Shedeur Sanders did more for the University of Colorado than his school did for him.
Following the 2022 college football season, the Buffs were an afterthought, one of the worst, most-forgotten football programs in America. Boulder is one of the prettiest cities in the world, a degree from CU is internationally regarded and there’s nothing more perfect than a fall Saturday spent in the shadows of the Flatirons, watching a 1500-pound Buffalo dart across the greenest grass in Colorado. Yet, despite all those advantages, the Buffs football team was all but dead.
Two seasons later, amidst the chaos of the 2025 NFL Draft, the University of Colorado’s football program is now being mentioned – talked-about, tweeted-about, bantered-about – more than any college football program in the country. The only topic discussed more is the man who quarterbacked the Buffs back to prominence, Shedeur Sanders.
And for all the wrong reasons.
Saturday, two days and four-and-a-half-rounds deep into the draft, Sanders – one of, if not the best quarterbacks in school history, and indisputably one of the best college quarterbacks in 2024 – had yet to hear his name. In the NFL, where no team has a shot without an elite gunslinger, all 32 teams said “no thanks” to Sanders a total of 143 times, before the lowly Cleveland Browns, who’d already passed him up six times, finally said, “okay, why not?”
It wasn’t long ago that Sanders’ name could be found atop plenty of mock drafts, always tied to the most QB needy teams in the league. If he wasn’t going to be the first pick in the draft, he’d surely be in the top-5. There was no way a quarterback of his caliber could slip out of the top-10. It simply couldn’t happen.
If you’ve followed Sanders’ saga from then until now, you’ve no doubt heard countless reasons, speculations and theories as to why he didn’t just slip, but somehow fell completely out of favor with every GM in the NFL.
Terrible, terrible one-on-one interviews. Too arrogant. Too many sacks. Too much baggage. Too… not worth it.
Whatever the true reason, or combination of reasons, in just 24 hours, football at the next level decided to serve Sanders a jumbo slice of humble pie fit for only for Costco. It was a black-balling the likes we’ve never seen.
If we operate on the assumption that even the sharpest GMs in the NFL couldn’t deny what Sanders did on gameday, then the rest of the reasons must play a massive role in what’s suddenly become the biggest story in sports.
But cockiness, arrogance and awareness (or lack thereof) might just be the symptoms.
What is the root of the problem, though?
It’s easy to blame Sanders’ father, a logical popular place to point a finger. “Coach Prime” is the personification of flash, cocksure confidence and sizzle.
He’s also a lot of substance, though.
The results over the course of his life – as a star athlete, as a coach, as a business man – don’t lie. There are far worse things one could aspire to be than Deion Sanders. He is who he is, and whether you like him or not, there’s more than one way to skin a cat in the grand game of life. And Prime is a winner in the purest sense of the word, certainly not a bad guy to call “dad.”
Blaming Prime, however, is too easy. Shedeur is a young man, but a man nonetheless. No matter how influential his father might be, every person eventually and ultimately holds their own cards.
Perhaps the problem is that Shedeur’s other influences – sources outside his immediate family – were so limited, that he literally was never shown another perspective, never given advice from anyone he deemed credible.
Isn’t that what college is for?
The role of a university is not simply to arm a young person with a degree in a specified field. A university is a place for new exposure, different perspective, wise souls who can offer the next generation food for thought. A university is where existing beliefs are to be challenged, explored, accepted, rejected or refined.
Where was CU when Shedeur Sanders was busily devaluing himself for the past four months, or maybe even longer?
Fear not. This isn’t a righteous complaint about the virtues of higher education and its inherent conflict with bigtime college sports. Hardly. That ship sailed long ago; it’s an outdated and tired gripe. This theory has nothing to do with stuffy professors or entitled jocks. CU has failed in other ways.
While the presence of Deion Sanders is big, maybe as big as any college football coach ever, his place of employment has done little to control its own narrative, or in this case, the suddenly sad tale of Shedeur Sanders. The kid might have been the top-earning NIL athlete in the country, and yes, CU can take some credit for that, but there’s no way he should be dealing with the idea that a fifth-round contract is anything but guaranteed. Shedeur Sanders should have been inking first-round paper this week.
Blaming “the school” isn’t exactly right either. It’s more complicated than that.
For anyone who’s followed or covered the Buffs, one thing is for certain: It’s no longer the University of Colorado’s football team; it belongs to Coach Prime.
And maybe that’s okay; after all, it’s done much better ever since the coach landed in Boulder.
