Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images
This is part of the deal with Coach Prime on the sidelines.
It’s almost cringey how stuffed with metaphors Colorado’s spring game was.
Here was everyone’s first look at the new-and-improved Buffs, reforged in the fires of the transfer portal and ready to show the Big 12 that they’re worth taking at least somewhat seriously. Their spring game promised overwhelming amounts of both on- and off-field entertainment and was marketed with the full force of Nike’s sponsorship budget; this was going to be the first must-see event in a season that promises to be full of them. Or so they thought.
Instead, their parade was quite literally rained on. And this wasn’t just a little spring shower or two – this was gross, unrelenting slop. In unseasonably cold and damp conditions, only about half (and that’s being optimistic) of the expected 40,000+ fans showed up. Most of them wound up ending the game early. Somewhere, a creative writing professor on CU’s campus nods approvingly.
The Buffs are going through it this spring. The endless stream of transfer news, Twitter controversies (“ “) and one Very Rough article from The Athletic have once again brought the spotlight back to Boulder, albeit in a much less flattering – and certainly less fun – fashion. The Colorado State win already feels like ancient history.
But within the avalanche of Takes that have surfaced over the past few weeks, it feels like some of the plot’s been lost. The shock value seems especially manufactured – for better and for worse, this was always the plan. The transfers, the tweets, the controversy – all of them have been largely embraced by Deion Sanders not just at Colorado, but everywhere he’s coached. This is how Sanders operates and it’s what Colorado willingly (and enthusiastically) signed up for.
Admittedly, it’s odd to see a Division I football coach go at dudes on Twitter. But Sanders has never shied away from publicly criticizing his players – after a loss last year, he told reporters in a post-game press conference that CU’s #1 offseason priority was to “go get new linemen.” On another occasion, when asked about why cornerback Cormani McClain –one of the Buffs’ highest-ranked recruits in years – wasn’t playing very much, he didn’t beat around the bush in evaluating McClain’s effort. Watch even 5 minutes of any Buffs practice footage and you’ll see the same thing: Sanders isn’t afraid to be critical, and even embraces it. It probably shouldn’t be all that surprising to anyone that he’s the same way on Twitter.
The Athletic’s profile wasn’t flattering. The reporting was rock solid, and I imagine there were a few people in CU’s athletic department who didn’t have a great day after it was published. And while the piece did swing-and-miss at times – I’m not sure anyone’s actually outraged at the volume of transfers coming in and out of Boulder – it did a good job highlighting the harsh realities and treatment that more than a few well-meaning 18-year old college kids have dealt with in the wake of Sanders’ hire. It was the type of article that parents probably have more of a right to be mad about than, say, the local beat writer.
But getting too bent out of shape over a tweets or reported text messages is, to an extent, losing the forest through the trees. The Buffs will go as Deion goes, which is exactly what the plan was all along. CU didn’t hire him in hopes that Division I football would turn him into someone he’s not, and has never been. The school wanted to lift their football program back into relevancy, and they have. At the risk of sounding dead inside, the Buffs are still getting everything they want from this: the killer TV ratings aren’t going anywhere, nor is the cash influx that Sanders has brought to Boulder. At least not yet, anyways.
And ultimately, while I definitely don’t need to remind anyone of this, I will: the Buffs need to be better. Going 4-8 is all well and good when it’s a three-win improvement, especially in Year 1. But they don’t have to deal with a historically great group of Pac-12 QBs anymore, and they’ve only got one year left with Shedeur and Travis Hunter. The good news is that no one’s going to care about tweets and texts if they’re winning games, and Sanders has won everywhere he’s coached.
The bad news is, uh, most everything else from the last eight months. But even with the occasional bump in the road, it’s hard to argue that the Sanders hire hasn’t gone to plan so far – it’s just time to get to the whole “winning games” part.
by camellis
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