BOULDER, Colo. — The future for Colorado football looks so bright under coach Deion Sanders, Laviska Shenault said, he brought shades to the 2023 spring football game.
“It’s somebody that’s got a lot of respect to his name. A lot of culture to his name,” Shenault, the former Buffs star and current Carolina Panthers wideout, told The Denver Post before Saturday’s sold-out spring game at Folsom Field. “And I feel like this place needs a little — you need somebody with his type of, I don’t know how to say it, but his type of (rep), to be here.”
With that, Shenault, who led FBS football in receptions per game in the fall of 2018 while playing for the Buffs, flashed a bright smile. One that matched the one worn by former CU teammate Davion Taylor, who sat next to him signing autographs for fans at the Buffs’ indoor practice facility an hour before the spring game.
“I go around the locker room, I already tell them I’m taking all bets next year,” former CU linebacker Davion Taylor, currently with the reigning NFC champion Philadelphia Eagles, told The Post Saturday.
“I’m going to talk all the noise next year because last year, it wasn’t the best to (be) CU. But now since the hire of Coach Prime, I’ve been talking about the (Eagles) locker room, I’ve been talking so much noise, because I just know he’s going to bring success to this program.”
Shenault and Taylor were part of a group of roughly 20 former Buffs football players over the program’s last four decades who signed autographs for fans gathered at CU’s spring football showcase.
“I’m still shocked,” former Buffs tailback J.J. Flannigan, who lettered at CU from 1987-89, said of Sanders’ hiring. “When I saw the announcement for the first time that he’d been hired, I actually was like, ‘No, this is not happening.’ I actually got on the phone and start calling all the former players, like, ‘Man, did this really just happen?’ But I’m excited about it.”
