Coach Prime was the solution, now he is the problem
Thank you, Coach Prime, but your time in Boulder should be over.
It’s fair to say Deion “Coach Prime” Sanders injected much-needed life into the Colorado Buffaloes when he was hired in 2022. Seeing Travis Hunter and Shedeur Sanders play ball put the spotlight on a team that, just a year before Sanders’ hiring, was the worst in the country.
Boulder, Colorado, had ESPN’s College GameDay on the Leeds Business Field for the first time since 1996, when they hosted the Colorado State Rams for the Rocky Mountain Showdown in 2023. Big Noon Kickoff followed the Buffs for the first three weeks of the 2023 season.
Following one of the closest Heisman races in recent memory, with Hunter and running back Ashton Jeanty vying for the trophy, the team provided community on campus. Every game was entertaining, whether it was a shootout against Colorado State or scooping passes out of the end zone to beat Baylor.
Coach Prime saved the nation’s worst college football program from another decade of irrelevancy, but put it in a state of disarray.
As a media personality, Coach Prime loves primetime, and the spotlight can be a heat lamp. Deion’s every statement is torn apart, and not every player can handle the heat. Sanders recently benched his former five-star quarterback Julian “JuJu” Lewis, saying that he was still “coming around the mountain.”
The jury’s still out on what exactly happened and how it went down, with Sanders telling the media they’d have to ask Lewis.
Since Shedeur graduated from CU, Deion has started four different quarterbacks in a year and a half without consistent success from any of them
“We got to play better at one specific position,” Sanders said after the Buffs’ most recent game. “That's it.”
He’s 2-10 against ranked opponents in his tenure at CU and has made questionable coaching decisions.
Broncos fans know how frustrating Pat Shurmur’s offense was, and Sanders brought him in, and he delivered a conference-worst offense.
New offensive coordinator Brennan Marion is somehow worse. Hand-selected by Sanders to lead the offense, Marion is posting the 12th-worst scoring offense nationally, including putting up 52 points against FCS’ Weber State. Without that performance, the Buffs are averaging just 10.3 points per game —the worst mark in the nation by over a point.
Sanders’ obsession with not having a special teams coordinator has bitten his Buffs’ behinds and hindered their ability to get the offense rolling. In his tenure, teams have blocked 10 kick attempts while his team is only averaging 8.8 yards per punt return. Those small details aren’t just personnel issues or a lack of effort — it’s coaching.
“Special teams is a team effort,” Sanders said. “If we missed a kick, we missed a kick.”
Coming in with an attitude that special teams doesn’t matter bleeds into other aspects of the game.
The problem is, it gets to a point where they stop being problems and start becoming incompetence.
There were flashes of confusion last season during the Buffs’ 2025 loss to the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets at home. The Yellow Jackets gave the Buffs the ball with just a minute left, and Sanders didn’t use his timeouts, letting the clock run out and costing his team a chance to win.
“I think we got out of bounds a couple times so we didn't have to take them,” Sanders said after that game.
Sanders also has a history of being combative with the media, including barring Denver Post columnist Sean Keeler from asking him questions since 2024.
The incompetence reached a new level in the Buffs’ most recent game against the No. 12-ranked Texas Tech Red Raiders.
Not only did the Buffs leave their play-calling sheet in their hotel, but they only had eight players on the field during a Red Raiders’ field goal attempt, forcing a timeout. After the timeout, they came out with just nine players.
The Buffs also attempted a punt fake during the game, to which he appeared to have some words for tight ends coach Josh Niblett, who has been running the special teams this season. It’s unclear if Sanders knew the punt was happening.
“I’m gonna take the blame for that foolishness,” Sanders said after the game.
It’s worth noting that the jumbotron showed fourth-and-2 on the fake punt when the Buffs were actually facing a fourth-and-8. The ineptitude doesn’t stop with the coaching staff, but it extends to the in-stadium jumbotron.
Coach Prime has had his moments, but Colorado football is nauseating to watch at best and straight-up infuriating to watch at worst. With a level of incompetence that is becoming impressive.
It doesn’t help that the Buffs have two ranked opponents after their week six bye: No. 12 Utah and No. 18 Oklahoma State before hosting Kansas State on Halloween.
With the state the program is in, it’s likely the Buffs go 0-3 in the stretch. By week 10, the Buffs will head on the road to play a 2-2 Arizona State team that just got blown out by Baylor, making it a winnable game. If they find a way to lose to the Sun Devils, that’s when the team should decide to fire the coach who brought relevance back to Folsom Field.
More likely, the university waits until Sanders’ approximately $25.5 million buyout drops to $17.25 million after 2026 to fire him. At 59 years old and after beating bladder cancer, Sanders could choose to walk away from coaching, which wouldn’t cost either Sanders or the university a dollar, assuming he doesn’t take another job until 2029.
Either way, Coach Prime has had his time in primetime, and Colorado should be grateful. Now it’s time to move on.
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