The best party in college football rages on. Just barely. Somehow. But it continues.
Deion Sanders’s Colorado team moved to 3–0 with a double-overtime, comeback win over massive underdog Colorado State, 43–35. For the second time in two home games, the fans stormed the playing surface at Folsom Field. This time perhaps more out of giddy disbelief that the Buffaloes rallied from an 11-point deficit in the fourth quarter.
It took a brilliant, 98-yard scoring drive in the final minutes engineered by Sanders’s son Shedeur to get the game into overtime. From there, Shedeur Sanders threw two more touchdown passes and a two-point-conversion pass as well, as the penalty-plagued Rams finally relented after putting up a spirited fight.
After being bottled up for more than a half, Shedeur Sanders finished the night with 348 passing yards and four touchdowns. It was just enough to survive on a night when not much went right for Colorado until the last half of the fourth quarter.
“There was a tremendous amount of adversity tonight and we overcame it,” Deion Sanders told ESPN immediately after the game. “We started out playing like hot garbage but we got it done in the end.”
For much of the night it appeared that the Buffs’ shades-and-hats joyride was being derailed.
Colorado walked into a trap set by an old rival. Its sizzling, surprising start under Sanders captivated the nation, but with A-list celebrities and both big network pregame shows flocking to Boulder to ride the Coach Prime wave, the Rams reversed the hype in taking a 28–17 lead with 11 minutes remaining.
Two weeks after Sanders made a thunderous Colorado debut by beating TCU as a 20.5-point underdog, he was on the verge of his first loss at the school as a 24-point favorite. If the Horned Frogs were overconfident against a hungrier team then, the Buffaloes assumed that role against the Rams on Saturday night. Coming off an opening loss to Washington State, Colorado State used its open date last week to full effect in preparing to threaten a program that appeared to have risen too far and too fast to handle the hype.
But in the end, Colorado showed an inner resolve that wasn’t necessary in rolling past Nebraska or leading most of the away in the opener. The narrow escape keeps the helium in the Buffalo balloon at a place that had improbably become the Mecca of the sport. It keeps the oxygen flowing into Sanders’s hotly anticipated Pac-12 debut next week at Oregon, and similarly stokes anticipation for a potential Heisman Trophy showdown between Shedeur Sanders and USC’s Caleb Williams on Sept. 30.
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Much as Sanders backed up some big offseason talk with a 2–0 start, Colorado State coach Jay Norvell came achingly close to delivering his biggest win as coach of the Rams after his mouth upped the ante leading into the game. During his radio show Wednesday, Norvell took a shot at Sanders’s penchant for wearing sunglasses and hats to his press conferences, saying, “When I talk to grown-ups, I take my hat off and my glasses off.”
Sanders declared that the comment made this game “personal. On Saturday morning on ESPN’s “College GameDay,” he said to “keep the cameras rolling” after the game when he met Norvell on the field. The discussion between the two coaches was brief and unsmiling.
The Buffaloes were hurt on both sides of the ball by an injury to receiver/defensive back Travis Hunter, who took a cheap shot after a play to the chest in the first half. Hunter retuned to the game but later was ruled out and taken to a local hospital for evaluation. Hunter had averaged 127 snaps in Colorado’s first two games playing both ways and had been the team’s best cover corner.
Colorado stayed in the game thanks to a barrage of CSU penalties and a pair of huge plays at safety by Sanders’s other son Shilo. He returned an interception for the first touchdown of the game and forced a fumble in the red zone to stop another potential Rams scoring drive.
Deion Sanders made one coaching decision that could be second-guessed, opting for a field goal on fourth-and-2 while down a touchdown early in the fourth quarter. The kick cut the lead to 21–17, but when the Rams responded with a touchdown drive of their own it further underscored that playing for field goals wasn’t going to win the game. Yet the move ended up working out, thanks to a succession of big-time throws by Shedeur to lead two scoring drives and a two-point pass to tie the game in regulation.
On the tying drive that started from the Colorado 2-yard line, Shedeur Sanders completed passes for 106 yards (Colorado was penalized a couple of times on the drive). He sliced up a soft Colorado State zone, spreading the ball to his array of receivers and producing the kind of memorable moment that often helps a player become a Heisman finalist—or winner.
The story that has captivated the sport found a different way to extend itself, this time as a struggling favorite that found a way to win. Coach Prime and Colorado upped the ante yet again. The party rages on in Boulder.
