Mel Tucker weighs in on Deion Sanders at Colorado, transfer portal

Michigan State head coach Mel Tucker weighed in on Deion Sanders’ process at Colorado, the Spartans leader’s former stop.

Sanders completely rebuilt Colorado, top to bottom, via the transfer portal and crafty recruiting. Tucker did it similarly going into the 2021 season, his second with Michigan State, and finished the year 11-2.

After a down year in 2022, Tucker might want to try and correct last fall’s mistakes and that could come via the transfer portal. He sent a message of support to Sanders in the process.

“Prime has done a great job so far,” Tucker said at Big Ten Media Days. “I’m pulling for him and the Buffs to get that thing going again … He’s got his own process that he’s following, obviously, and I think that he’s gonna be wildly successful there. 

“The portal has been a benefit for us. You know, we’ve used it to help upgrade our roster. We can fill some needs immediately. You know, some of the downside is that we all know there’s hundreds if not 1000s of players that have entered the portal, haven’t found a home, and that’s disturbing. But for us, the portal is here, and we’re going to use it to benefit our program any way that we can.”

Tucker went 5-7 in his lone season at Colorado (2019) before leaving for Michigan State. He’s 18-14 going into Year 4.

Sanders meanwhile just left Jackson State to rebuild Colorado, which went 1-11 last season. Sanders is 27-6 overall as a head coach with back-to-back conference titles at Jackson State.

There are a lot of expectations with Colorado now that Sanders is in charge. If Tucker can attest to one thing, a quick transformation of a roster can really pay off, but it’s a high-risk, high-reward type of move.

When Sanders sat down with former Colorado quarterback and current college football analyst Joel Klatt, he asked Coach Prime if he would currently change anything about the transfer portal if he could.

“Yeah it’s some details about it I would probably change, but I like it, I like it,” Sanders repeated. “Now I’m built a little different, I’m old school. I was raised and taught we gon’ make it work, I’m not gon’ duck and dodge and leave if I can’t beat this guy out. I’m a beat him out eventually, we weren’t built like that.”

There’s no reason Sanders shouldn’t like the transfer portal, as he’s brought in 48 players to Colorado through the transfer portal this offseason and has the No. 3 ranked transfer portal class in the nation according to On3’s Transfer Portal Index.