Deion Sanders Keeps The Attention Of College Football During Chaotic Off-Season, Now The Pressure Is On To Win
Are you not entertained by everything that has transpired at Colorado under Deion Sanders over the past seven months during a chaotic period in college football?
The obvious answer is yes, you've been keeping up with what's going on in Boulder since the final whistle blew in Houston, and Michigan raised the national championship trophy. To be honest, it's fascinating to watch the folks online go insane over any type of detail that gets published through social media, because it's a borderline addiction to what Deion Sanders is trying to accomplish with the Buffaloes this season.
Now, whether your attention has been on what Sanders has done in the transfer portal, or how Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter continued to make headlines throughout the off-season due to their social media presence, is your own conundrum. But we can’t deny that Colorado hasn’t been one of the epicenters of news for the past seven months since its final game of the season.
Do you remember what this off-season in college athletics looked like? I know it's been a chaotic year with the constant news about revenue sharing, along with teams joining new conferences and antitrust lawsuits filed against the NCAA. But my goodness, there has been news just about every single day regarding the future of college athletics, whether that's the recent settlement or how NIL and revenue sharing is going to make the sport of college football a more professional model than collegiate.
Through all of this, we were still talking about Deion Sanders and this final season with Shedeur Sanders, Travis Hunter, Shilo Sanders, which could easily be called the ‘Four Horsemen’ of Colorado football.
After coming off a rough ending to the 2023 season, this program still moves the needle as Deion prepares for his second season at the helm in Boulder.
BOULDER, CO - NOVEMBER 4: Head coach Deion Sanders of the Colorado Buffaloes has a word with quarterback Shedeur Sanders #2 before his first offensive drive in the first half of a game against the Oregon State Beavers at Folsom Field on November 4, 2023 in Boulder, Colorado. (Photo by Dustin Bradford/Getty Images)
You're not wrong to think that this could be the final ride of the Deion Sanders experiment in Boulder. But at the end of the day, Sanders has made it clear that he doesn't plan on walking out the door when his family heads off to the NFL. If we're being honest, the talk of him leaving Colorado after the 2024 season became nauseating at times, because you can only come up with so many different scenarios to fit the narrative of this being his swan-song.
The more reasonable scenario is that Deion Sanders has enough success this season in Boulder, in the Big 12, that an athletic director at a high-profile school comes along with an opportunity to take the next step in his coaching career. Would a 6-6 or 5-7 season make him attractive enough to garner a better situation in college football? Sure it would, because we are now in a different era of collegiate sports, and one of the attributes that Deion Sanders possesses is being able to sell tickets.
But, how will off-field drama affect the overall outcome of the 2024 season?
Off-Season Drama, Colorado Is Still Trying To Handle The Spotlight
Look, it wouldn't feel like a normal day in college football if there wasn't someone on the internet trying to rile up controversy around the Colorado football program. And some of that is brought on by the countless number of cameras that are documenting every single aspect of the program for the world to see.
Sure, some of the off-field stuff is kept behind the lenses of a camera, but Deion Sanders has made it clear with his actions that he doesn't care about some of the dirty laundry getting out into the public, because it's still a way to promote the program. This has been a case in point over the past week, starting with the piece on Colorado's culture under Coach Prime, which Athlon Sports reported with anonymous former Colorado players.
Wait, there was a fight between two players in practice and some of the coaches might have triggered it to see just how tough their players were? That's unfathomable, right? No, I would think this happens at every campus that houses a football team. But there's more, centering around a backup quarterback who wanted to settle a gambling debt with a teammate, which ended in a reported fight in the locker room.
BOULDER, COLORADO - APRIL 27: Jordan Seaton #77 of the Colorado Buffaloes blocks during their spring game at Folsom Field on April 27, 2024 in Boulder, Colorado. (Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)
Are we sure this isn't a description of every major program in college athletics? Most of the time, this type of stuff isn't brought to light because it usually stays in-house, but with the number of players that have either been told to leave or willingly left for more playing time, these types of stories are going to get out. Whether it's totally true is another conversation, though I personally don't think a reporter is making up stories for the hell of it, especially knowing the ramifications.
And let's be clear, I don’t condone Shilo Sanders slapping Cormani McClain multiple times in the locker room following a game, if a riot actually occurred, but can we please stop acting as if there aren't fights between teammates on a consistent basis in this sport.
In a video released on where else, but social media, Deion Sanders was sitting in the team cafeteria eating breakfast, with his son recording him, and commented on the story that compared his football culture to ‘Grand Theft Auto’.
"When are we going to address all these lies," Sanders said. "That's when you know you're doing well. When they start lying. Shouldnt there be penalties? Shouldnt there be some kind of ramifications? Jordan (Seaton) and Savion got into a fight that got bloody?"
As he laughed-off the report, Sanders did what he does best, and promoted the team on the video.
"Nevertheless, we got the highest GPA we’ve had in the history of the school the last two semesters. I wonder how they do that," Sanders proclaimed, to which his son replied ‘While thugging out’ in a sarcastic tone.
If you haven't figured it out by now, Deion Sanders is not worried about how loud the outside noise is, at least in front of the camera. This, at the end of the day, could be one of the bigger problems that hurts the Colorado program down the road.
Winning Cures Everything, Right? Colorado Is Hoping So
For some odd reason, college football fans across the internet tried to piece together a clip of Shedeur Sanders throwing a pass in practice this week in the same way folks tried to make sense of the JFK assassination.
Was it a legit pass or was it pieced together to make it look like Sheduer had thrown a nice ball? The fact we're having to discuss this topic is about as useless as the NCAA's punishment of Jim Harbaugh this week. If this doesn't make you think about just how polarizing the Colorado football program is under Coach Prime, go back and look at the replies to the video.
The fact is that this upcoming season is going to be judged in so many different ways that Colorado officials are just hoping for an opportunity to be relevant when the first weekend of November arrives.
If you bundle the transfer portal, social media, in-depth pieces on the culture at Colorado (from one reporter) and the expectations of the ‘Four Horsemen’ (look back at previous comparisons), the Buffaloes need to take the next step in a new conference.
Luckily for us, after opening the season with North Dakota State on a Thursday night, Deion Sanders will take his team to Nebraska the following week for a prime-time game against the Cornhuskers. We're going to find out very early if the Buffs can handle the outside noise, or we will see the volume turned-up and excuses being made about why things didn’t pan-out in 2024.
Either way, Colorado has made sure to stay in the spotlight, and we're about to see how these players handle the bright lights.