How Deion Sanders Made Colorado Football the Center of the Sports Universe

For a brief moment, on Saturday afternoon in Boulder, Deion Sanders is invisible. Hard to believe, I know. Since he took over as head coach at the University of Colorado, Sanders has become college football’s centrifugal force, the planet around which attentions circle on loop after thirsty loop. The Buffaloes were on Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff the past two weeks, and will host ESPN’s College GameDay this coming weekend. Sanders’s every word—whether spoken in press conferences or in private locker-room meetings—seems to not only get filmed, but to go instantly viral. The 56-year-old has become such a larger-than-life presence that countless adults appear to have collectively decided, without second-guessing it, that we will henceforth address him as “Coach Prime.”

But now, at 1:30 p.m. local time on Saturday afternoon, Sanders is gone. He has vanished in a mass of black and gold as security rushes him from Folsom Field to the locker room to keep him safe. Fans spill onto the turf, some of whom are draped in Sanders Dallas Cowboys jerseys or Sanders Atlanta Falcons jerseys or T-shirts adorned with previous Sanders quotes (“I Ain’t Hard 2 Find,” “We Coming”). Towels wave and liquids fly and the faint but unmistakable scent of marijuana wafts in the air. People want to revel in what Sanders and the Buffaloes have just done.

Which is this: Win a football game, 36-14 over Nebraska, that gives Colorado more wins this season already (two) than it had in all of 2022; embarrass the Cornhuskers in a renewal of a once dormant but still vicious rivalry; attract a level of attention that stretches far beyond the reaches of college football; and upend many of the norms and sets of decorum that longtime fans of the sport have held dear. Not bad for Week 2.

In the chaos on the field, a few Colorado players mill about, dazed and joyous, allowing fans to pat them on the back and offer them copious dap. At one point, running back Dylan Edwards demurely says “thank you” when a (seemingly) drunken fan tells the freshman, loudly and repeatedly, that he is, in fact, Him. Somewhere nearby, Terrell Owens is milling about. So too are Raekwon, Inspectah Deck, and other members of the Wu-Tang Clan. Eight-hundred-forty-eight reporters were credentialed for this game, surpassing the old Colorado program record by more than 200.

A longtime college football afterthought is suddenly the most thrilling story in the nation. And though the man responsible has briefly vanished from view, Deion Sanders never stays out of the spotlight for long.

Photo by Dustin Bradford/Getty Images

“Oh my God,” Sanders says when he emerges an hour later, walking into a press conference room where reporters are crammed shoulder to shoulder to capture the most bountiful source of content in sports. Deion is wearing sunglasses, indoors, because of course he is, and a blazer, over a hoodie, because of course he is again. He flashes a smile that gleams as brightly today as it did when he danced onto the scene as the NFL’s most flamboyantly dominant cornerback in the ’90s.

“We must be winning!”

Indeed. The Buffaloes opened the season as three-touchdown underdogs to TCU, and then beat the defending national runners-up 45-42 in Week 1. They entered Week 2 as slight favorites over Nebraska, and proceeded to humiliate the Huskers in a game in which they never trailed. All of this with a roster that includes 86 new players, the majority of whom were recruited from high school or the transfer portal after Sanders arrived in December.

When Sanders first showed up in Boulder, he famously told a room full of Colorado players, “We’ve got a few positions taken care of because I’m bringing my luggage with me, and it’s Louis [Vuitton]. Go ahead and jump in that portal.” The message was clear. The players who had gone 1-11 last season were not good enough. Sanders would be finding replacements, and the incumbents could find new homes.

This set off the most audacious roster overhaul in the history of college football, something possible only in the new age of the transfer portal. From a talent management perspective, this was perhaps prudent. But telling a group of college students who expected to spend four years at one school that they should instead find another upset many people around the sport. “That’s not the way it’s meant to be,” Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi said in May. “Those kids have moms and dads and brothers and sisters and goals in life. I don’t know how many of those 70 really wanted to leave or they were kicked in the butt to get out.” (Sanders, for his part, responded to Narduzzi by saying, “I don’t know who he is, if he walked in here right now I wouldn’t know him.”)

At least from a competitive standpoint, Colorado’s overhaul appears to have worked. The Buffs defense may be porous on the ground (TCU rushed for 262 yards in Week 1), and their offensive line can occasionally be overwhelmed by the pass rush (Nebraska had eight sacks in Week 2). But the team is undefeated and has doubled last season’s win total. Colorado’s floor is competence. Its ceiling? We still don’t know.

One person who will define that ceiling: Shedeur Sanders. Deion’s son and Colorado’s quarterback has quickly put to rest any suspicions that he is starting because of nepotism. He is the Buffs’ breakout star, poised and mobile and decisive, spraying the ball to playmakers all over the field. In Week 1, he broke a school record by passing for 510 yards against TCU. In Week 2, he started slowly against Nebraska, but finished with 393 passing yards and two touchdowns. He has rocketed into the Heisman Trophy conversation and is even gaining buzz as a future first-round NFL draft pick.

