thankful that I look ahead, and I'm right on point. I'm loving everything that we've added. I'm loving what we did in the portal. I'm loving what we're doing recruiting-wise right now. We're right where we want to be. Right where we want to be. We're going to even get better."
If you could win national titles through sheer force of optimism and willpower, Sanders would already have a coaching career minted for the Hall of Fame. He wouldn't be Prime if he wasn't constantly selling, constantly promising, constantly painting the rosiest picture of what he sees regardless of what the rest of us see.
But suffice it to say, the college football world is skeptical about whether he can deliver. Though nobody expects Colorado to fire Sanders in the traditional sense, many industry insiders have their eye on Boulder as a place where both sides could decide they've had enough of this marriage if it results in another losing season.
Sanders, however, is not the type to just give up. Though everything about the way he does the job is non-traditional (including how much time he spends at his ranch in Texas rather than on campus), give him this much: He's still trying.
Colorado once again overhauled its roster with more than 40 transfers, many of them from power conference programs. The Buffaloes completely changed their offense by hiring Brennan Marion and his "Go-Go" scheme away from a head coaching job at Sacramento State. They are truly starting from scratch on defense after giving up a Big 12-worst 425 yards per game last year, with former Virginia Tech coordinator Chris Marve overseeing a transfer-heavy unit.
Colorado might have more talent top to bottom than it did in Sanders' first two seasons, albeit without the star power that Hunter and Shedeur Sanders brought to the field. It was also a huge win that quarterback Julian Lewis, a former blue-chip recruit, decided not to enter the transfer portal after a freshman season in which he played just four games to preserve his redshirt.
"I want to see how we get to the ball defensively because Marve has them flying to the ball," Sanders said at a press conference this week. "I want to see the explosiveness of some of the backs we have because we've been seeing it. Our offensive linemen are doing a wonderful job doing in the run as well as the pass game and making the quick decisions to get the ball to these playmakers. We've got some guys that are really fast, man. They can go. They can change the dynamics of a game instantaneously, we have to get the ball to them and let them do what they do. So I'm excited."
Though most prognosticators have pegged Colorado for a lower-tier finish in the Big 12, it feels like one of those teams that we know almost nothing about. When the Buffs debut Thursday, we should be ready for anything.
But how many people are even paying attention anymore?
When Sanders arrived at Colorado and instantly brought fans to the stadium and money to the NIL fun and insane TV ratings, instantly reviving a program that had been dormant for years, you could squint and see the pathway to longstanding national relevance.
In some ways, though, Sanders was probably better equipped to win big in the pre-NIL era where his fame was more useful in recruiting. After all, the man got Hunter — a Heisman winner — to initially enroll at Jackson State. You could argue that nobody in the history of college football has out-recruited the reputation of their school than Sanders for a period of time.
That's harder to do when recruiting is a money race that Colorado, by and large, cannot win.
It leads to the existential question of this season: If Sanders is no longer dominating the zeitgeist and his celebrity is no longer a major edge in recruiting, what value is he bringing as a college head coach?
It can only be in the winning. He has not done enough of it yet. Thursday night starts a new season, but more importantly, a chance to change the narrative.
"It's gonna be a tremendous challenge but I love it," he said. "I absolutely love it."
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