Top photo: Gideon Lampron brings down an Arizona State ball carrier. Photo courtesy of CUBuffs.com.
11/7/2026 — Arizona State 20, Colorado 10 — 3-6, 1-5 Big 12
Two plays into Colorado’s second possession, Isaac Wilson hit Ernest Campbell in stride for 74 yards.
Charlie Williams was not lined up right.
Aflac sells supplemental insurance. You hand them a small amount of money every month, and if the thing you depend on stops working, they hand you a much larger amount back. That is the whole company. It is a priced opinion about how likely it is that something goes wrong, and it employs people whose only job is to be right about that. They are good at it. If they weren’t there would be no company and there would be no duck.
In July 2023, Aflac amended its sponsorship of Colorado athletics. The deal is worth $3.76 million over six years and runs through the 2027-28 season. It also contains termination language that triggers if Deion Sanders leaves before 2028, or if Aflac ends the separate endorsement deal it has with him personally.
Sit with which direction that runs. Aflac did not sell Colorado a policy. Aflac wrote itself one, against the possibility that Deion Sanders is no longer the head coach of the CU football program, in the same summer the rest of us decided that Deion Sanders had fixed the place.
The Denver Ford dealers did the same thing. So did Blenders Eyewear. Learfield went further and wrote out a definition of “diminishing event” so thorough that CU’s own athletic department put out a statement calling it “not unusual.”
Every one of those people watched the exact 2023 you and I watched. Sponsorship revenue up 42 percent. Then they went back to their offices and asked their lawyers for an escape hatch if Deion Sanders is no longer the head coach at Colorado.
Reader, that is not what you do when you believe something is permanent.
The football itself: it was not good.
Colorado lost 20-10 at Arizona State on Saturday night. The Buffs are 3-6 and 1-5 and have now lost nine straight Big 12 road games. It was the first conference game this season in which CU never led.
CU went three-and-out after the flag. And on the next drive. And the one after that. By the time Colorado ran a play that mattered again it was 17-0. Game over.
Eight days ago the students stormed Folsom Field. It feels like that happened to somebody else.
Let’s waddle into the deep end, Aflac-duck style….
1. If CU doesn’t make a bowl this year, it is time to move on from Deion Sanders
Colorado has to beat No. 17 Houston on Friday, win at Cincinnati and beat UCF. Three straight, against three teams with better records, starting with a Houston team that has lost twice all season and both times to top-15 opponents by a combined ten points.
Last week I wrote I’d be surprised if CU got to six wins. I am now something past surprised.
If the Buffs don’t get there, the answer is not another offseason of explanations about culture and youth and the portal. It’s year four.
Here are the four things that get yelled at me when I say that out loud.
“The buyout is too big.” I ran it three ways after Oklahoma State. It is smaller than the number people throw around, and it is the one objection that is purely arithmetic. Next.
“The sponsors walk.” Some of them do, and that part is real, and it is the piece here that is probably the most underreported. It also has an answer that has been sitting in plain sight for two years. Both of those are discussed in #2 below.
“Recruiting collapses.” Colorado is spending an estimated $23.2 million on this roster. Arizona State is spending an estimated $21.5 million. On Saturday the $23.2 million roster lost to a true freshman quarterback making his second career start. The money is already here and it is already not working. That’s discussed in #4 below.
“There’s nobody better available.”
Let’s put a pin in this one. As soon as CU loses its next game and is not going to be qualified for a bowl game, I’ll put together the first hotlist. You can decide what you think about this one. I have very strong feelings.
This is item #9 below.
The decision gets made in the first week of December whether Colorado participates in it or not.
2. The commercial fallout of a change, which has been largely underreported
A source pushed me toward this. Up top you got the shape of it. Here are the details.
Colorado’s sponsors wrote Deion Sanders into their contracts. Not his contract. Theirs.
The Denver Ford Dealers’ sponsorship, written through Learfield’s Buffalo Sports Properties, runs about $5 million over seven years. It starts at $665,000 for 2025-26 and climbs every year after that. It also contains what the paperwork calls a “football coach departure” provision: if Sanders leaves before the term is up, the dealers’ obligation is capped at $665,000 a year for the rest of it.
