For whatever reason, people don't want to give Deion Sanders the amount of credit he deserves for the job he has done at Colorado. Before Coach Prime arrived in Boulder, Colorado had just two winning seasons since 2005, one of which was the COVID-shortened 2020 season, which featured only six games. Prior to last season, Colorado hadn't won more than five games in a single season since 2016.
Most coaches would receive endless praise for the job Sanders has done. He took over a team in 2023 that had gone just 1-11 the season before. His first season finished at only 4-8, but even that was a massive improvement. Things came together last season, with Sanders leading the Buffaloes to a 9-4 mark and just the third bowl appearance for the program since 2006.
But there's still plenty of doubt about Coach Prime and his program. People want to see if he can do it without his son Shedeur at QB, and two-way superstar, Travis Hunter. Colorado is flying under the radar heading into the 2025 season.
ESPN's Bill Connelly has Deion Sanders ranked way too low
Bill Connelly is one of my favorite college football writers. His deep, statistical dives into this wonderfully stupid sport are consistently illuminating. But I can't disagree more vehemently than I do about where his formula places Sanders on his list of the top coaches in college football.
Two years is a small sample size, but he ranks 15 FBS head coaches who have been at their programs between 1-3 years. Sanders is ranked 12th out of those 15 coaches. He's behind G5 coaches like South Alabama's Major Applewhite and Louisiana's Michael Desormeaux. He's also behind coaches who have proven even less, such as Fran Brown, who ranks No. 9 after just one season at Syracuse.
I'll take a page from Coach Prime and call that for what it is: bulljunk.
This ranking isn't exactly indicative of Connelly's opinion on Sanders' coaching acumen. As he does for most things, Connelly crafted a formula to spit out this ranking. He uses a "performance vs. baseline" plus an average of where teams have ranked in his SP+ formula during the tenure of those coaches. The formula supposedly gives more weight to winning more games at programs that have historically struggled. It's why on the same ranking, SMU's Rhett Lashlee ranks No. 1, ahead of coaches like Oregon's Dan Lanning and Notre Dame's Marcus Freeman, on the strength of the Mustangs finishing 12th in SP+ last season.
Despite the five-win improvement last year and Colorado finishing No. 25 in the AP Poll, the Buffaloes ranked 39th in Connelly's final SP+ ranking of the 2024 season.
Still, any ranking of coaches that has Sanders that low should have you rethinking your formula.