BOULDER, Colo. — A woman who was a good 15-20 years past the usual field-storming demographic was out there on the grass at Folsom Field Saturday, recording video on her phone. Euphoria surged around her, as younger trespassers ran and jumped and howled. Music, mayhem and marijuana wafted through the thin air.
The woman spied another older field stormer. She asked with a laugh, “What are we doing out here?”
Riding the wave, ma’am. Riding the wave of the biggest, freshest, funnest party in college football. Don’t question it, just ride it.
The Colorado Buffaloes have stolen the college football show and they have no intention of giving it back. They’ve charged out to a 2-0 start after going 1-11 last year, pulling a huge upset in Week 1 and following that with a dominant win in Week 2. The breakthrough team unexpectedly popping up is always one of the best storylines in the sport, and this one is a blockbuster buttressed by star power.
The Buffs are exciting, they are dynamic and they are charismatically led by visionary/revolutionary coach Deion Sanders. Their 36-14 beatdown of Nebraska in Sanders’ home debut so energized the home crowd that even a few fortysomethings felt compelled to ignore the P.A. announcer’s warnings and rushed the playing surface.
Sanders has experienced just about everything in his remarkable athletic career, but being in the midst of a field storm was a first. “I’ve seen a club storm one time,” Sanders quipped. “I ain’t never been on a field that was stormed. … That was phenomenal.”
Safely escorted to the locker room, Sanders then pulled 98-year-old Colorado super fan Peggy Coppom up on a table to dance with him. “Give me my theme music,” Peggy said, stealing one of Sanders’ trademark lines and stealing hearts.
This is CPR for a flatlined program. Coach Prime Revival.
The TV networks can’t get enough. Fox Sports rolled the dice by making the Buffaloes the centerpiece of its early-season coverage, putting their first two games in the coveted Big Noon Kickoff time slot. Fox rolled sevens—the Buffs delivered an audience of 7.26 million for the opening victory over TCU, and the number should be huge for this game as well.
No wonder Fox Sports vice president Jordan Bazant was beaming upon arriving on the Colorado sideline in the closing minutes and hugging athletic director Rick George. No wonder ESPN announced shortly after Colorado won that it has already slotted College GameDay for Boulder next week. Last time the signature pregame show in the sport came here: 1996.
“We expect it,” Sanders said of the onslaught of attention. “It sounds kind of boastful, and at the risk of sounding arrogant, we truly expect that. That’s why these kids come—they want the biggest stage and they’re getting that every single week.”
The size of the crowd was notable: 53,241, the biggest at Folsom Field in 15 years. But so was the size of the media crowd for Sanders’ postgame press conference.
“Oh my God!” Sanders exclaimed when he walked into the room, wearing sunglasses, a white “Coach Prime” hoodie and a black suit coat with a polka-dot pocket square. “We must be winning.”
They’re winning, which is impressive. But what’s more impressive is winning these two games in very different ways.
Colorado beat TCU with a high-flying, fast-paced offense and a suspect defense that made just enough plays in key spots. Then, facing a stout Nebraska defense that tackled well and put pressure on quarterback Shedeur Sanders, Colorado won with a healthy dose of defense and special teams.
It took Colorado five possessions to score points Saturday, six to score a touchdown, and both those possessions were aided by Nebraska turnovers. (The Cornhuskers were awful offensively.) Shedeur Sanders, Deion’s son, labeled the Buffs’ first half “unacceptable.” His father termed it “a lot of garbage.”
But Colorado succeeded in playing complimentary football, as the coaches love to say these days. They got stops. They won the field-position battle. They converted all three field goal attempts. They did not turn the ball over.
And once the offense finally got untracked, this game became a walkover. Shedeur Sanders moved around the pocket to buy time, and his fleet of excellent receivers started getting open, and it was over in a hurry. The sight of Nebraska tacking on a cosmetic touchdown with a second left was something to behold for longtime observers of this old Big Eight/Big 12 rivalry, which the Cornhuskers have historically owned.