Read that one twice, because the clause does not cancel anything. The escalators ARE the Deion premium. The provision just freezes the dealers at the price they were willing to pay before any of this started, and everything above that line leaves with him.
Two more from the same file, and the second one cuts the other way. Blenders Eyewear’s two-year, $120,000 deal can be terminated if Blenders’ own separate endorsement agreement with Sanders ends. But the Denver Region Toyota dealers signed a five-year, $3.06 million deal in July, $609,394 a year through 2029-30, with no Sanders clause in it at all. So this is not applicable to every CU sponsor. It is the ones whose business with Colorado was actually business with him.
Learfield’s own deal is the bigger number. The fifth amendment to CU’s multimedia rights agreement commits Learfield to paying Colorado at least $46.8 million over ten years through 2035, and Sportico got it by public records request. Inside it are clauses covering what the industry calls “diminishing events,” defined, Sportico noted, more exhaustively than in Learfield’s other contracts. Colorado’s athletic department called that language “not unusual” and said it felt the broader version was “completely reasonable.”
A head coach leaving is exactly what that kind of language is for.
So a change costs something commercially, and it is more than the buyout math that I’ve done previously captures.
BUT NOW, FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK OF THE ROOM, I WANT YOU TO HEAR THIS: none of this changes the answer to whether CU should fire Deion Sanders.
Football ticket revenue already fell from $31.2 million in fiscal 2024 to $24 million in fiscal 2025. The department’s record $161.7 million leaned on roughly $31.9 million of the university’s own money. The “Prime Effect” is already depreciating. CU is still paying list price for it.
And there is a solution to a lot of this that has been sitting there the whole time. Naming rights sponsors. I wrote about this in June. Colorado has never sold naming rights to Folsom Field or the CU Events Center. The Power 4 average for a stadium naming deal is more than $3 million a year. Folsom on its own should go for at least $3.5 million, or about $2.5 million for a heritage version that keeps the Folsom name in it (think Chipotle Field at Folsom Field). Bundle Folsom, the Events Center and Prentup and you are at probably $6+ million a year.
Set that against a Ford deal frozen at $665,000 and a $3.76 million Aflac term.
Fernando Lovo inherits the bill and the unsold asset in the same month.
3. One penalty was the entire season in a single play
A tight end lined up wrong and a 74-yard touchdown turned into nothing.
Colorado is the most penalized team in the Big 12. Through nine games the Buffs have 79 penalties for 677 yards, and they have spent most of the season around 136th out of 138 FBS teams in penalty yards per game.
Year four. Not a new staff. The 1st quarter non-touchdown against Arizona State was at least the 3rd touchdown called back this season because of an illegal lineup.
There is exactly one thing in football that is entirely inside a coaching staff’s control, and it is whether eleven men know where to stand before the ball is snapped.
Somebody has to count them.
4. CU outspent Arizona State and lost to its true freshman
Whenever any of this comes up, somebody says resources. So let’s look at the resources.
Third-party estimates put Colorado’s 2026 roster cost at about $23.2 million and Arizona State’s at about $21.5 million. Both schools pay the same $15.6 million through revenue sharing. The difference is third-party NIL, roughly $7.6 million for CU against $5.9 million for ASU. Nobody discloses these numbers, so treat them as estimates, but every available estimate says Colorado is spending at least what Arizona State spends and probably more.
Arizona State started a true freshman quarterback, Jake Fette, in his second career start. Its freshman running back, Cardae Mack, ran for 80 yards and threw a touchdown pass to his own quarterback.
More damning, CU is 1-5 against teams with similar roster budgets. Teams with budgets at or below CU’s level, per The Athletic, are Northwestern ($21-25m), Baylor ($20-25m), Utah ($18-22m), Oklahoma State ($15-19m) and Kansas State ($19-23m). Add Arizona State at an estimated $21.5 million and CU is 1-5 against that group this season.
It is not a money problem.
5. The Go-Go has never gone
Brennan Marion brought an offense to Boulder with a history of scoring a lot of points. In nine games it has not once looked like that offense.
Four straight three-and-outs to open the game. No third-down conversion until the third quarter. The only touchdown came after Arizona State roughed the kicker, with 8:14 left and the thing already decided.
CU went into halftime down 17-0 with two timeouts still in its pocket.
