The jersey retirement drama swirling around Colorado football finally got a response from a Buffs legend we wanted to hear from.
Darian Hagan, the man who helped lead CU to a national championship in 1990 and finished fifth in Heisman voting the year before, has officially chimed in on the school’s controversial decision to retire the jersey numbers of Travis Hunter and Shedeur Sanders.
Speaking to USA Today, Hagan said, "It should not be at the discretion of the athletic director and the head coach. Head coaches come. Head coaches go. ADs come, and ADs go."
Hagan’s No. 3 jersey, once iconic on the Folsom Field turf, is still in rotation. In fact, new quarterback Kaidon Salter will be wearing it this fall. Meanwhile, the numbers worn by Hunter and Sanders—two players who weren’t even on campus for more than two seasons—are fast-tracked for retirement. That’s where the frustration begins for a lot of old-school Buffs fans.
According to Hagan, there was a policy. A waiting period. A voting process. Something that honored the history of the program and gave proper weight to the decision.
"That was shocking news to me," Hagan said. "It was hard to stomach."
You can’t blame Hagan for being frustrated. But rather looking at the old way of doing jersey retirements, Coach Prime mentioned how he is trying to change that.
Coach Prime actually had a pretty good point about honoring past greats
In his post-spring game press conference, Deion Sanders brought up the recent passing of Coach Bill McCartney—who led Colorado to its only national title. Now, decades later, he finally gets a statue. And Rashaan Salaam? His jersey wasn’t retired until after his death.
"Why we wait, man?" Coach Prime said.
And honestly, he’s not wrong. We live in a “right now” world. UberEats. Amazon Prime. Instant everything. But when it comes to honoring our legends, we wait until one of them passes away.
This isn’t about disrespecting the past—it’s about honoring greatness while they’re still here to see it. Prime is setting trends, flipping narratives, and challenging how we view tradition. That includes jersey retirements.
There’s room for both truths here: Hagan’s legacy matters. So does rethinking how we honor greatness before it's too late.
Hopefully that through all of this, we begin to look back on other legends like Hagan, and start doing more jersey retirements and putting new names on Folsom Field.
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