When Deion Sanders arrived as the new coach at Colorado in December, he warned the roster in his initial meeting with the team that significant changes were coming.
“I’m bringing my luggage with my luggage with me and it’s Louis,” Sanders told the team. “I want y’all to get ready and go ahead and jump in that portal. The more you jump in, the more room you make.”
Sanders’s approach may have been brash, but who could blame him? After all, the Buffaloes went 1–11 last season and were one of the worst programs in the country under Karl Dorrell.
The spring game last Saturday was nationally televised, and significant roster changes began right after the game ended. Over the last four days, 23 players have entered the transfer portal, with many “cut” by Sanders himself.
According to a story from David Ubben of The Athletic, there was a clear divide between how players from the old regime have been treated versus how players Sanders has brought in via the transfer portal have been treated since his arrival in Boulder.
“None of the new coaches would talk to the old players and treat us the same as the people they brought in,” former Colorado tight end Zach Courtney told Ubben. Courtney entered the transfer portal on April 19 as spring practice was coming to a close.
“The new guys wouldn’t be picked on as much in film,” he added. “Coaches would tell them to just do better, but if it was an old player, they’d keep going off on what you did wrong and keep yelling about it.”
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Other players The Athletic spoke to reiterated similar details that Courtney provided. Sanders spent “little to no time” coaching the players that were inherited from Dorrell’s roster.
Travis Gray, an offensive lineman that Sanders told to enter the transfer portal on Sunday, echoed Courtney’s account.
“No relationship with [Sanders] at all,” Gray said. “I said what’s up to him a few times. I’m not sure he knew the names of half the kids he got rid of. He was worried about who he brought in. If you were on the 1–11 team, it seemed like he didn’t really care about us at all. He already said he was going to get rid of 25–30 of us, and that’s exactly what he did.”
Sanders’s rebuild in Boulder is well underway, and it’s clear that he’s using whatever means necessary to get things going in the right direction as quickly as possible.