Colorado ran 34 times for 64 yards. That is 1.9 a carry, and it is the fourth time in six Big 12 games the Buffs have finished with 83 rushing yards or fewer.
Richard Young carried 15 times for 47 yards. Eight days earlier he ran 24 times for 120 and I wrote that CU had finally found its best back. Then CU gave him 15 carries.
6. Last week the tight ends were a problem. Saturday they were worse.
I wrote 1,200 words about this after Kansas State and I am going to keep writing them.
Colorado ran 69 offensive snaps against Arizona State and played 79 snaps of tight end. It’s a smaller number of plays than the 110+ plays against Kansas State, but it’s still probably too many. Charlie Williams was out there for 44, Corbin Laisure for 24, Fisher Clements for 11.
Everything CU’s tight ends produced: two targets, one catch, 17 yards.
Now the blocking, which is the stated reason they’re on the field. PFF graded Williams 47.6 as a run blocker, Laisure 46.6, Clements 49.1. Sixty is average.
Three tight ends. None of them above 50 blocking the run. None of them with more than one catch. And it was a tight end’s mistaken alignment that erased the 74-yard touchdown.
To be fair, however, the run blocking woes are not just owned by the tight ends. Go down the offensive line in the same PFF report and not one starter reached 65 as a run blocker:
| Lineman | Run block | Pass block |
| Chauncey Gooden | 64.2 | 78.9 |
| Larry Johnson III | 60.8 | 61.9 |
| Yahya Attia | 58.8 | 77.8 |
| Sean Kinney | 57.4 | 83.1 |
| Leon Bell | 54.8 | 60.1 |
| Xavier Payne | 52.3 | 42.8 |
Look at those two columns. This group can protect. It gave up eight pressures on 41 dropbacks. Unfortunately, this group struggles to move defenders off the ball in the run game.
So CU’s answer to not being able to run is to add blockers who can’t block either. There are alternatives — CU has played offensive lineman Andre Roye Jr. some at tight end, and did play more 3 WR sets against Arizona State. But one of the reasons that the Go-Go isn’t going is because the tight end game is not working.
If I can see it, surely the coaches can see it. Right?!
7. Isaac Wilson took a step back on Saturday night
I’ll own this one. After Kansas State I wrote that Wilson’s PFF passing grade had climbed in four straight starts, 60.2 to 63.3 to 67.5 to 72.9, and that it was the first trend all season pointing the right way.
Saturday? He graded 53.0 passing and 50.3 overall.
He went 20-of-32 for 248 yards, a touchdown and an interception. On the season he is at 61.7%, 1,412 yards, eight touchdowns and eight interceptions.
Two of the plays that ended this game were his. CU was in Arizona State territory in the last three minutes and Wilson was sacked on back-to-back snaps, the second on fourth down. Worse was the one before halftime: fourth-and-6 at the ASU 34, down 10-0, a chance to make it a game, and he took a 24-yard sack. Five plays later it was 17-0.
A quarterback has to throw the ball away in that situation. He has to. It’s becoming clear that Wilson is not the long-term answer at the position. Nine games in, and we know that much.
But Joseph Williams caught seven balls for 121 yards and the only touchdown, and he was barely used in the first half. The short game worked and CU kept wandering away from it. It is not his job to work out what he does well and build an offense around it.
8. Gideon Lampron is a Butkus-caliber linebacker
Gideon Lampron had 18 tackles, 3.5 for loss and two sacks. It was the fourth straight week he set a career high in tackles: 13 against Utah, 14 at Oklahoma State, 16 against Kansas State, 18 on Saturday. He was the Big 12 Defensive Player of the Week a week ago. PFF graded him 77.4 overall and 83.2 against the run, the best grades on the field for either team.
He is the 2nd leading tackler in FBS football, with 99 tackles on the season.
If CU had a winning record, Lampron would be in contention for bringing a 3rd Butkus Award to CU. [For those of you that are new fans to the program, yes —- CU football has a rather illustrious past. CU has 2 Butkus Award winners in its history: Alfred Williams in 1990 and Matt Russell in 1996.]
Lampron is also, improbably, CU’s best pass rusher.
Colorado generated 13 pressures all night. Both of CU’s sacks came from Lampron.
The entire defensive line, every end and every tackle, combined for none.
