CU Bluffs or CU Buffs? If Deion Sanders ain’t careful, Ralphie’s gonna become college football’s version of the Dallas Cowboys. Eighty percent hat, 20 percent cattle.
“There is definitely reason,” Brandon Huffman, 247Sports’ national recruiting editor, told me Monday, “to be concerned.”
For all of Coach Prime’s sins as a hyperbolist, strategist and staff-builder, as a closer, as a pitch man? Nobody does it better.
“We already know what’s gonna transpire,” Sanders said after a 4-8 season ended with a scrappy 23-17 loss at Utah. “You’re gonna be pleased with what’s coming. I promise you that.”
Which makes it all the more curious that the viral CU recruiting headlines over the last 48 hours haven’t been about who’s coming … but who’s going.
On Monday, the Buffs lost their top QB commitment from the Class of ’24, Danny O’Neil. The day before, they’d lost their No. 1 signal-caller for ’25, Georgia four-star find Antwann Hill.
As of Nov. 1, the Buffs had landed three commitments from the Class of ’25, including Hill. By the afternoon of Nov. 27, they had none.
Something’s up. Something other than Ryan Staub’s passer rating.
Context: O’Neil is a Sean Lewis guy, the latest indicator yet that CU’s offensive-coordinator-in-title-only is likely following Tim Brewster out the door, another casualty of Pencil Pat Shurmur’s perplexing rise to power.
Lewis, lest we forget, left an FBS head-coaching job — and a tough one in Kent State, where he went to two bowls over five seasons — to come to Boulder in the first place. His name’s being whispered in Big Ten circles as an offensive coordinator candidate for the big-boy jobs and as a potential head-coach option for middleweights such as Indiana.
Brewster, a former Broncos assistant, was CU’s king of bluff, the proudest and loudest of Prime’s initial hires. The screaming for the Sanders family cameras felt a tad over the top, but Brewster’s greatest value, besides his work with the Buffs’ tight ends, came in being the only CU coach on hand with any real local ties. Brew resigned this past Sunday.
Sanders has teased staff upgrades, of course. Big names. Warren Sapp was a frequent sounding board for the Buffs’ D this year. Byron Leftwich, another Folsom Field visitor, is being floated as a possible Lewis replacement. In times of crisis, you lean hardest on your friends and on what you know best.
Sanders knows some of the best people to ever play the game. He’s still struggling to land the best people to ever teach it, though. There’s a difference.
College football has always been America’s gilded hypocrisy, its beautiful lie. When you contend to an athletic director that it’s about education, they tell you it’s about business. When you tell them it’s about business, they tell you it’s about education. Round and round it goes.
Sanders, who has the rare gift of being able to somehow stand passionately on both sides of an issue at the same time, fits that ecosystem perfectly.
“We’re not an ATM. That’s not going to happen here,” Coach Prime said at the Champions Center last Tuesday. “If you come to CU to play football for me and the CU Buffaloes, it’s because you really want to play football and receive a wonderful education.
“And all the business stuff is going to be handled at the back end, if that’s the case. But we are not an ATM. You’re not coming here to get rich unless you really come here with a plan to go to the NFL and get your degree. Not to come here and be (rapper) Moneybagg Yo … We’re not going to buy anybody whatsoever.”
Yet just a few days later, this was Sanders’ postgame soliloquy in Salt Lake:
“We definitely need giving, you know what I mean? It’s unfortunate to say this, but some kids cost (money). It’s unfortunate to say this, and … I have not charted this yet, but I’m gonna ask for the numbers, but if you start thinking about the top several teams in the country, let’s see what was spent on assembling the teams.
“You know, we can sit and talk about ‘great coaching’ and ‘great this,’ and ‘great that’ all we want. But it’s gonna be a credit-card swipe, some kind of way, with all these guys going to these (College Football) Playoffs, right? And I understand that.”
CU targets: We don’t do pay-for-play in Boulder, son!
CU donors: 5-star recruits are expensive, so let’s see those credit cards!
So where’s that money going?
No wonder recruits are confused.
“Now that the season has played out, quarterbacks are decommitting, it could be reason to think the initial buzz has worn off,” Huffman continued. “And now they really need to hunker down and sell the long-term vision.”
Is there one? I mean, beyond Shedeur’s eligibility running out? Or his back, the one that valiantly carried a team for three months, finally giving out?
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