It’s impossible not to offer a tip of the cap to Rick George, the school’s athletic director who boldly and miraculously pulled off one of the greatest, improbable hires in the history of sports. Even the most diehard Deion detractors can’t deny the multitude of benefits the coach unpacked from his Louis Vuitton luggage upon arrival. Relevance is up. Winning is up. Revenue is up. Applications, prestige, diversity, national respect – all up.
But that doesn’t mean that such a hire hasn’t required a few concessions along the way, plenty of which are worthy of criticism. Don’t forget, it wasn’t long ago that CU’s academic purists wanted little to do with football and fundraising and recruiting and winning. The slow decomposition of a once great program was a direct reflection of the institution’s inner battle between academia and sports. Now – and credit George and those higher than him – it’s obvious that football has dramatically moved up CU’s list of priorities.
Look no further than Coach Prime’s massive contract extension, a feat that would have been laughable under previous regimes. Still, the powers that be lack the highest power – or so it would seem.
If you think Coach Prime doesn’t have the most important vote in every decision that surrounds his football program, you’re fooling yourself.
Again, it’s difficult to be unhappy about the results, both on and off the field. But as brilliant as Prime has been or might be, some level of checks and balances would be beneficial to all. Take the retirement of Shedeur Sanders jersey for example; how was nobody inside the university unable to raise a hand and loudly say, “You know, this just looks bad!”? Retiring Sanders’ No. 2 didn’t do him or CU any favors. Isn’t there anyone wise enough or powerful enough in the entire school to override a decision that was undoubtedly going to land with a thud, even if it’s Prime’s idea?
Maybe someone tried. Maybe slowing CU’s unexpected and unprecedented momentum in the midst of Prime’s contract extension simply wasn’t worth it.
“Media” or Public Relations” aren’t classes that every student-athlete is required to take. But, by and large, every college athlete gets a taste of these disciplines through the athletic department’s media relations staff. College sports often afford young people the opportunity to talk to enter the spotlight, and more importantly, do so under the guidance of a highly trained media and public relations staff. This, in turn, creates a forum in which future stars learn what to say and how to say. It’s experience and feedback at an early stage in the game.
Case in point, Dave Plati, the longtime sports information director of Buffs athletics, was widely regarded as one of the country’s very best before his semiretirement two years ago. Not only did Plati skillfully guide the Buffs football program through multiple national title-worthy seasons and out of plenty of sticky situations over the years, but his former athletes dot the sports media landscape to this day. Both nationally (see Joel Klatt) and locally (see Alfred Williams, Tyler Polumbus and Phillip Lindsay), there are dozens of former Buffs who now work in the sports media business. Furthermore, a litany of Plati’s media relations assistants and interns can be found now running similar offices in both pro and college sports across the country.
Point being, the University of Colorado has always had one of the best PR and media departments in all of sports. In fact, they still do.
The problem, however, is that the same department that guided plenty of great young men and women through their CU athletic experience, doesn’t – for the most part – have any say over the media and messaging that surrounds Prime and his most prominent players (see Shedeur Sanders, Travis Hunter, et al). If one wants access to those guys, going through “Prime’s People” is a must. Presumably, the coaching and feedback comes from them too – not the school’s personnel.
And that’s not to say Prime’s folks haven’t done a spectacular job; in many ways they have. Then again, in the case of Shedeur, they might have been a bit preoccupied with building a brand and making piles of NIL money. Sadly, it doesn’t appear as if they molded an image for Shedeur that sat well with the NFL. It’s fair to wonder if the university still had a say – under the wisdom of someone like Plati, for example – if Shedeur’s historic slide could have been prevented.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, so when a savior comes along and says, “This is how it’s going to be,” then that’s how it generally goes. And make no mistake, in the context of CU Football, Deion Sanders is a savior. A smart man like Rick George isn’t about to derail the train over something that, on the surface, seems small.
But over the weekend, Shedeur’s image became a pretty big deal. Wonder if a father and an athletic director would have handled anything differently in retrospect.
In this instance, CU could be Any U, USA. After all, when failure turns into success overnight, and success turns into notoriety, popularity and money, few people are strong enough to call timeout. It’s not as if the University of Colorado is acting any differently than practically any school in a similar situation would have.
But if one of the major purposes of college is to prepare a young person for life on their own, away from the influence of parents, it’s possible that the school Shedeur put back on the map didn’t exactly return the favor.
Systemic Failure: The CU Buffs didn’t do Shedeur Sanders any favors Mile High Sports.
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