He is a linebacker leading his team in sacks. He is also, at this point, CU’s next NFL draft pick. I believe he is as good as former Buff and current LA Ram standout Nate Landman (again — CU has a football history before Deion Sanders). Gideon Lampron is a football player.
The rest of that side of the ball was fine again. Santana Hopper had six tackles and three for loss. Ben Finneseth stepped in for the injured Naeten Mitchell and graded 74.7. Liona Lefau had 12 tackles and forced a fumble.
This defense held a Big 12 team to 20 points on the road and lost. CU Defensive Coordinator Chris Marve continues to do a good job.
9. It’s not going to be Jason Eck
If you have been telling yourself CU can fire Sanders and go hire Jason Eck, I would stop.
Eck is 7-1 at New Mexico and 4-0 in the Mountain West. He is on the Bear Bryant Coach of the Year watch list. He went 26-13 at Idaho — Idaho did not have a pulse before Eck arrived — and is 16-5 in two seasons in Albuquerque. New Mexico already extended him five years through 2030 last November, so he now comes with a buyout on top of a salary. And yes, CU’s current AD, Fernando Lovo, hired Eck at New Mexico.
Eck is probably the #1 “next man up” coaching candidate in the country. He will be sought after by the Texas A&Ms of the world (bye, Mike Elko). The Ohio States of the world (bye, Ryan Day). The Michigans of the world (bye, Kyle Whittingham). He’s a big-time candidate at this point, and he’s probably priced himself out of the CU job. The blue blood programs can pay more for a head coach, assistants, and NIL than CU can. Therefore, it’s highly, highly unlikely that Eck ends up in Boulder.
Still, there are a TON of great coaches that would salivate at the chance of being a head coach in Boulder, Colorado. CU will have a lot of interest in its head coaching job. And if CU loses one of its next 3 games, we’ll unveil the BuffsBlog Hot Board. We love hot boards. Just know that Jason Eck is an extremely low probability hire at this point.
Where this leaves us
Colorado has to win out:
- vs. No. 17 Houston, Friday, Nov. 13
- at Cincinnati, Saturday, Nov. 21
- vs. UCF, Saturday, Nov. 28
Houston is 7-2. Cincinnati is 5-4 and its two losses are to Utah and Houston. UCF is 5-4.
Eight days ago I wrote that the Kansas State win was real and that it was also a win over a team playing its fourth quarterback. Both things were true. Let’s see if Deion Sanders can pull a rabbit out of his hat and get CU to bowl eligibility.
Go Buffs.
This Week in CU Athletics, Sponsored by SportsDeck
Following the Buffs this week is a project. Men’s basketball is home Tuesday on ESPN+ and at Providence Saturday on Peacock. Women’s basketball is at San Diego State Wednesday on the Pac-12 Network and home Saturday on ESPN+. Volleyball hosts No. 17 Kansas Thursday and No. 24 Baylor Sunday, both on ESPN+. Soccer is in the Big 12 Tournament all week. And football is Friday night at 8:15 on ESPN. Five sports, five places to look, and no single screen that tells you what is on tonight and whether you already pay for it.
That is the whole reason SportsDeck exists. I built it after getting tired of finding out my team had played yesterday, on a channel I already had.
You tell it which teams you follow, and there are 3,220 of them across 47 sports leagues, and which streaming and TV services you already pay for. SportsDeck tells you every game your teams play, what time it starts, what channel or app it is on, and whether you can actually watch it with what you’ve got. It can even show you whether there is a cheaper way to watch more of your teams’ games.
It also pulls your teams’ news, podcasts, YouTube videos and trusted local coverage into one place, like the old sports page you miss, rebuilt for today’s world. There are 454 of those team pages. You can get a morning email with your games, viewing information and biggest team stories before your coffee, and there are game alerts and an iPhone widget too.
Your first month of Pro is free. Get the iPhone app or start at mysportsdeck.com.
Other Things That Interest Me, Which Have Nothing To Do With CU Football
–A middle-school teacher in New Orleans crashed his motorcycle and woke up two weeks later with perfect pitch he never had. The New York Times Magazine on Edward Freytag, here, with a gift link so you can read the whole thing. This is a fascinating one.
