Can Deion Sanders change the culture of football at Colorado? | College Football Enquirer
Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel, and Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde and Ross Dellenger discuss Colorado’s hiring of ‘Coach Prime’ Deion Sanders as its next head coach, and talk about what he can bring to a program that needs a revitalization.
Video Transcript
PAT FORDE: Woe be to those schools if you said, no, he might be a little too high maintenance. That's on you.
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DAN WETZEL: Deion Sanders is headed to Boulder. Does not care about the cold. Does not care about the lack of local talent. He did not agree with our assessment he should just go to South Florida. He is-- he's ready to roll. He got Jackson State to 12 and 0. He's going to come back and coach the Celebration Bowl in Atlanta and try to finish 13 and 0 and win that title. That's in a couple of weeks. But he is headed to Colorado. He very well may bring 60 guys in on the transfer portal. I don't know. I mean, this could be wild. His speech, did you guys watch his speech to the team?
PAT FORDE: I did not.
ROSS DELLENGER: I haven't. I haven't.
DAN WETZEL: OK. It's quite a speech. He basically just talks about how he's coming and everything's going to change. Basically, he's like, if you don't like it, hit the portal now. I'm bringing guys in. Like, it's an amazing speech. It's-- just you're not going to hear it any other way. But yeah, I mean, players are going crazy. There's verbal commitments from high school kids. Everyone's all excited about Deion Sanders at Colorado. Ross, what do you think? What do you think of the first hours of the Prime era?
ROSS DELLENGER: Yeah. Yeah, he already got a commit. I was trying to find it. It broke earlier on Sunday.
DAN WETZEL: It's like a 2025 receiver, like a five-star receiver.
PAT FORDE: Yeah, it's like several years out.
ROSS DELLENGER: Yeah, IMG Academy.
DAN WETZEL: Was he at A&M?
PAT FORDE: Yeah.
ROSS DELLENGER: Yeah, committed to A&M. Picks the Buffs over Alabama, Ohio State, and Miami in the '25 class. Yeah, so it has begun. That's what Deion is going to get you. That's what we talked about. He's going to bring talent. You're going to get players you normally wouldn't want-- you wouldn't get at a place like Colorado, at a conference like the Pac-12, because you have Deion as coach.
And I know we talked a lot about Deion this past season and, you know, about where he could go and the fit and stuff. And the fit there doesn't make a lot of sense for a lot of people. And a lot of people that were around him at Jackson State thought that he would go to a South Florida or stay in the South in some way. But Prime is all about prime time, right? I mean, he's-- Prime is about prime time, and--
DAN WETZEL: Power Five.
ROSS DELLENGER: --he's about Power Five. And he's been wanting to get in the Power Five. He's interviewed at several Power Five places. You know, there's this kind of like lingering, oh, my gosh, how could he leave Jackson State? I can't believe he left. A lot of people at Jackson State-- because I used to cover Jackson State for a couple of years, about 10 years ago, and so I still got people down there. And they're just, like, shocked and devastated. I'm like, guys, what are y'all-- what were you thinking? Like, he interviewed for Power Five jobs after his first season there in 2020. Like, this was going to happen.
And he's probably not at a place, like I don't think a lot of people would have penciled in. But guess what? It's the place that's open, and it has its own perks. It has a somewhat weak division/conference in a path to the CFP. It's a beautiful city, a great campus. They don't invest like others, and I think that's probably changing, will change with Prime there. I think that is on the way to changing. They're going to pay him an average of 6 million a year at Colorado, which is probably unheard of there. And his staff, I think, is getting 6 to 7 million or something like that.
So he's going to assemble not just player talent. And I think it's already been reported he's taken-- he took a coach off of Alabama's staff. Like, he's going to assemble coaching talent as well. So it's-- everything was pretty wild yesterday. Pat and I were in a lot of communication with the staff trying to figure out what was going on. And there's a time and place to talk about, like, the search and how crazy it was. But it landed on Deion. He's there. And it should be fun to watch.
PAT FORDE: Oh, it's going to be totally fascinating, like as good a theater as-- somebody tell me a more interesting coaching hire, I don't know, in a long time. It may blow up spectacularly. It may be great. It may be somewhere in between where it's almost even boring. I don't know. But Deion Sanders at a Power Five school, Colorado, sign me up. Sign me up for that because it's very unconventional.
There's a lot of schools that were not going to touch him, and I wrote about that. Woe be to those schools if Deion works out because-- especially in the South, where he's got all of his roots and all of his successes as a player, as a coach, as a recruiter. And if you said, no, he might be a little too high maintenance, we might not be able to deal with that, and he goes to Colorado and kills it, well, that's on you.
DAN WETZEL: Yeah. Well, I think we said he was the lottery ticket. He could-- he can change the dynamics of your program forever. If this works, he can-- especially if it had been an SEC job, where he wouldn't necessarily leave. I think if he starts winning in Colorado, someone from the South is coming with a-- coming to get him.
PAT FORDE: Yeah, someone's coming with 9 million, 10 million.
