You may have missed what the four players who made PFF's Big 12 team of the week after Colorado's narrow loss to West Virginia last weekend had in common.
Redshirt freshman guard Yahya Attia didn't.
Let's see if you can spot it. Here are the players who made PFF's Big 12 team of the week:
- QB Julian Lewis
- OG Yahya Attia
- WR Omarion Miller
- DT Brandon Davis-Swain
Give up?
"Most of the guys were young people, freshmen and sophomores," Attia said. "It's great to see that most of them were high schoolers, too. You can really build the future upon that."
Miller, a junior, is the only upperclassman. But all four who made the team signed with Colorado out of high school. Not a single one of them arrived in Boulder via the Transfer Portal.
Paging Deion Sanders - do you get what Attia is laying down for you? The best players on this team are of the high school ranks, so why on earth do you continue to try and build the team via the Transfer Portal while mostly ignoring high school recruiting?
Deion Sanders must attack high school recruiting to build the program he wants
The core of Colorado's team - if they all stick around - will be high school guys. Along with the four who made the PFF Big 12 team of the week, there are others like London Merritt and Alex McPherson that Coach Prime can build the future around.
The Transfer Portal has been a mixed bag for the Buffs. There's plenty of buyer's remorse on this roster. A lot of guys who didn't perform up to expectations and haven't fit the culture that Sanders has built in Boulder.
Sanders has had a lot of success identifying talent at the high school level and then developing that talent. And yet he still insists on building the roster through the portal. It's baffling.
Over the last two cycles, Colorado has signed just 27 total players from high school. They signed 15 in 2025 and just 12 in 2024. That's not how you build an elite program. 27 players are one cycle for most teams. USC, for instance, has 35 players committed to its 2026 class. Georgia has 30.
With less than a month to go until early signing day, Coach Prime's 2026 class has a whopping 12 commitments. The class ranks 78th nationally in the composite. What does that tell us? Sanders is once again going to have to use the Transfer Portal to build next season's roster.
And he'll probably get similar results to what he got this year.
If Sanders wants to build this program into a perennial contender, he's going to have to change his roster-building strategy. Players on the team can see it. It's past time for Coach Prime to see it, too.