After the Nebraska game, Shedeur walks into the media room, flanked by wide receiver Xavier Weaver and defensive lineman Taijh Alston. He is clapping and grinning and saying “Sko Buffs,” seemingly confused about why the reporters are not clapping and grinning and cheering along with him. He sits. He wears a chain with his no. 2 encrusted in diamonds, and his grin ignites, broadening into a full smile. At this stage in his life, it shines even brighter than his dad’s.

Shedeur shares his father’s charisma, but with softer edges. He seems earnest and delighted by the attention, almost grateful that this many khaki-and-polo-clad sportswriters have arrived to ask him questions about what he has just done. His father creates his own stage. Every step, every word, every choice is a performance. Deion wills the limelight into existence. Shedeur steps into it and looks immediately at home.

Like his father, though, Shedeur doesn’t hold back. When asked whether he was able to feel the intensity of the Colorado-Nebraska rivalry, he leaves no doubt. “All respect was gone,” he says, “for them and their program.”

All week leading into this showdown, the Buffs embraced a theme: It’s personal. Deion said it in his midweek presser. The players said it before and after the game. Many of them recently arrived at a new school, in a new state, and they now stepped into an unfamiliar rivalry. But there is history, here, between Nebraska and Colorado. One of your duties when you don black and gold is to hate the men in white and red. The states border each other, Boulder just a seven-hour drive from Lincoln, and the teams faced off every year back when both were in the Big 12.

In the late ’80s, when coach Tom Osborne had built Nebraska into one of the sport’s powers and Bill McCartney was beginning to do the same at Colorado, the Buffaloes became the brash, shit-talking, high-scoring antagonists to the quietly and perpetually excellent Huskers. Though the stakes have lowered and the conference affiliations have changed, the animosity remains. Late in the fourth quarter on Saturday, expletives and middle fingers flew between sections of Nebraska and Colorado fans. The players and coaches on both sides may have had to educate themselves on the depths of their programs’ antipathy, but they had 53,241 willing teachers screaming them on from the stands.

So Shedeur and his teammates showed up Saturday to a maelstrom. This continued on the field, as a group of Nebraska players congregated on the midfield Buffalo logo before the game. “The Buffalo means a lot to me,” Sanders says afterward, explaining his efforts to disrupt the Huskers’ gathering. “That was extreme disrespect.”

And there was more. On the day the transfer portal opened in April, first-year Nebraska coach Matt Rhule took an apparent shot at Deion Sanders, saying, “I hear other schools talking about, they can’t wait for today, the transfer portal, they can’t wait to go out. I can’t wait to coach my guys. I’m not thinking about anybody else other than this team that’s out here.” In the months since, Rhule has made efforts to praise Sanders, saying, “He’s won at everything he’s done in football. He’s won as a player, he’s won as a coach. Everyone maybe thinks from the outside—not me, everyone else—thinks that ‘Well, this is all a show and act.’ He’s the most serious person about football.”

Sitting at the podium, Shedeur makes clear he hasn’t forgotten Rhule’s earlier comments. “The coach said a lot of things about my pops and about the program,” he says. “And now he wanna act nice. I don’t respect that.”

Photo by Dustin Bradford/Getty Images

Sanders’s success so far is undeniable. But there are still plenty in the sport who criticize the methods by which he’s achieved it. He began his college coaching career at Jackson State, where he insisted that he saw the job as about much more than football, as a mission to reinvigorate the university and other HBCU institutions as a whole. But when the chance to take the Colorado job arrived—less than three years after he told Michael Strahan on Good Morning America that “God led me to Jackson State”—he jumped at a position with a higher profile and better resources.

And then he proceeded to let many Buffaloes players know that they were surplus to his requirements. “I couldn’t have stayed,” former Colorado wide receiver Grant Page told The Denver Post in April. “I really wanted to.” His position coach, he said, told him, “It was best for me to leave.”

Former Buffaloes center Travis Gray recounted his own experience in an interview with The Athletic that same month. He said that as he walked to a meeting with Sanders alongside offensive line coach Bill O’Boyle one afternoon, the assistant told him, “Hey buddy, you’re going to get cut today. I’m sorry to tell you this. I didn’t want you to hear it from Coach Prime. I wanted you to hear it from my mouth. I didn’t want to cut you, but we had to cut five offensive linemen, and you were the last one.” He continued, saying that when he sat down with Sanders, the head coach told him, “I hope you have a great future, it just won’t be here at the University of Colorado.”

