Want to Fix CU Football? A Solution for Deion Sanders

“You can fix anything but a blank page.” –Nora Roberts

I find myself staring at a blank screen more and more when I sit down to write about the CU football program.

The blinking cursor mocks me, and I hear my mother’s voice— if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

I can hear my dad’s voice, too.  He’s fiercely loyal to CU athletics, always reminding me to look at the bright side of the Deion Sanders era – the national attention, the sold-out Folsom Field, the privilege of watching Travis Hunter, and the increased diversity at CU.  

He’s right.  There have been some real positives.  I’ve written about many of them.

But now, three plus years into the Deion Sanders regime, I find myself staring at my computer screen.  

Because CU football, as it’s currently constructed, is broken.

Deion Sanders built the CU football program with the transfer portal as its foundation.  In Year 4, that foundation is showing serious cracks.  The overreliance on transfers has created continuity and culture problems that threaten the future of the Deion Sanders regime in Boulder. 

Let’s start with the continuity issue. 

Statistically, over the last 3+ years, CU has relied more on transfers than any other program in NCAA football history.  

In Year 1 and even Year 2, that made sense.  The team that Deion Sanders inherited won only one game and was one of the worst teams in college football. The portal was a life raft.

But by Year 4, the ship should be sailing under its own power.  

This is now all on Deion Sanders. 

When your talent base is mostly players who’ve already left one situation for a “better” one, you can’t be shocked when they price-shop again for a few more snaps or a little more coin.  There’s no allegiance to CU.  The result is a program with record low year-to-year continuity and where the fan experience is forced to reset every August. New names, new numbers, new social media handles on the back of practice jerseys.

This offseason alone, CU’s best defensive player (Tawfiq Byard) and one of its top offensive players (Omarrion Miller) have entered the transfer portal.  Other outgoing transfers include DL Tawfiq Thomas, WR Dre’lon Miller, DL Alexander McPherson, DL Christian Hudson, DL Gavriel Lightfoot, OL Tyler Brown, OL Carde Smith, DL Brandon Davis-Swain, safety TJ Branch, DL Jaheim Oatis, cornerback Teon Parks, safety Noah King, and linebacker Mantrez Walker.

One source told me to expect “2 or so” more outgoing high-level transfers in addition to several more outgoing lower-level transfers. 

And before you say that’s just modern college football, consider this:

The average team in this year’s NCAA football playoffs returned more than 55 scholarship players, providing cohesion and institutional knowledge.   Oregon, a playoff team, had just 25% of its roster comprised of newcomers.  CU?  Roughly 70% off its roster in 2025 was new. The difference is stark.  Continuity matters.  It breeds chemistry, leadership and buy-in.  Without it, you’re rebuilding culture every year from scratch. 

Which brings us to the culture issue.

When two-thirds of your roster is new every year, there’s very little opportunity for leadership to take root. Veteran players don’t stay long enough to mentor younger players, and the kind of internal accountability that makes great programs resilient simply doesn’t have time to take hold. 

Accountability can’t be built when no one knows what the standards are. 

What you get is less of a team and more of a co-working space—independent contractors in shoulder pads, sharing a sideline for a few months before moving on. 

Complaints about the team not singing the fight song or not running behind Ralphie might seem trivial.  But they’re symptoms of a program that hasn’t figured out what it wants to stand for beyond NIL deals and Instagram reels.

When a huge chunk of your contributors weren’t even on campus 6 months ago, cohesion is thin.  Adversity breaks a team. How do you sacrifice for the guy next to you when you barely know him?   

Yes, folks, this matters when it comes to wins and losses. Culture wins games.

Please know that this isn’t a knock on the players.  Instead, it’s a reflection of the system they’re dropped into. Loyalty and culture aren’t inherited.  They’re built, through blood and sweat and tears.  CU’s current approach leaves no time for any of that. 

And so I stared at a blank screen, trying to figure out how to stay hopeful when I genuinely dislike Colorado football right now.

And then it hit me.

I know how to fix it.

And the best part? It doesn’t require Deion Sanders to overhaul his core philosophy and abandon the transfer-heavy strategy that’s become his signature (and Sanders has shown that he refuses to abandon this strategy even though I think he needs to rethink it.)

Thanks to the House v. NCAA settlement, FBS programs can now offer up to 105 scholarships. Yet over the last three years, CU has hovered around 80 scholarship players. That’s not because there’s no room. It’s because the program has chosen not to pay for those final 25 scholarships, likely assuming those back-end players wouldn’t contribute immediately and that the expected added cost (about $1m) isn’t worth the hassle.

That’s a mistake.

Those 25 extra scholarships are an opportunity to build a foundation.

CU needs to use those scholarships to bring in high character high school recruits. Think the kind of kids who might otherwise end up at Mountain West or Big Sky prorams. The kind of players that walked on at Nebraska in the 1990s or that are joining the South Dakota States of the world today. Players who cost little to no NIL but want the chance to prove themselves at the highest level. 

Even better, recruit them from Colorado.  Recruit the players that are ranked in the 20-40 range in the state and that are high character players.  Let them be the backbone of the program.

Find grinders, glue guys, long-haulers.

While some of them will never see the field, others might become real contributors.  But more importantly, these players will bring CU something that it sorely lacks — stability.

These are the kinds of players who will stick around for four or five years. The ones who will carry the locker room culture forward when 50 new guys arrive every spring. The ones who will show the incoming transfers where the weight room is, where the Duane Physics building is, and how to sing the fight song.  Most importantly, these are the players that can show the newcomers what the expected standard is for them as football players for the University of Colorado.

These are your “coach on the field” type guys. Your scout team all-stars. Your “next man up” guys when injuries hit in November. 

In short, they’re program players.  CU hasn’t had them.  And CU desperately needs them.

Deion Sanders can still pursue blue-chip transfers.  But he needs to stop building a new team every year.  

By using those 25 scholarships on program players, Deion Sanders and CU can start to build a culture that the incoming transfers need to adhere to.

If you’d like to read more from BuffsBlog, read about the CU hoops team at:

Unverified Veracity Looks at Likelihood of NCAA Tournament and More CU Facility Issues

Or read about how Brennan Marion is going to marry his Go-Go offense with a non-running QB in Juju Lewis, only at:

What does the Go-Go Offense Look Like with JuJu Lewis at QB? How Brennan Marion Utilizes a Non-Running QB