Where does Coach Prime and Colorado go from here? That's the question on everyone's mind now, 48 hours removed from a stunning blowout loss to Utah. Colorado was wildly uncompetitive in a 53-7 shellacking in Salt Lake City.
It's not a loss that you just flush and move on from. Deion Sanders is facing heat for perhaps the first time during his tenure as the Colorado head coach. There's pressure for him to get things fixed, and at least one ESPN writer isn't so sure that the issues are easily fixable.
In a column discussing the takeaways from college football's Week 9, ESPN's Kyle Bonagura slammed Coach Prime and the Buffaloes for the performance and theorized major dysfunction within the program for Colorado to look that bad:
"There is still a lot more interest in Colorado football than before the coach arrived, but the program has failed to capitalize on the buzz in a meaningful way," Bonagura writes. "Even the most ardent supporters of Coach Prime are going to have a hard time staying optimistic. This was the type of loss that points to comprehensive dysfunction, and that's not something that can be solved through the transfer portal."
ESPN writer believes there's 'comprehensive dysfunction' within the Colorado program
Bonagura uses strong words, and most Colorado fans wouldn't disagree with them. There's no excuse for how poorly Colorado played or how poorly they were prepared for the game. They had an extra week to prepare and were coming off their best performance of the season in a win over No. 22 Iowa State.
To go from knocking off the Cyclones to getting thoroughly dismantled by Utah was jarring. And Coach Prime has to answer for that.
No, Sanders isn't on the hot seat this season. He's still brought relevance to a program that was thirsting for it, but the honeymoon faze came to a crashing end on Saturday night at Rice-Eccles.
Results have to follow, quickly, or maybe both Coach Prime and Colorado will be looking for an escape hatch next season.
Widespread changes on the staff have to be made. It would be hard to justify bringing back either OC Pat Shurmur or DC Robert Livingston next season. Sanders has always been loyal to his coaches, but if he wants to win at the level he says he does, remaining loyal to underperforming coaches will prevent that and perhaps force Colorado to make a move it never expected to.