Encouraging players to “jump in the portal” on the day he arrived, proclaiming that he was bringing his own Louis luggage—that is, more talented players—with him to Boulder, all of it feels a little callous and uncouth. But it’s also putting to bed the central lie that has long undergirded college football, that these are amateurs, arriving on campus to get an education first and play football second, that their value to the university extends beyond the money that comes with wins and losses. In April, Connecticut senator Chris Murphy tweeted, “The NCAA says players aren’t employees except for their coaches all treat players like employees. Sanders is in the process of firing half his team, kicking them off their scholarships because they aren’t performing. That’s employment.”

Sanders has defended himself by saying of the departed players, “I didn’t kick ’em out. They walked out.” And when Narduzzi criticized him, Sanders suggested that he was the wrong target. “He is not mad at me,” Sanders said in an interview with 247Sports, going on to reference former Pitt wide receiver and Biletnikoff Award winner Jordan Addison transferring to USC. “He is mad at the situation in football right now that allowed his best player to leave a year ago. He’s not mad at me, he’s using me to shoot bullets at another coach who he has an issue with.”

In many ways, the transfer portal affords players a level of autonomy they previously never had. Stars at smaller programs can jump to bigger ones. Running back Jahmyr Gibbs transferred from Georgia Tech to Alabama before last season and then became a first-round NFL draft pick; receiver Dominic Lovett starred at Missouri as a freshman in 2022, and is finding his place at Georgia as a sophomore. The portal also allows backups seeking additional playing time to downshift from a powerhouse to a mid-major. Or players with family concerns to find a new school closer to home.

But when a new coach arrives at an underperforming program, he now has the ability to do what Sanders has done: clean house. And Sanders is not the only one following this blueprint. Texas State brought in 50 new players this season. Other programs have cycled in double-digit transfers year after year. What’s the solution? It’s unclear. At SEC media days in July, Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin said he used to believe that players should be treated as official employees, signing multiyear contracts, but has since reconsidered. “That solves one problem but opens up five, 10 more,” he said. “I don’t have the exact solution because it is so complicated.”

For now, Sanders is left coaching the players on his roster, the ones who arrived this offseason and jelled right away, who have become the talk of the sport and a stealth contender in Colorado’s final year in the Pac-12. Beyond Shedeur, Edwards, and Weaver, there is Deion’s other son, defensive back Shilo Sanders, as well as wideout Jimmy Horn Jr. Most notably, there is two-way marvel Travis Hunter, once the top overall recruit in the country who committed to Sanders at Jackson State and followed him to Boulder.

And those players seem to love him. “He teaches me everything,” Hunter told ESPN’s Desmond Howard, “on offense and defense.” Nine players followed Sanders from Jackson State to Colorado, and you get the sense that if he decided tomorrow he was heading elsewhere, they’d follow him to that school too.

It’s impossible to know where this story will go from here. What will the Buffaloes look like against established conference powers Oregon and USC? How will they respond when squaring off against more talented and physical teams? What will next year bring, and the year after that, and the year after that? For all of Sanders’s magnetism, Colorado currently has the 76th-ranked recruiting class in the country, per the 247Sports composite rankings, just behind Florida Atlantic and Miami (Ohio). But Sanders has already shown he can build a roster in unconventional ways. The Buffs will likely hit the portal hard again and focus recruiting efforts on blue-chip high school talent, like Bryce Underwood, the top-rated quarterback in the 2025 class, who announced he’ll visit Boulder for the USC game later this month.

On one Saturday in Boulder, though, the future can wait. The Buffaloes are 2-0, the stadium is buzzed and raucous, and the players are awash in adulation from the fans right next to them—and soon enough, from the media pontificators many hundreds of miles away.

Back in the press room, Sanders is almost contemplative, reflecting both on what his team has accomplished and on how much it has left to go. “I keep saying, more and more young men as well as coaches are believing,” he says. “I think we’re up to probably 80 percent now of young men in that locker room as well as staff and support staff truly believing in what we’re capable of doing. It’s not believing in me—it’s believing in what we’re capable of doing.”

And while Sanders is clearly a coach for a new era, talking openly about getting players to the NFL and securing NIL deals for them while they’re on campus, the clips of his locker-room speeches show him emphasizing long-standing college coach talking points. Working toward a degree. Making good choices away from football. Turning boys into men.

Moments after the Nebraska win, a video uploaded to TikTok shows Sanders climbing on a platform, surrounded by his players.

“It was what?” Sanders says.

“Personal!” The players shout.

“It was what?”

“Personal!”

After presenting game balls to a long-suffering Colorado fan and to athletic director Rick George, Sanders jokes to his team that “We played like garbage, but we did what we had to do.” Then he delivers an exhortation.

“Don’t turn this moment,” he says, “into a memory that you’ll regret.” He tells them to celebrate responsibly, to ask themselves whether the person they respect most in the world would do what they were about to do. “I love you,” he says, “and I appreciate you. And I can’t wait to see you tomorrow.”