Deion Sanders might've backed out of NDSU-Colorado football matchup if he had say: Analyst

BuffsBeat's Josh Tolle believes that if Deion Sanders had a say, he might've backed off the NDSU-Colorado football Week 1 matchup CU is facing to kick off the 2024 season instead of risking a loss to an FCS program.

"Colorado made the agreement with the FCS powerhouse eight years ago before the hype of The Rise kicked in," Tolle prefaced before saying, "The Buffs are hosting Bison and will break out the checkbook. Thamel could be right. If NDST ends up leaving Folsom Field with a win, it could be trouble for the program early. At the very least, Sanders and crew might've backed out and gone another route to get momentum going."

ESPN's Pete Thamel scolded the person who scheduled the North Dakota State game for Colorado in 2016; claiming that said university personnel is shaking in their boots right now.

"You do not schedule an FCS game you can lose," Thamel said on the ESPN Gameday podcast. "You just don't do it. Now, North Dakota State might not have been what they were three or four years ago, but they're still excellent. And they are going to be sound.

"That is a game that whoever scheduled that eight years ago or whoever they are, should be shaking in their boots because that's just going to be very interesting."

Colorado football nearly lost to most comparable opponent to NDSU in 2023

The program closest to NDSU -- in the sense of not being a Power conference program, at least -- that Coach Prime's Buffs have ever played, Colorado State, nearly upset Colorado in Week 3 of the 2023 season.

That doesn't mean much from a matchup perspective, since CU has overhauled its roster since that game, but if the Buffs coaching staff haven't learned that they can't overlook opponents from the lower level, a similar, or worse, result could be waiting for them on August 29.