Sanders acknowledged and embraced Colorado’s historic dislike of Nebraska this week. “It’s personal,” he declared, and his players bought into it. Each of his sons (Shedeur and defensive back Shiloh Sanders) were flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct in the game as emotions ran hot.
Shedeur was flagged after removing his helmet in celebration of a wild, duck-and-dodge two-point conversion pass that ultimately was overturned on review. His dad admonished him after the play, telling him he cannot make that mistake. “But it’s personal,” Shedeur responded, which brought a laugh out of his old man.
Shedeur Sanders now has thrown for 903 yards in two games, completing 77.5 percent of his passes with six touchdowns and no interceptions. Those are Heisman Trophy contender numbers to be sure—but he still might not be the most worthy candidate on the Colorado team.
Travis Hunter did it again Saturday, starting on both sides of the ball and playing almost the entire game. Hunter logged 129 plays last week against TCU, which might be unprecedented in the last 35 years—then he backed it up with 125 against Nebraska. For the season he now has 14 catches for 192 yards and two touchdowns, seven tackles, an interception and two passes broken up. He’s essentially rewriting what can reasonably be expected of a football player.
Former Colorado coach and current radio analyst Gary Barnett offered this explanation for how Hunter is doing it: “He’s not from this planet.”
Deion, for one, isn’t worried about asking his resident alien to essentially play two games in one every week. He’s managed Hunter’s practice time carefully, putting him on an NFL-level schedule during the week to rest his legs.
“You got to understand, everybody who’s critical of that in saying he’s going to tire … shoot, they can’t cook and answer the phone at the same time,” Sanders said. “I don’t subscribe to that foolishness because that’s who Travis is. Travis is special. He has a tremendous gift and he wants to play. He loves to play.”
Hunter isn’t the only unprecedented element of this Colorado story. The very makeup of the roster is unlike anything we’ve seen, with just 10 players still around from the 2022 team and 86 new names on the roster. That’s an extreme makeover, but the Buffaloes needed that if they were going to compete right away. And it’s worked, a testament to Sanders’ team-building ability.
With the players buying in, the fans have followed. The scene here Saturday morning, starting well before a 10 a.m. local kickoff, was unlike anything in Boulder in decades.
Colorado fans of all ages were walking campus wearing Coach Prime shirts. There were enough cowboy hats in the student section to outfit a year’s worth of Nashville bachelorette parties, an ode to Sanders’ preferred headwear since becoming the coach here. Students who in years past would have been late for a morning kickoff—if they arrived at all—trash talked visiting fans. One held up a sign reading, “The alphabet has more Ws than Nebraska.”
A father walking to the stadium held the hand of his young daughter and taught her the words to the Colorado fight song. Twenty-five-year season ticket holders wandered in a blissful daze, scarcely believing the scene they were seeing. Nebraska fans who used to easily gobble up Folsom Field tickets had a much harder time getting into this stadium this time.
“I have seen a picture when the stands were in full red,” Shedeur Sanders said. “I do not know when that was, but I have seen that. This year looks different. Our fans came out in support.”
Deion Sanders said this all would happen. He sold the vision. But seeing it come to life in real time was moving.
“Beautiful,” he said. “A lot of this stuff is new to me. I know I have been to the highest level, the World Series as well as Super Bowls. But I am [new] in the coaching aspect of Power Five. … To know what we accomplished today and to see that many people that came to see us perform, it was tremendous. Not just the number but the energy, the love, the expectation. I love that.
“I am not thinking about the economic impact. Really, I am thinking about the social impact. I am seeing more African-Americans that I have ever seen before, sprinkling through the stands, stadium, restaurants and everything, I love that. The thing about sports, the thing about competition—when Shedeur is doing what he’s going, and Travis and Xavier [Worthy] and all those guys, they are not Black Colorado Buffaloes. They are just Colorado Buffaloes. We all come together, and we bring people together, uniting. And that is the part of it that I adore.”
The adoration is flowing in all directions right now in Boulder. Black and white, old and young, they were all flooding the field and dancing in the locker room Saturday. The freshest, funnest show in college football rolls on, no stopping it now.
