What’s Next for Colorado and Deion Sanders?
Heading into the 2023 CFB season, the leading story was Coach Prime at arriving Boulder. There was so much buzz around the Colorado program. The spring game sold out! Season tickets had sold out and the fans had reached a new level of excitement. Everyone was curious and intrigued by how Deion was approaching the management of his team and many had questions and doubts on whether he could make this work at a P5 level, jumping from Jackson State.
His methods were very brash and were very radical to CFB at the time. Deion essentially overhauled the entire Colorado roster over the course of 6 months. He made it very clear that there were kids on the team who would not see playing time and encouraged to enter the transfer portal. As a result, Deion took full advantage of the transfer portal, bringing in over 50 kids! There had never been a roster overhaul like this before and I don’t know if there ever will be again.
Finally, Week One hit. Colorado took on TCU, the runner up in the College Football Playoff the year prior. Colorado entered the game as a three touchdown dog. As the clock struck triple zero’s, Colorado came out victorious and it seemed as though Colorado was for real. Deion famously started his press conference after the game with “Do you believe?”
The shine lasted for a few weeks but once entering conference play, the lights got turned off before the season even ended.
The question I teeter back and forth with is “was Deion successful this year?”. I think ultimately, the answer is probably yes. They won four games (three more than the previous year) and exceeded the Vegas win total of 3.5 wins. So, yeah, they were “successful”. That said, I think Deion benefitted from the element of surprise a little bit early on in the season. Teams had no idea what to prep for. On top of that, Shedeur and Travis Hunter are bonafide studs . However, after starting out 3-0, they went 1-8 in conference play. Things went down hill very quickly.
Deion was writing the blueprint on how to overhaul a roster and be competitive immediately in the transfer portal era. While it showed early promises, at the end, it was an utter failure. The “Deion approach” of building a roster through the transfer portal is not a sustainable model. Yet, here we are again this year, Deion trying to run this same strategy back. I might venture to say they may end up worse than last year.
To be a successful football program, high school recruiting must be the foundation of your program. National championships are won through high school recruiting. The transfer portal, when used properly, is best suited for supplemental value to high school recruiting. Deion is willingly neglecting high school recruiting as he signed just 6 kids in the upcoming 2024 class. That’s good for last in the “old” P5 and 106th nationally. When you’re getting out recruited by the top half of the G5 and schools like Boston College and Northwestern, you’re not set up for success. With typical classes hovering around 22 kids in any given year, he is well short of bringing on high school talent as compared to his peers.
With his blatant disregard to prioritizing high school recruits, there rises some speculation that he might be trying to field a team for 2024 rather than build a program for the future. If you’re a Colorado fan, what do you have to look forward to in the future? There’s six kids you’re bringing in as freshman. That’s hardly a baseline for a sustainable future.
I’m curious to see what happens after Shedeur is eligible for the draft. Will he leave Colorado? Will he change his approach? This model is just not sustainable and Colorado will likely enter the 2024 season projecting to be the worst team amongst the now power 4 conferences.
