Deion Sanders Is Paving the Way For A New Era of College Football
The University of Colorado is more well known for its stunning campus scenery than its athletics, but Deion Sanders may have changed that, and the college football formula for success, forever. Last year, the Buffaloes struggled to win a singular game amid an array of embarrassing losses. This year, they waltzed into the home stadium of a team that played in the National Championship just eight months ago and shocked the world. A turnaround like this, especially for a program of Colorado’s stature, is basically unheard of. While the season is still young and week one overreactions are a hallmark of the sport, Colorado's first performance may mark the ushering in of a new era of college football.
Deion Sanders, the spunky former defensive back, is regarded as one of the greatest athletes to ever grace the NFL. He retired from the NFL in 2005 after 14 seasons. Following his retirement, he coached at the high school level for a few years as he started to gain traction as an offensive guru. He was hired by Jackson State, Mississippi’s largest HBCU, as the head football coach in September of 2020. Sanders was an instant success, leading the Tigers to two consecutive conference championships, marking the end of a 14-year title drought.
In December of 2022, Sanders was hired by Colorado to replace Karl Dorrel, who served as head man for the Buffaloes for three years with limited success. Upon arrival on campus, Sanders began making headlines. He infamously announced to the team that most of the current roster wouldn't be on the team come Fall. In the subsequent months, seventy-one Colorado players entered the transfer portal. This statistic was jarring enough to make some call Sanders’s coaching strategy into question. In the wake of this mass exodus, Deion did something that had never been done in the transfer portal era of college football. He signed a staggering fifty-one players out of the portal, marking by far the largest and most talented transfer class ever.
Even though this may seem like a recipe for success, the doubt persisted. Some coaches claim that adding too many players via the portal is a formula for bad team chemistry. Locker room “culture” is considered one of the most important parts of a team’s success, and it’s notoriously hard to achieve a good culture with a roster supported by newly arrived talent. Some of college football’s biggest names, including two-time national champion Clemson's Dabo Swinney, have advocated against relying on the portal. In an interview with ESPN last year, Swinney was quoted saying “My transfer portal is right there in that locker room because if I'm constantly going out every year and adding guys from the transfer portal, I'm telling all those guys in that locker room that I don't believe in them, that I don't think they can play. We're also not doing our job as coaches and recruiters if we're bringing in a bunch of transfers. We're not going to build our roster on transfers.” Well, this Monday Clemson was handed an embarrassing loss by Duke, who is far from a football powerhouse. On the other hand, teams like Colorado and Florida State, who leaned on transfer talent this offseason, looked impressive while respectively defeating the top twenty teams.
If these results are significant for college football’s future, then the way teams are constructed may begin to change. As conference realignment and an expanded postseason shake up the sport’s foundation, coaches are having to constantly adapt to stay competitive. Sander’s unprecedented portal success will undoubtedly change the way coaches operate and how administrations hire their staff. While Sanders didn’t singlehandedly influence college football’s seemingly inevitable shift, he is certainly speeding it up.
The transfer portal isn’t the only way Sanders is reshaping college football. His intense personality contradicts the clean-cut prototype that has shaped college football coaches for decades. Sanders, affectionately nicknamed “Primetime” because of his clutch playmaking ability, was presented with a jersey that read “Coach Prime” when he was introduced at Colorado. Sander’s stylized brand seems to be one of his biggest assets. As he rejects the status quo, he attracts young talent that jive with his untraditional approach. While his press conferences may make him the subject of criticism, he’s clearly doing something right. “Do you believe now?” Sanders asked reporters following the Buffaloe’s week one upset win. It seems like Sanders has always believed in his own success, but now it looks like the rest of the country is finally catching on.
By Sawyer Sugarman