Colorado is dominating college football -- or is it?
Lots of early hype for Coach Prime, but let's pump the brakes a bit
I only hope Ralphie can forgive me.
As you have no doubt heard, Colorado is all the rage in college football. After only managing to win a single game last year, the Buffaloes have put together a 3-0 early season run that has fans and media swooning.
Deion Sanders, who was Prime Time in his playing days and is now Coach Prime, has captivated the country. Three games into the season, and headed to Oregon for a defining game against the top-10 ranked Ducks, nobody is getting more buzz.
Which is why I hate to be the guy to say: Uh, before we hand out the Heisman, National Championship and Coach of the Year trophies, shouldn’t we give this a little thought? Isn’t it possible the Buffs are getting over-hyped?
Actually, that’s a silly question. By any reasonable measure CU has the hype machine in overdrive.
Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson showed up on the sideline, among other celebs, at last week’s double overtime win against Colorado State. LeBron James was live tweeting to complain about a late hit by a CSU player. (He was right.)
And after winning just two games to start the season, Sanders was booked for an interview on 60 Minutes. (Which turned out to be a little controversial.)
We get it. Sanders has always been a media magnet. And he’s proving the point with the Buffs.
According to SB Nation and ESPN last Saturday night’s double overtime game was “the fifth-most watched college football game on record.” (presumably regular season games.)
And you don’t have to be a pointy-headed TV executive to get the message. With the writers’ strike dragging on, fresh content is going to be scarce. So it makes sense to double down on America’s most popular reality show — football.
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The media is so gung ho — “People can’t get enough of Coach Prime” was the SB Nation headline — that it borders on embarrassing. The hosts on the highly-regarded “Move the Sticks” football podcast joked that the ESPN TV coverage was so Buff-centric that they wondered if the announcers realized there was another team on the field.
All of this is just delightful for those of us who are, like Ralphie, Buffaloes. I graduated from CU eons ago and I have fond memories of riding the stagecoach to Boulder. It was four great years at CU — some of which I remember.
You have no doubt already been cornered by a Buff-alum who wants to tell you about the years of despair and discouragement. Fellow-Buff and pal Rick Reilly wrote a laugh-out-loud column for the Washington Post.
He claims a friend couldn’t give two tickets away, so he left them on his office desk overnight, hoping someone would steal them. Instead, someone sneaked in and left two more tickets.
Again. Giddy times. But let’s give this a little time and space.
For starters, everybody loves an underdog story. You know how it goes in sports. The new coach comes in, inspires the roster, they start working harder than they ever have in their lives and suddenly — they’re contenders.
That’s not what happened here.
Sanders basically fired the entire team from the year before — only 10 scholarship players from last year remain — and brought in 86 new players. And many of them are top, top college players.
Look no further than the remarkable Travis Hunter, who was playing both wide receiver AND defensive back for Coach Prime. Hunter was injured on that late hit James was talking about and although you hate to see someone get hurt, it did give us this clip from the hospital with Hunter wearing what appears to be adult giraffe pajamas.
So there’s that.
But the important point is this:
Not only is there nothing wrong with Sanders’ roster stocking, this is what college football, and big time college athletics have encouraged.
With a no-waiting transfer portal, players can switch schools at will. And coaches can make a pitch for the top players and poach them from other programs. Dan Lanning, coach of Oregon, this week’s opponent, said he “recruited a lot of the players” that ended up at Colorado.
It isn’t hard to imagine a trend to super-programs, where coaches convince the best of the best to come to one of the major programs. And, once there, the players can take advantage of Name, Likeness and Image rules to build their brand and make serious money.
And if schools don’t want to play along with transfers and roster-stocking, well, look at Stanford and Cal, coming helmet in hand to ask the Atlantic Coast Conference if they could pretty please join.
The thing is, this is all new. Before we begin calling Colorado the Alabama of the Rockies, a couple of thoughts.
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First, it’s three games. Beating TCU — runner up to the National Championship last year — in the opener got this all started. Then the Buffs handled Nebraska — a traditional rival, but rebuilding.
And then they barely squeaked out the double OT win over CSU, which was a two-touchdown underdog. (If they’d lost that one it might have put a crimp in that 60 Minutes interview the next night.)
So I’m interested to see how they play at Oregon before going full Buffalo.
Also, a word about Sanders. He’s a brand-marketing dream. As the CU-CSU game played out, Sanders appeared in three national television commercials — one with Alabama icon Nick Saban.
Sanders comes by the hype honestly. He was an elite defensive back in the NFL. When he was with the 49ers there were games where he never had a ball thrown to his side. He was that good. And he’s the only athlete, ever, to appear in both a Super Bowl and a World Series.
But he can be controversial. I was in the locker room at the 1992 National League Championship when he threw a bucket of ice water over broadcaster Tim McCarver because he didn’t like his comments.
Stuff happens around him. Colorado State coach Jay Norvell, for some reason, made a bonehead crack about Sanders wearing a cap and sunglasses all the time, Sanders said he took it personally. He even handed out sunglasses to all his players to make the point.
From there, the pregame scuffle between the teams was pretty much inevitable.
And if you are scoring at home, this is the second pregame dustup in the first three games. Sanders’ son, quarterback Shedeur Sanders, said that the Nebraska team showed “extreme disrespect” when they held a team meeting at mid-field.
So, it bears watching to see if this program gets caught up in hype, drama and personal grudges or takes care of business.
And of course, they might. Maybe this really is the beginning of a sea change in college football. I am willing to be convinced.
I know this, if they beat Oregon — at Oregon — I will only have one question:
Where did I put that old CU cap?
Contact C.W. Nevius at cwnevius@gmail.com. Twitter: @cwnevius