RJ Jung
FOX Sports College Football Analyst
It’s prime time at the Power 5.
After leading Jackson State to the SWAC title and a 12-0 record for the second straight season, Deion Sanders was announced as Colorado’s next head coach. With this announcement, a new era begins in Boulder and beyond, and marks the arrival of a cultural icon—and one of the sport’s finest coaches—to the ranks of FBS coaching.
Let’s see what that means:
What does this mean for Coach Prime?
After leading Jackson State, a historic football program, to its first undefeated regular season in school history, posting a 27-5 record and winning back-to-back SWAC championships, Sanders makes a fitting move in coaching difficulty, if not prestige. He also accepts the challenge of building a champion at the sport’s highest level – the Power 5 – at a school that felt ready for the Coach Prime experience.
Sanders is smart about taking the job at a school that previously hired two black head coaches one after the other. With a shortage of Black head coaches at the FBS level, Sanders has an opportunity to show himself not just for Colorado, but for other Black coaches who deserve a chance to lead Power 5 programs.
If Sanders’ Buffaloes perform like his Tigers, he may not be in Colorado for much longer when a better job — like Alabama, Ohio State or the Dallas Cowboys — becomes available. Buffalo fans can be encouraged to believe that Sanders may have to put together a good season (10-plus wins and a conference title?) before that job goes down. However, Mel Tucker left Colorado for Michigan State without accomplishing any of those things.
What does this mean for Colorado?
The Buffaloes have one star. Remember, Sanders’ appeal is such that the JSU spring game was nationally televised.
He built and backed a winner in Mississippi during a pandemic and only signed the top recruit class in FCS this past February.
He also has legendary player qualities, having played in both the NFL and MLB — famously once on the same day. He won NFL Defensive Player of the Year, a Super Bowl, and was crowned into the Pro Football and College Football Halls of Fame.
This time last year, USC and Trojan athletic director Mike Dohn shocked the sport with the biggest coaching hire of the year, luring Lincoln Riley away from Oklahoma.
In short order, Riley turned a 4-8 program into an 11-win program that stayed just one game short of his first trip to the college football playoffs.
He accomplished that feat by using the transfer portal, luring a star quarterback and others to play with him, and feasting on the recruit-rich West Coast.
Sanders brings to Boulder the same fame and star power that brought Riley to South Central. He would also likely recruit his son, Shedeur Sanders, one of the best quarterbacks in the FCS — or FBS — to Colorado.
With the resources available to Sanders on a Pac-12 program that’s irrelevant since Joel Klatt played quarterback, the Buffaloes have the ingredients to skip a rebuild and play in a league that hasn’t had a CFP since. Team has spawned more to become competitive immediately 2016.
With a 2023 season opener against a TCU program that edged JSU win-for-win in the regular season, as well as a matchup with Nebraska and its new head coach Matt Rhule, Colorado has gained a foothold in the national discourse for the first time in two decades.
What does this mean for the Pac-12?
What better way to respond to USC’s (and UCLA’s) departure to the Big Ten than by successfully defending one of its remaining teams, Utah, not only its Pac-12 title, but also beating up Riley’s roster? How about hiring a trainer with even more star power than Riley?
The league began the season amid wild speculation that it would be invaded by other conferences or, worse, forced to disband. CU athletic director Rick George acted. After firing former CU head coach Karl Dorrell, he didn’t settle for less than a homework and a win for the remaining 10 teams in the Pac-12.
As such, the league will be known for more than just playing the East Coast night window, teams beating each other out of CFP competition, and playing their title game on a Friday night. Now, with Coach Prime on the sidelines, the Pac-12 has become a must-watch on TV.
To games with the brightest rising star in coaching – Sanders, who rivals Riley, Kyle Whittingham, Chip Kelly and Dan Lanning in just eight months.
What does this mean for sport?
At a time of dramatic turning points in programs like Baylor, TCU, Michigan and USC, the head coach at a university was more important than ever. Sanders is an example of this.
With him as the Buffaloes head coach, expect fundraising in Colorado to become easier and players to be able to make recruiting visits there that might never have been.
But for Colorado’s enemies – all 130 of them on FBS – the time has come to gird up their loins. Sanders was able to land the No. 1 overall recruit in the 2022 class at Jackson State. It shouldn’t surprise anyone when he compiles a set of top 10 recruitment classes considering he can recruit in the age of name, image and likeness and the transfer portal.
If there’s one caveat about Sanders’ recruitment moves, perhaps it’s whether he can convince these all-important offensive and defensive center-backs to choose Colorado. At JSU, he simply didn’t have the resources — nor the number of scholarships available to him — to challenge FBS teams on the field.
And that should be a terrifying thought.
What does this mean for HBCUs?
Sanders has shown that not only can the right person win at an HBCU, but that HBCU program can lead (back) to national prominence at the FCS level.
And Sanders is not alone in his attempt. Eddie George is trying to win at Tennessee State, Willie Simmons is winning A&M at Florida, and the college football world is paying attention.
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RJ Young is a national college football writer and analyst for FOX Sports and the host of The Number One College Football Show podcast. Follow him on Twitter @RJ_Young and subscribe to The RJ Young Show on YouTube.
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