Colorado's sudden return to college football relevance

Deion Sanders has put Colorado Buffalo football back on the map in a big way unlike what we've seen from the program in a long time. What's going on? A lot.

Colorado has been in the college football news A LOT this offseason. Like, an awful lot, more than I’ve seen in a very long time.

For most of this century the program has largely been content to hire non-splashy coaches who fielded teams built from non-splashy recruiting classes. This changed in spectacular fashion and all of a sudden this offseason when they hired extremely splashy coach Deion Sanders and gave him a contract worth up to $29.5 milly over five seasons.

Sanders has grabbed headlines ever since, first with his “I’m coming” speech they taped him delivering to the roster, then for the unbelievable transfer portal roster churn he proceeded to initiate.

I’ve been asked a few times to comment on Colorado’s roster and shape for next season and frankly, it’s difficult. Their depth chart appears to be a moving target with something like 29 players coming in and 22 exiting, with potentially more to come.

Included amongst the incoming transfers? Deion’s own sons Shilo and Shedeur Sanders, the latter of whom is taking over as the new starting quarterback.

Colorado’s schedule release also caused a stir as everyone is curious to see how this team fares in year one. They will have to play a tough Pac-12 schedule and a non-conference which includes a road trip to open the year against the National runner-up TCU Horned Frogs followed immediately by a home date against the Matt Rhule Nebraska Cornhuskers. So more headlines to come.

Finally…they’re now the first Pac-12 program publicly flirting with making the move to the Big 12, the conference with which they opened the century in. In fact Colorado won the first Big 12 Championship of the 21st century.

So lots of Buff news, more than we’re used to. Too much to process even, but I’ll at least try to capture the big picture of what’s going on with Colorado football.