Editor’s Note: This summer, FOX Sports college football analyst Joel Klatt is interviewing the biggest names in college football as part of his new podcast series, “The Joel Klatt Show: Big Noon Conversations.” The following is an excerpt from Episode I, featuring Deion Sanders.
Colorado football coach Deion Sanders is many things. The Pro Football Hall of Famer, who was named the head coach of the Buffaloes on Dec. 3, is bold, flashy, extremely competitive and a proven winner.
But above all, Sanders, who has been at the top of the college football news cycle throughout the past six months for his unprecedented roster overhaul is, simply put, unapologetic.
In college football’s new and ever-evolving landscape, in which coaches, players and administrators across the country are trying to figure out how to properly navigate the transfer portal, Coach Prime is providing a master class in how to efficiently turn over a roster.
Whether that results in double-digit wins, a Pac-12 title or even a coveted spot in the College Football Playoff remains to be seen, but the displeasure and ridicule he has received from others for his remarkable roster flip does not bother him. He knew that to transform a Colorado program that finished 1-11 last season into a winner, he was going to have to make wholesale changes from the second he officially inherited the roster.
“I value ‘now’ so much that I ain’t looking at yesterday, and I’m not looking at tomorrow,” Sanders told FOX Sports college football analyst Joel Klatt. “My feeling, my thought, my understanding is … I got to get it now.”
Sanders joined Klatt for a one-on-one sit-down conversation as a part of Klatt’s new podcast series titled, “The Joel Klatt Show: Big Noon Conversations,” which was released Monday.
Coach Prime touched on the outside noise that has followed each change he’s made.
“I’m not surprised because it’s always been that way, even when I started out in sports,” said Sanders, a former two-sport star who was selected fifth overall in the 1989 NFL Draft, becoming just the second cornerback ever selected in the top five in the common draft era. “I’m used to that. I’m accustomed to adversity. I’m accustomed to having ridicule and disbelief.”
To truly understand Sanders’ unapologetic nature, look no further than his introductory meeting with the Colorado football team, which was delivered shortly after he was officially introduced as the program’s head coach.
“I’m not going to lie: Some of you who are sitting in these seats aren’t going to have a seat,” Sanders told his team during that initial meeting. “We got a few positions already taken care of because I’m bringing my luggage with me, and it’s Louis [Vuitton].”
It was the sound bite heard round the college football world, picked up by every sports media outlet across the nation. But to Sanders, that line wasn’t meant to be assuming. He didn’t mutter those words with the hope it would go viral across social media, and according to Sanders, it certainly wasn’t rehearsed.
“It just happened … because I’m honest to a fault,” Sanders told Klatt of the speech. “I’m gonna say what I feel and I’m gonna feel what I say.”
It’s that very mentality that made Sanders such an attractive head coaching prospect to a football program that has been craving a return to national relevance, having gone 24-42 (.363 winning percentage) since 2016 with one double-digit win season since 2001.
“I was brought here because there was a tremendous need, a tremendous want, a tremendous desire for excellence,” Sanders said. “I love that challenge. That’s what wakes me up in the morning. That’s what gets me going.”
Following that initial team meeting, Sanders had his first true realization of the challenge that lied ahead. When he finished addressing the team, Colorado players broke off into positional groups, allowing Sanders the chance to meet with players in a more personal setting and gain an understanding of the team he was inheriting. It’s what happened next that let Sanders know drastic changes were needed.
“I walked into this position room, and they have music playing … their first time meeting me,” said Sanders, who was told by the players that they always bring a boombox into their position meeting. “I looked at those players and I said, ‘If you ever bring music into one of my meetings, I promise we will never see each other again in life.’”
That’s when Sanders went to work. Within two weeks, Colorado had 19 new players committed to play for the Buffaloes via the transfer portal. Leading the pack was his son, QB Shedeur Sanders, who was the reigning SWAC Offensive Player of the Year during his time at Jackson State, and Travis Hunter, another Jackson State standout who is a two-way superstar and was the top-ranked player in the nation coming out of high school in 2022.
“There were two things that all the teams that went to the playoffs had last year,” Sanders said. “They had a quarterback … and they had athletes that were relentless and wanted to go get it. That’s what we brought into the house.”
Colorado has now had more than 50 players enter college football’s transfer portal since Sanders was named head coach, while also adding 42 new players via the portal.
One of the coaches who has not taken kindly to Sanders’ utilization of the portal is Pitt’s Pat Narduzzi, who recently criticized how the portal has negatively become a way for schools to raid rosters.
“That’s not the way it’s meant to be,” Narduzzi said in an interview with 247Sports.com. “That’s not what the rule intended to be. It was not to overhaul your roster. We’ll see how it works out, but that, to me, looks bad on college football coaches across the country.”
For Sanders, who possesses a “win-now” attitude, the task of rebuilding a program that lost 11 games by an average of 29 points per contest last season was something that had to be done if he was going to deliver on his promise to Colorado athletic director Rick George to take the football program to the next level. And that doesn’t mean simply improving the team’s win total by four or five games.
“I don’t think like that,” Sanders said when asked by Klatt if he viewed 4-5 wins as a drastic improvement for the program. “I don’t want a sip. I want it all. And I want it now. And I feel like we’re assembling the type of young men and the staff to have it all.”
Fans will get their first glimpse of the new-look Buffaloes on Sept. 2 when Sanders leads his team into Fort Worth, Texas, to take on the defending national champion runner-up TCU Horned Frogs in Week 1. The game will be broadcast on FOX, with Klatt, Gus Johnson and the entire Big Noon Kickoff crew in attendance to watch a new-look football program led by a man who is the center of attention of the college football universe.
“I want that, I embrace that, I envision that, I expect that,” Sanders told Klatt in reference to his team playing on college football’s biggest stage in Week 1. “Why wouldn’t I want that for our kids? They want to be seen, they want to be heard, they want the lights, they want the ‘ooohs’ and the ‘ahhhs.’
“We don’t want no one in this locker room that ain’t like-minded,” Sanders added. “My players have to want that moment. They have to be ready to seize that moment and that opportunity.”
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