Colorado football head coach Deion Sanders was credited by Mike Farrell of Mike Farrell Sports for getting the Buffaloes into the Big 12 — with the recruiting expert going as far as to say that Coach Prime is the greatest coaching hire because of the conference realignment he helped cause.
“Why is Deion Sanders the best ever already? Because the Colorado move to the Big 12 is because of him,” Farrell wrote. “The national media attention is because of him. The interest in Colorado from the portal to high school recruiting is because of him. Because a 1-11 football program stuck as the bottom feeder in a dying Pac-12 suddenly became not only attractive but SOUGHT AFTER by a viable Power Five (soon to be Power Four) conference because of Deion Sanders. That makes him invaluable.”
While less so about Sanders himself, because the future of football coaches in the NFL and Power Five college football is oftentimes unpredictable due to the abundance of high-paying jobs available, CU being able to reel in a coach like “Prime Time” is the real hook for the Big 12; not to mention the Buffs’ previous history in the Big 12/Big 8 before the 2011 season. Sanders may ultimately be too smitten with FSU not to eventually lead his alma mater, but if Colorado can land Coach Prime, there’s no caliber of headline name Boulder can’t entice in the future.
Deion Sanders has done at Colorado football what Tom Osbourne, Barry Switzer, and Nick Saban never did
Farrell believes that if not for Coach Prime, Colorado would’ve been left out of the latest round of conference realignment, and thus, Sanders has done what the likes of Alabama’s Nick Saban, Oklahoma’s Barry Switzer, and Nebraska’s Tom Osbourne haven’t for their respective blue blood programs.
“There have been coaches who have built programs like Bobby Bowden and Frank Beamer,” Farrell prefaced before saying, “There are coaches that made colleges absolute superpowers like Tom Osborne and Barry Switzer, and there have been coaches who saved blue blood programs from mediocrity like Nick Saban. But none of them have done what Deion Sanders has done before winning a game. He’s literally saving Colorado from being left out of a conference realignment game of musical chairs.”
CU now gets to renew rivalries with Oklahoma State, Iowa State, Kansas, and Kansas State in the Big 12, with at least one other Pac-12 school likely to make the jump as well. And Sanders gets bragging rights some of the game’s most legendary coaches don’t.