Colorado coach Deion Sanders returns to form after illness: ‘I am a humble man’
Colorado football coach Deion Sanders lost eight pounds recently as he battled a series of personal challenges – flu-like symptoms, a five-game losing streak and possibly one of toughest stretches of his professional life.
But on Tuesday he returned to the public spotlight with an outlook so bright that he declared the following:
That college football will never be the same after his plans in Boulder come to fruition.
∎ That the Buffaloes (4-7) will win again like they did at the beginning of the season, when they became the biggest story in sports with a 3-0 start.
Sanders recently has taken to comparing this year’s team to last year’s team at Colorado, which finished 1-11 before his hiring in December. Before that, the Buffs were 4-8 in 2021 and 4-2 during the pandemic season of 2020. Sanders preferred to look ahead to his vision of where this program is going if his team gets the missing parts it needs on the recruiting trail and the transfer portal, which opens Dec. 4.
We pretty much put a mark in college football, and what we’re gonna do from here on, it will never be the same,” he said. “I promise you that, because I know how we’re recruiting. I know what I know, and I know where we headed. And you gotta be crazy if you can’t see it. It’s easy to look at us play and say, ‘OK, all they need is that, that, that and that.'”
Asked about sticking to his plan, Sanders said that plan “has not been aborted.” Four of his team’s seven defeats were by seven points or fewer.
“We right on schedule with the plan,” he said. “The plan is improve every dern thing we touch. Did we sell out every game? Did this team get better? Is hope instilled? What’s the problem? Somebody tell me what’s the problem. So what you’re trying to say is we didn’t live up to whose expectations? Because I know this team. I know what this team is capable of doing. So what didn’t we do?”