Why I was wrong about Deion Sanders: A look at Colorado's pursuit of Julian Lewis and the College Football Playoff

Colorado erased an early 13-point deficit, dodged tortillas thrown onto the field and ultimately made what was supposed to be a challenging test look easy in a 41-27 win over Texas Tech in Lubbock on Saturday. The Buffaloes improved to 7-2 and now control their own destiny in the Big 12, and by extension, the College Football Playoff race.

On Sunday, it no longer became possible to keep Colorado out of the 12-team Playoff field. In our Bubble Watch column — a weekly projection of what the Playoff field will look like in December — Colorado moved into the No. 4 seed as the Big 12 champion, as it now has become the expectation the Buffaloes would win a hypothetical matchup with BYU in Dallas. They’d be favored in that game, right?

As if the weekend wasn’t good enough for Colorado, On3’s Steve Wiltfong & Chad Simmons logged predictions Monday evening for five-star quarterback prospect Julian “JuJu” Lewis of Carrollton (Ga.) High to flip his commitment from USC to the Buffaloes.

It’s time to accept the reality.

I was wrong about Deion Sanders.

First, let me start off by revisiting the criticisms. Sanders’ qualifications for being a head coach at Colorado were his star power, his demeanor, the way he commands attention, the hype he brings to his program, and, in totality, what all those things could do in the world of recruiting. Watching Sanders not fully commit himself to recruiting high school athletes the way his peers do seemed wrong. If Sanders wasn’t going to lean into his superpower — fame — to sign top-25 classes, then how could Colorado ever have a roster good enough to realize the hype he brought?

To be clear, I still kind of feel that way. I’m programmed in my DNA to think recruiting good high school classes is the recipe for success.

We have to acknowledge Colorado has done a much better job at talent accumulation than anyone else who has had that job since Bill McCartney in the early 1990s. There’s no question. But we’re talking about Deion Sanders here. We’re talking about PrimeTime. It seems to me that Colorado could be recruiting at a much higher level out of the high school ranks. Colorado’s last two classes had big-time last-minute gets like five-stars Cormani McClain (though he didn’t pan out) and Jordan Seaton, which helped elevate the rankings, but they were small classes. Colorado’s 2024 class finished No. 65 overall, which is not what I thought the build was going to look like.

I still dream about what Colorado’s roster could look like down the line if Sanders fully weaponized his fame in high school hallways. What if he fully committed to it? What if he went to games on Friday nights, did in-home visits and did everything in his power to amass as much elite-level talent from the high school ranks as possible? What if he applied everything he was doing with Lewis to 25 other guys and signed a really good class in a conference where nobody else is even capable of that? Colorado could build something huge there.

So I scoffed at his annual roster flips and seethed in disappointment because, truthfully, I was one of the biggest Sanders believers from the beginning. Go check the receipts if you don’t believe me. Sanders brought in Travis Hunter (who is getting my Heisman Trophy vote) and his son, quarterback Shedeur Sanders. Neither of those players would be at Colorado under any other coach. But in my view, he wasn’t building the roster in a healthy or sustainable way. It felt like, to me, that he was trying to win as quickly as possible while not building the foundation for Colorado in the long term. It really felt like he was going to bolt from Boulder after this season.

I look stupid right now. I can live with that. My analysis of Sanders was wrong.

It’s time to accept college football has evolved so much that things can be done differently than they have traditionally. Sanders clearly has figured something out in his time in Colorado that I’ve been slow to welcome, which is that you can build a really good team without dominant high school football recruiting.

Colorado has one of the best pass rushes in the country. Incoming transfers like edge rushers B.J. Green, Dayon Hayes and Samuel Okunlola have made the Buffaloes more efficient along the defensive front, so much so they lead the Big 12 in sacks. Receivers LaJohntay Wester and Jimmy Horn Jr. — combined with Hunter — have made for one of the best receiver rooms in the country. Shedeur Sanders is going to be a first-round pick at quarterback. Seaton, a true freshman starting at left tackle, is playing well and getting better every week. There is a lot to like about this team’s roster, not just its best players.

Colorado was bad last year. I thought they were going to be bad again because Sanders did the same thing in flipping what felt like his entire roster. I doubted he could upgrade his lines through the portal enough to make the Buffaloes competitive. Again, I was wrong.

Colorado made the jump, so much so that it isn’t outside of the realm of possibility these Buffaloes not only make the College Football Playoff, but advance in it. That’s a real sentence in November.

Now they are on the verge of flipping Lewis?

We all saw the picture Lewis took with Shedeur Sanders where he was sitting on a thrown and receiving the keys to the Colorado kingdom. That was a powerful picture because it asserted the possibility that the new quarterback to lead Sanders’ Buffaloes into the future could be bigger star than even Shedeur.

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A post shared by JULIAN “Ju Ju” LEWIS (@julianlewis10)

That addresses two things. One, that Colorado could beat out Lincoln Riley for a five-star quarterback. And two, that Sanders plans on staying in Boulder long enough to actually see this build through. We hear the chatter about going to Florida State — or this week on ESPN’s First Take, the Dallas Cowboys — and take the bait. I thought it was possible he wasn’t even interested in being a coach once he was no longer guiding his son first-hand. The recruitment of Lewis is proving otherwise.

Honestly, there are still doubts. We’ve seen teams assemble amazing rosters and have incredible one-year runs by having a really productive cycle in the portal. We’ve also seen those same teams — cough, Florida State — return to mediocrity the second those portal players leave for the NFL. Colorado is a pretty old team right now and there’s going to be a lot to replace next year. I’d feel a lot more comfortable with Colorado’s chances of doing so had the high school recruiting piece been where I anticipated.

But what’s the use of doubting anymore? We’re getting close to revenue sharing — which could make Colorado more competitive in paying players — and Sanders’ stardom, platform and marketability gives the Buffaloes added value in trying to add players. Maybe that’s more important than an in-home visit in 2024?

Sanders has already accomplished more in a short period than we could have even imagined. These results would have blown us all away had he approached the job the way I — and many other college football analysts — thought he ought to from day one. Sanders has his own plan and maybe it’s time to accept it could work.

So the heck with the future. Predicting it is hard. Let’s be in the present with Colorado, which is a pretty amazing picture of a hopeless program that now is on the verge of making the College Football Playoff. Why? Because it got Deion Sanders. That’s a beautiful thing.

After the Texas Tech game, Sanders was asked about playing in this new reality in which his team is competitive for championships and having to rise to the occasion.

“Every game is that, isn’t it?” He asked back. “We don’t change with the stakes. You guys change with the stakes. What we’re doing right now, we planned on it. We didn’t plan on losing two games. We plan on winning. And, we plan on winning each week. We’re not looking for that, down the street or down the road to the championship. Because if we look that far, we never reach our destination of preparing tomorrow. … I’m proud of them. But our expectations are truly our expectations.”

I was wrong about him. I’m happy to admit it.

What could the next surprise be? What does Colorado look like if it achieves Sanders’ expectations? That’s the joy of the ride.