HOW DEION SANDERS FLIPPED COLORADO’S FORTUNES AND BECAME THE MOST TALKED-ABOUT MAN IN SPORTS
BY SEAN GREGORY/BOULDER, COLO.
SPORTS
ON AN AUTUMN WEEKEND IN BOULDER, THE sports miracle of the season is clearer than the blue Rocky Mountain sky. Whereas for years, the University of Colorado football team delivered Saturday misery—the Buffaloes enjoyed just four winning seasons in the past 20 years and finished 1-11 in 2022— Boulder now may be the hippest, happiest place in America. “The Stampede,” a Fridaynight pregame pep rally down Pearl Street, used to feel more like a tiptoe. But on Sept. 29, the night before Colorado faced off against No. 8 USC, the restaurants are full and the sidewalks packed. A handful of little kids even line the rooftop of a trattoria to watch the marching band play.
A little before 6 a.m. Mountain time the next day, hundreds of University of Colorado fans, most wearing white cowboy hats adorned with LED lights, have assembled on Farrand Field, smack in the middle of campus. Some are students, others alums and locals, while a significant number have traveled from far afield, never having imagined they’d have reason to gaze at those picturesque peaks in the backdrop. Fox Sports’ Big Noon Kickoff pregame show won’t start for hours, but the revelers are ready. They’re here to see Deion Sanders, or Coach Prime—a play on Prime Time, his nickname from his 1980s and ’90s heyday—who arrived as head coach in December, radically made over this year’s team, and turned Colorado into the biggest story in sports.
Before kickoff, the sidelines at Colorado’s stadium are now the place to be seen. There’s rapper DaBaby hyping up the crowd. There are Sanders’ friends and fellow football Hall of Famers Terrell Owens, Warren Sapp, and Michael Irvin. Hey, that’s basketball Hall of Famer Kevin Garnett and future baseball Hall of Famer CC Sabathia and rapper Symba. The VIPs wear a special credential around their necks: Prime Passes, in the shape of the gold whistle Sanders uses in practice. Boulder County is 1.3% Black, yet as one sideline spectator observes, the scene “feels like Black Hollywood.”
And what’s been happening on the field is as spectacular as what’s happening off. As the Buffaloes charged back against the Trojans, slicing a 41-14 third-quarter deficit to 48-41 with just under two minutes left, Folsom Field, filled with more than 54,000 roaring fans, felt like