–I’ve written about how the College Sports Act, if it gets implemented (and the chances of it getting implemented are much lower this week than they were before the national election), would lead to the blue blood programs opting out of the Big 10 and SEC. I still think that’s correct. Twitter user Cyclone Larry goes into details below about how this could “save” college football. While I don’t know how likely this is given the new Democratic majorities in Congress, I think he’s right that this will happen if the College Sports Act gets implemented. Worth a read.
–This doesn’t have anything to do with CU football….
–“I attempted the longest set of monkey bars ever built.” This guy is an animal and I’m now too embarrassed to see if I can cross the monkey bars at my local park.
–Jason Kelce tries sumo. I laughed.
–Dogs can sniff out invasive plant species with high accuracy to curb their destruction.
More BuffsBlog You Might Have Missed
Pitch Invasion: Six Things I Think We Learned After Kansas State
The students stormed Folsom. Eight days later it feels like another season.
Deion Sanders’ Contract at Colorado, Explained: Salary, Buyout and the Real Cost of a Change
The buyout math, run three ways, from the public contract.
Coming Attractions: 24 of ESPN’s Top 100 Basketball Players Are on the Buffs’ Schedule
The nonconference slate is loaded. Here is who is coming to Boulder.
Thank you. I have been screaming into the void since 2023 that this program existed before anybody had heard of Jackson State and every time I say it some 22 year old tells me to enjoy my irrelevance. Lampron is the real deal and the Landman comp is right. Great work.
You should see the responses I get on social media to my posts from new CU fans. They keep telling me CU is heading for irrelevance if Lovo fires Deion Sanders. CU’s record against power 4 teams over last 2 years is 2-14. Is that relevant?!?!
Came here ready to be annoyed because I’m tired of the fire-Deion stuff. But this is good and informative. I’ll keep reading this site even though you’re wrong on Prime.
lol. thanks nick.
Great stuff John.
Pingback: Colorado Basketball vs San Diego State: An Optimist's Take
Great article.
I agree with the ongoing TE assessment. They cannot block and are not athletic enough to get open and catch the ball. There is no way that they broke Fall camp with multiple TE’s being a focal point. Maybe this is the lack of a safety valve slot receiver? We struck out on Scudero, Kam and others, but why not try Trackhawk or a Frosh.
I thought Ike played okay for being on the road, since we could not establish the run. We are not winning, if he has to throw it all over the yard; that is not his game. The OL was not blocking great. Could not establish the run. Young has 15 touches and Henderson 0 for the power backs. Smith is good for a scat, but not for short yardage. Plus, in short yardage we do not even send out a Power set.
I have watched the 4th down sack over and over. Ike probably should not have stepped up, or just ate it. The play never had a chance. The WR’s were right and ASU had 5 guys over there. Smith motions to the left and we have 2 TE’s split outside as WRs, so 5 wide. Smith goes to for LOS screen but covered (no 1st down here), one TE stays close to Smith yet had nobody within 8 yards and does not head into wide-open space. The other TE is 20+ yards downfield with back turned blocking someone?? They should have called time-out either before selecting the play, or once ASU ignored RBs motion.
I’m on the fence with firing HCDS, mostly because I don’t think we can make a splash hire. Eck and others will be gone, and I don’t want to see CU settle for their 4th or 5th choice. I’m waiting to see how the season ends. If we win 2 especially coming in, if we pull off a shocker v. Hou, we won three of last five. The teams that we have lost to are 40-10, as of today. CU has easier schedule and 7 home games next year, so I might be inclined to put off the firing carnage.
Thanks GR. I appreciate your thoughts.
If we lose again, I’d love your thoughts on the BuffsBlog Coaching Hot Board. I think there are 5+ coaches that I’m be pretty excited about on that list. But maybe beauty if in the eye of the beholder. Anyway, thanks for reading.
I don’t see up and coming coaches “salivating” over the CU job. It’s been a coach killer for 20+ years. The only coach who left with his stock higher than when he started was Mel Tucker.
Get ready for Ryan Walters or Sean Lewis type coach.
Well that ruined my evening.
Thanks for reading.
> Colorado has never sold naming rights to Folsom Field or the CU Events Center.
Minor correction – the CU Events Center was the Coors Events Center from 1990 – 2018.
You mean the Foam Dome. 🙂