Deion Sanders Leads Colorado Buffaloes to Spotlight

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00:00All right, welcome back to Newswire here on Sports Grid.

00:06College football starts up back again tomorrow night.

00:08Brian Howell is with us.

00:09He covers the Colorado Buffaloes.

00:11They play tomorrow night.

00:13He's a beat writer for Buff Zone and also the Boulder Daily Camera.

00:16Brian, thanks for coming on the show.

00:18I really appreciate you spending some time.

00:20It's going to be a busy night for you tomorrow.

00:22Yeah, yes, it will be.

00:24I'm looking forward to it, though.

00:25It's just, as I tell people, after nine months or whatever of talking about the next

00:29season, I'm just glad it's here.

00:32Yeah, I would agree.

00:33And I think that, especially when you're covering one team every day, like you are the Buffaloes,

00:37speaking of which, look, it's North Dakota State tomorrow night.

00:40Most anticipate Colorado winning, I don't know by how many points.

00:44I mean, that's probably a subject for another day, but I think they'll probably win the

00:48game.

00:49But, you know, I got to tell you, this team was the story of college football for the

00:54first month of the season.

00:56It was all Colorado, all Deion Sanders, all Shador Sanders all the time.

01:01And then after starting off four and two, the wheels absolutely fell off, although there

01:05were some close games.

01:06I mean, this shouldn't have really been 0-6.

01:09If you just talk about some regression to the mean, maybe it's 2-4 or 1-5, a bad bounce

01:14here and there, a bad play on defense.

01:16But I guess that is the narrative.

01:19Is that fair?

01:20The slow finish has to be corrected going into this season?

01:23Yeah, absolutely.

01:25And you know, I agree with you, it probably shouldn't have been 0-6.

01:31They were closer than that.

01:32And I honestly, you know, I know we want to focus more on this year, but I honestly think

01:37if they don't cough up that Stanford game when they're up 29-0 and lose the game, that

01:41would have put them at 5-2.

01:43I think they absolutely would have won at least another one and been in a bowl game.

01:46So I think they never recovered from that one.

01:50Not fully.

01:51I mean, they were still in games, like you said, but I think that one hung over them

01:53for a while.

01:55And they've got to prove that they can get on the winning track and not be 4-8, 5-7 again.

02:01Yeah.

02:02And look, that's what everyone is certainly looking at.

02:05Let's kind of move this over to Coach Prime, Deion Sanders, who is arguably the most popular

02:12figure right now going in college football.

02:14I mean, maybe we could have made the case Prime was like Nick Saban or somebody else,

02:18but it's not.

02:19Like, everything he says and everything he does always is making headlines.

02:24I think it's absolutely great for the sport.

02:27I mean, I love it.

02:28I love the fact that we're talking about a former player, a Hall of Famer, that's coaching

02:34college football.

02:35But this is a results-based business.

02:36I think he understands that, too.

02:38The results are going to have to be better.

02:40Yeah.

02:41And he fully acknowledges that.

02:43He says he's the first to say that.

02:46The results have got to be better.

02:47He knows that.

02:48And he's also the first one to say, look, if you're going to talk, you better back it

02:52up.

02:53And you're going to deal with the backlash if you don't.

02:55He knows that.

02:56I mean, this is a guy that we know has been one of the brashest and most confident athletes

03:02we've probably ever seen.

03:03At least for me, I put him right up at the top, and I'm sure for you, too.

03:08But he always backed it up as a player, or 90% of the time or whatever it is.

03:12But as a coach, he backed it up at Jackson State, and now he's got it backed up at Colorado,

03:17and he knows that.

03:18Yeah.

03:19I mean, for Peter Sanders, he is 40-1 to win the Heisman.

03:21He threw 27 touchdown passes last year.

03:23He was not the problem.

03:24It was the defense for most of the season.

03:27Do you think those numbers pretty much are repeatable this year, better, worse, about

03:31the same?

03:32What do you think?

03:34They should be better.

03:35And those are pretty good numbers.

03:36I mean, those passing yards was a school record.

03:39His completion percentage was a school record.

03:42Touchdowns was one off the school record.

03:45And that's with missing the last game and a half with injury.

03:47So I think the offensive line was not very good last year.

03:51If they're better on the offensive line and can run the ball a little bit, then those

03:55numbers should be a lot better.

03:56I've always said, if he gets good protection, he can be in New York for the Heisman ceremony.

04:02And I absolutely think that that's a ceiling for him and something he can shoot for.

04:06Yeah.

04:07No, I mean, look, he's right on the cusp of that in terms of the odds.

04:10Now, as far as the deepest group that Colorado has, probably a wide receiver, although they

04:14did lose one player to injury.

04:17Is this a significant one?

04:20This is not an offense to this young man, but no.

04:23He's a really talented young player.

04:25He's a redshirt freshman transferred from TCU.

04:28Good player, Cordell Russell.

04:29But there's four guys that are really the top four for them, and he's not in that group.

04:35So Travis Hunter, Jimmy Horn, Will Shepard, and LeJonte Wester are going to be their four

04:41main guys.

04:42And so as long as they stay healthy, they'll be all right.

04:45Yeah.

04:46So Travis Hunter projected to be a first-round pick in next year's NFL draft, as is Sanders,

04:51too.

04:52So we'll see there.

04:53OK, so now before we go, let's sort of shift over to the daily beat of you covering the

04:58Colorado Buffaloes.

04:59I've been in this spot before with different players and coaches and athletes, and there's

05:04some unusual circumstances going on right now in that media room that you're dealing

05:07with, Brian, which is Coach Prime essentially doesn't like the way that his team is being

05:13covered by an individual reporter.

05:17We've seen some reports that this individual reporter is not going to be allowed to ask

05:21questions at different press conferences and things of that nature.

05:25We don't see this happen that often.

05:27It's been talked a lot about in national media, but I feel like with you sitting in the room,

05:31you have a much better understanding as to what's actually going on.

05:34Yeah, and that's a pretty good summary of it is that this columnist from the Denver

05:41Post has written a lot of pieces that that Coach Prime has taken as personal attacks.

05:47And you can see why if you look at some of the pieces and he's taken offense to that

05:52and called out the reporter at a recent press conference and said, why do you do this?

05:58Just asked him and the reporter couldn't really answer.

06:00And so he's like, well, until we figure it out, you can't ask any questions.

06:03And so, yeah, it's it's created a different dynamic.

06:08You got media people that have jumped all over him and, you know, it's a weird dynamic

06:13covering Deion Sanders in a lot of ways.

06:16But I get along with him.

06:18I feel like I think in a lot of ways, he's much like every other coach I've covered.

06:24But in a few ways, he's not.

06:26Yeah.

06:27And I think that's really what needs to get figured out.

06:30I think both for Deion and maybe even the media, too, is just some middle ground, because

06:34in the end, he's trying to do a job.

06:37And the columnists and even you are trying to do a job as well.

06:40Usually, these things do get sorted out.

06:42And I do feel like this has made a lot of attention about something very little that

06:47probably can just be handled off the camera.

06:49And I think in the end, hopefully, that's the way that this works out.

06:52Ryan, thank you so much for coming on the show.

06:54Have fun tomorrow night.

06:55First game of the season.

06:56We'll be watching.

06:57Thanks again.

06:58Awesome.

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