Deion Sanders is done playing nice. After taking the Colorado Buffaloes from years of irrelevance to a national conversation piece in just two years, Coach Prime has made his stance clear — it’s time for the Buffaloes to pay up, and rightly so.
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Beyond boosting Colorado’s AP rankings to new heights (#25), Sanders has turned the program into a destination for top talent, attracting five-star recruits like Julian Lewis — one of the highest-ranked QB prospects in school history.
Add to this, a $113 million local economic impact. The Buffaloes have developed two future first-round picks as well, including a Heisman winner, and have set record-breaking viewership numbers. Taken together, Sanders’ work at Boulder becomes quite impressive. Yet, Deion Sanders is shockingly the 38th highest-paid head coach in college football today. Talk about being criminally underpaid.
Unsurprisingly, this fact doesn’t sit right with Prime. So, in a brief appearance on The Morning Run podcast, he took a shot aimed directly at Colorado’s administration before walking off screen: “These folks better stop playing and pay me my money.”
While Prime’s stern statement has received a polarizing response, Buffs analyst Kevin Borba is fully in sync with Sanders’ demands.
“The value he brings to the program is not something you’re going to get from anyone else,” Borba said on the Locked On Buffs Podcast while reacting to the noise surrounding the contract dispute.
The Sports Illustrated analyst argued that if the Buffs are serious about turning Boulder into a long-term success story, they must reward the architect behind it. “If you want to build a winning program, you have to buy into the guy who’s building it.”
Despite his impact, Sanders is making less than Maryland’s Mike Locksley (who’s on the hot seat) and Rutgers’ Greg Schiano ($6.25M). Even Colorado’s rival, Nebraska’s Matt Rhule, is pulling in a whopping $6.5 million salary—with none of them having brought nearly the same level of attention to their respective programs.
Yes, Sanders still has to prove his mettle as a tactician. But for a team that managed just 19 wins in five seasons before his arrival and now has 13 wins in two seasons under Prime, the leverage to argue otherwise is scarce.
“Dating back to 2000, Colorado has just four seasons of nine or more wins—now with Deion Sanders, they have another one… This program has been struggling for quite a while. He finds success, and he’s asking for you to buy into him a little bit more,” as Borba explained.
If Neon Deion were to express an interest in coaching elsewhere, there would be no shortage of suitors simply for the monetary benefit that he brings along. Hence, it was unsurprising to see the Dallas Cowboys and Jerry Jones jump immediately into having exploratory talks with Prime a few months ago.
Though talks with the octogenarian didn’t materialize, with an entity like Coach Prime, an exit to greener pastures feels like a matter of time. So the longer Colorado drags its feet, the riskier the situation becomes. Sanders has said he loves Boulder, but at some point, love has its limits — especially when bigger checks are on the table elsewhere.
If the Buffs aren’t careful, they might find themselves playing a dangerous game of Go Prime or Bust. And if they lose? Let’s just say they won’t like what comes next.
