Is the drumbeat of change sounding in Colorado? (Photo credit: Facebook, Getty)

Prime Time may be over

We, as Deion Sanders likes to say, have the receipts.

Currently, in his fourth season as head football coach at the University of Colorado in Boulder (abbreviated CU, not UC), Deion Sanders burst onto the major college football scene like a buffalo running through a brick wall. You had to pay attention. And we all paid attention.

Now, like the proverbial car wreck, no one can look away as Sanders’ CU team stumbles and bumbles its way through another (so far) subpar season. Broadcasters continue to place Colorado games in prime slots, so we all can watch in the event Sanders and his team have an epic meltdown.

When Colorado hired Sanders the hype machine was turned up to 11. Football analysts, fans and media took note, including The Weekly Opine writing in December 2023, “winning is what Sanders does and he has the right stuff to turn things around.”

Now, as storm clouds intensify, Sanders is an enigma; a decent, albeit sometimes controversial person. More flash than substance it appears.

Following a strong 2024 season, and with the table seemingly set to deliver a winning program, Coach Prime Time has produced sub-mediocre teams. He’s recruited just OK talent and has conducted a merry-go-round of assistant coaches. The reality points to a poorly organized operation that’s big on big talk.

Those were heady days when ESPN Gameday pulled into Colorado. (Photo credit: ESPN screenshot)

Results? Save for 2024, when he coached Heisman winner Travis Hunter and his star quarterback son, Shedeur, also a Heisman candidate, Coach Prime has lost his shine.

After opening 2023 with great fanfare and three straight wins, Colorado’s season record was four wins and eight losses. Sanders’ CU teams went 9-4 in 2024 (getting thrashed 36-14 by BYU in the Alamo Bowl), 3-9 in 2025, and sit at 2-3 entering this weekend’s bye week.

That’s 18 wins and 24 loses, with likely more losses than wins again this season. If it happens, well, three losing seasons in four years is not a Prime cut, it’s ground beef.

What happened?

Deion Sanders won at Jackson State. We presumed he would do the same at Colorado, with his combination of appealing swagger and rock-solid religious faith as his foundation. (Sanders’ charisma attracts media and fans like tariffs attract high prices.)

The sideline at Colorado games is no longer a red carpet filled with celebrities like The Rock, Lil Wayne and Paul Pierce. (Photos credit: Reddit, The Coloradoan, OutKick)

During Coach Prime’s first two seasons, on game day the Colorado sideline became a VIP celebrity hangout for sports and entertainment stars such as The Rock, Lil Wayne, Michael Irvin and Nikola Jokic.

Expectations soared that sustainable CU football success was upon us. In reality, Coach Prime’s tenure has been mostly a slippery slope of missed opportunities, bad decisions and oddities.

Sanders refuses to meet high school recruits at their homes. He’s meddled in the Cleveland Browns handling of his son Shedeur, a second-year pro. Rather than keep his nose to the grindstone, it’s been reported that in prior years Sanders travelled to his ranch in Texas during Colorado’s in-season bye week.

Being so easily distracted will not raise your program to championship level. Yet Sanders $10 million+ annual salary places him among the highest paid college football coaches. And Prime is a highly visible pitchman for Aflac and Depends.

Sander’s leeway for deflecting with memorable quotes and read-between-the-lines insinuations that CU’s failures are someone else’s fault has expired.

Coach Prime has hired and then replaced multiple offensive and defensive coordinators, brought in numerous QBs and repeatedly revamped offensive and defensive lines to little avail. Recently, he kicked three players off the team for laughing and goofing off after losing to Northwestern.

The media at Coach Prime’s press conferences are sniffing for signs that Prime Time is ending. (Photo credit: Fox Sports)

Colorado home game attendance has dropped from a record average of 53,180 in 2023 (Sanders first year) to 49,363 so far in 2026. The 2023 spring game drew 47,000 fans. In 2026, just 17,000 fans showed up at the spring game.

Maybe the truth is Sanders’ once irresistible “Prime Time” charm is evaporating, now lacking the credible substance necessary to build a rock-solid foundation such as what Curt Cignetti has accomplished at Indiana. Coach Prime has become a caricature of himself.

In fairness, Sanders has been fearlessly transparent while facing serious health challenges. But he and his sons also have not been shy about rolling around Boulder in luxury cars, showing off the financial spoils of NIL-fueled college football. (Sanders’ son Shilo, now $12 million in debt, is embroiled in a nasty bankruptcy case.)

Would Colorado return to irrelevance without Sanders? Possibly. But right now, Colorado is becoming irrelevant with Sanders. And the big talk, big strut program is reeling.

After another loss last weekend, Coach Prime said, “Let’s stop the shenanigans, man.”

Those words might echo what CU fans are saying about Deion Sanders’ tenure at Colorado.

WE GOT PLAYED