So who exactly landed on top of the college football transfer portal sweepstakes for 2023. Could it be USC who’s returning last year’s Heisman Trophy QB Caleb Williams along with his favorite receivers? How about LSU who seems to be on the rise again under the leadership of former Notre Dame Coach Brian Kelly with a 10-4 record last year including wins over No. 6 Alabama and No. 7 Ole Miss. Maybe it’s Michigan who, with a 13-1 record and a trip to the college football playoff, had their best season ever under Head Coach Jim Harbaugh and according to 24/7 Sports Summer Edition [College Football] Bowl Projections expect the Wolverines to return to the final four.
Well, if those were your top choices you’d be wrong by a mile. The school that won the transfer portal sweepstakes for 2023, the school that had over 200 recruits reach out and that everyone is flocking to, had a record of 1-11 last year and came in dead last in their conference. And it’s not like they had just one bad year, they were 4-8 the year before and have an average winning percentage of just 37% over the last 20 years with their last bowl win in 2004. So, why in the hell would anyone want to go play for the Colorado Buffaloes who will be fielding 70 new players.
Well, that’s pretty easy to explain if you know who “Neon” Deion Sanders or “Prime Time” is. How special is he and who is he to Colorado? Well, as far as the special part goes, during the 1989 season Deion Sanders hit a major league home run and scored a TD in the NFL the same week—the only man ever to do so—as well as the only man to ever play in both a Super Bowl and a World Series. An all-state honoree in football, basketball, and baseball in High School Sanders was recruited by Bobby Bowden to play football for Florida State. While playing football for Bowden Sanders was a two-time consensus All American Cornerback, won the Jim Thorpe Award in 1988 as the nation’s top Defensive Back, led the nation in punt return average, intercepted 14 passes including 3 in bowl games—one with five seconds left to seal Florida State’s 13-7 win over Auburn in the 1989 Sugar Bowl. In 1986, playing baseball for Florida State, Sanders posted a .331 batting average and the next year was credited with 27 stolen bases.
Selected 5th overall in the 1989 NFL draft, during his career Sanders was named to eight Pro Bowls, was designated first-team All-Pro six times, appeared in back-to-back Super Bowls—one as a 49er in Super Bowl XXIX and one as a Cowboy in Super Bowl XXX—winning both. After nine seasons in MLB and 14 seasons in the NFL “Prime Time” was inducted into both the Pro Football and College Football Halls of Fame in 2011 after which he pursued a job as a sport’s analyst, which he landed with the NFL Network, and what he coveted most—a head coaching job at a major university. But, in spite of all his success, no-one was interested and as a result Sanders took his passion for football to the high school level, eventually landing a job as the offensive coordinator at Trinity Christian High School in Cedar Hill, Texas where he coached two of his sons who played for the team. In that role he took a sub-500 team and turned them into a Division II state champion. That’s when Jackson State, an FCS Division 1 school with 4-8 record the prior year, came calling. In his first full season, Sanders led the Jackson State Tigers to the Southwestern Athletic Conference title and a school record 11 wins while also becoming the recipient of the 2021 Eddie Robinson Award as the season’s top FCS head coach. Counting an abbreviated and delayed COVID year along with two full years, Sanders’ overall record was 27-6,19-2 in conference with a perfect 8-0 conference record two years in a row.
That’s when Colorado came calling. That’s right, Deion Sanders is the new head coach for the Colorado Buffaloes in the PAC-12 and apparently there’s a lot of talented young men who have come through the portal to help him out—51 in fact, including five 4-star players and even one 5-star player. On top of that Deion isn’t the only Sanders coming to the Buffaloes as his son Sheduer, his QB at Jackson State for the last two years, along with his brother Shilo, a 195-pound defensive back will be joining their dad in his effort to turn the Colorado program around. Sheduer is a legit Division 1 QB and was a four-star recruit coming out of high school. In two years at Jackson State he threw for just 37 yards shy of 7,000 yards, 70 TD’s with just 14 picks. Last year he connected on 70% of his passes for 3,732 yards, 40 TD’s with just 6 interceptions while also collecting four more TD’s on the ground—throwing 4 TD’s with no interceptions while leading his team to a win in the Southwest Atlantic Conference Championship. In two years at Jackson State his other son Shilo played in 20 games and racked up 59 total tackles, five interceptions and 12 passes defended. As of June 22nd, 24/7 Sports has the Colorado 2023 recruiting class ranked as 21st best in the nation, just one tick below Michigan with 2 five-star recruits, 8 four-star recruits, and 60 three-star recruits. With a very tough schedule that would make a .500 season a huge success, we’ll have to see what it all means when it shakes out. But one thing for certain, while “Prime Time,” is head coach the days of Colorado being the doormat of the PAC-12 are over.