Analyst: Colorado ‘one of the most forward-thinking programs in the country’

Deion Sanders‘ Colorado football program was lauded by OutKick’s Grayson Weir as “one of the most forward-thinking programs in the country” due to their commitment to letting players wear jerseys with their social media handles on the back during practices.

“It might seem silly to have the handles on a practice jersey, and not an in-game jersey,” Weir prefaced before saying, “However, there are multiple cameras that follow the Buffaloes in each and every moment. Practice clips are cut and posted to multiple YouTube channels and on social media. The exposure, even if it leads to just one additional follower, is serving its purpose. Colorado and Coach Prime continue to be one of the most forward-thinking programs in the country.”

While sporting such jerseys aren’t new — UCF used social media handles on the backs of jersey during their 2021 spring game and even switched to using QR codes on the backs instead in 2022 — allowing the team to continually feature self-promotion shows that Coach Prime wants his guys to succeed on a personal level as well as with the team.

Colorado football has several NIL superstars already

One thing that separates the Buffaloes under Sanders and the CU of years past is the level of superstardom Colorado’s top players already have. Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter are household names in the sport, with the former having more than 1.4 million followers across all social media and being worth an estimated $1.3 million annually.

With the dawn of NIL, Coach Prime’s presence was going to help anyone, but his ability to land actual difference-makers, as proven by Sanders and Hunter’s 2022 performance at Jackson State, is giving CU star power it couldn’t fathom before the arrival of “Prime Time.”

It’s a new era in Boulder, and for however long it lasts, Colorado will be the talk of college football one way or another.