Deion Sanders' Colorado football program finished the 2024 season way ahead of where most had the Buffs projected in the preseason. While CU had serious mental lapses against Nebraska, Kansas, and, worst of all, BYU in the Alamo Bowl, Coach Prime's men still wildly outperformed expectations with a 9-4 season the Buffs were Big 12 title game-eligible in until the season's final week.
247 Sports' Cody Nagel ranked Colorado behind Arizona State, BYU, and Arizona State in his season-end rankings -- calling out the Week 13 loss to KU in Lawrence as the 2024 season's undoing.
"Had Colorado not become 'intoxicated with the success' as Deion Sanders put it after a loss to Kansas, then the Buffaloes would have been playing for a Big 12 title and a spot in the College Football Playoff. Still, this season was a remarkable accomplishment in Boulder, marking their first nine-win campaign while producing a Heisman Trophy winner in two-way star Travis Hunter. The blowout loss to BYU in the Alamo Bowl put a bit of a damper on the year, but there is no questioning the turnaround Sanders has achieved," Nagel wrote.
Coach Prime proclaimed after the Alamo Bowl that the standard is now set in Boulder.
“Expectation. We’ve established expectation. So now you expect us to perform a certain way. You expect us to win. You expect us to be exciting. You expect us to be a lot more disciplined than we displayed today. You just have expectations of us now. That’s what we’ve established," Sanders said on December 28, per Rivals.
Whether it was the start of something substantial or a one-year wonder, what the Buffs did in 2024 will live on forever in the Centennial State and beyond.