After an offseason filled with arrivals and departures, harsh criticism and breathless praise, lawsuits, media bans and, of course, open-access videos, the Colorado Buffaloes return to the field on Thursday when they host North Dakota State.
Of course, it will be broadcast nationally on ESPN.
“The world is watching,” said coach Deion Sanders.
Coach Prime is back, although he was never really gone, which speaks to the attention he generates and draws. After all, CU finished 4-8 last year.
Will the Buffs be good? Will they disappoint? Will this be a disaster? Will this be a glorious rise? Will Sanders leave Boulder at the end of the season?
“I’m just getting started with this college football thing,” he said this week.
Nobody knows anything, except that starting Thursday, all the outside noise – positive and negative – won’t matter. If the prime experiment is going to work in FBS football, let alone Boulder, then winning is really all that matters.
“I’m excited about the roster we’ve put together,” Sanders said this week. “I’m excited about what I see day in and day out, not just from the players but the personnel. These guys challenge other guys at a high level.”
Sanders never did anything the way anyone else did it. He presented himself as a defensive player. He played in the NFL and MLB simultaneously. He talked. He puffed himself up. He never backed down. He constantly challenged himself.
When he wanted to become a coach, he chose a college head job – at HBCU Jackson State – rather than join an NFL team. Still, he recruited five-star talent.
Now he’s entering his second season at CU, with a roster assembled through the portal and a head coach who pays little attention to high school talent. That’s not how it usually works. Prime doesn’t care.
And he claims he is not worried about the doubters – among rival coaches, the media and the fans – who predict outright that the whole thing will not work.
Proving them wrong is not important, he claims again. The only thing that matters is victory.
“You don’t really care because it doesn’t affect you,” Sanders said. “I’ve never read an article or an outside comment and said, ‘Oh, this is going to make me push harder.’ I’m going to push hard anyway…
“It’s not what drives me,” he continued. “Where I come from drives me. How I was raised drives me. Being African-American and one of the few to be a head coach in college football, that’s what drives me.”
Sanders took over a 1-11 team a year ago and changed the roster through the transfer portal while filming nearly every move. The Buffs started hot, winning their first three games and drawing huge television crowds and a sideline full of celebrities.
Then it was all over with a final score of 1:8.
Undeterred, Sanders kept the transfer turnstiles rolling. The club is built around his son Shadeur, a possible NFL first-round pick at quarterback, and two-way sensation Travis Hunter. But Prime believes his team is better in the trenches, will run better and has much more depth than it did a year ago.
Normally a coach would be successful if he went from one win to four and then to, say, six. That’s not normal. Is six enough? Or eight? In the past, Sanders has talked about competing for national championships. Now he’s not raising expectations.
“Even when I was playing, I never talked about what I was going to do, contrary to what you all think,” Sanders said. “I want to win, I definitely do. You have to be an idiot not to want to win in life or not to want to win as a coach. It’s just stupid not to want to do that.”
He kept it simple.
“I expect to do some amazing things,” he said.
There are a lot of people who want to see him succeed. There are a lot of people who want to see him fail.
The time of talks, hype, fights, controversies, stories and speculations is over.
Now it’s all about winning, and the whole (college football) world is watching.
