Colorado's TV Streak Under Deion Sanders Continuing in Season Opener

The Colorado Buffaloes 2026 season opener will be on in front of a national television audience. ESPN will be broadcasting the Buffs’ week one game on the road against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. Kickoff is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. at 6 p.m. MT.

Colorado Back on ESPN For Season Opener

colorado buffaloes deion sanders coach prime national television espn tv broadcast pac-12 big 12 college football conference — CU football head coach Deion Sanders, or Coach Prime, watches his team warm up before the game against CSU in the Rocky Mountain Showdown at Canvas Stadium on Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024, in Fort Collins, Colo. | Cris Tiller/For the Coloradoan / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Colorado will now have 26 games broadcasted on national television in a row on channels such as as ESPN, FOX, ESPN2, FS1, CBS, and TNT. There are multiple factors that are the reason for this including Colorado’s new television deal in the Big 12.

24 of Colorado’s last 26 games have been nationally televised.

26 straight if you include ESPN2 and FS1. https://t.co/EjA5rF1Mv5
— Scott Procter (@ScottProcter_) May 12, 2026

Colorado re-joined the Big 12 after being in the Pac-12 from 2011-2023. Like many teams in the Pac-12 during this time, it wasn’t easy for fans to be able to watch them on a weekly basis due to the conference's television deal.

There would be a big chunk of each team’s games broadcast on Pac-12 Network. This channel was extremely hard to find and only on a select few streaming packages. Colorado was on Pac-12 Network as much as any team in the last few years of the Pac-12, which has since been revived with new teams and two original members (the Oregon State Beavers and Washington State Cougars).

In 2022, six of Colorado’s 12 games were on Pac-12 Network as the team went 1-11 and was an after thought in college football. Enter the “Coach Prime” era.

Deion Sanders was hired as Colorado coach prior to the 2023 season. 2023 was Colorado’s final season in the Pac-12 before moving back to the Big 12. Sanders brought a buzz to Boulder and it resulted in more nationally televised games.

The 2023 Buffaloes only went 4-8, but had 10 of their 12 games not on Pac-12 Network and on popular stations instead. This trend continued in 2024 as all of Colorado’s 13 games during their 9-4 season were on ESPN, CBS, NBC, FOX, or ABC. All of these networks have been home to the most watched sporting events in the modern era.

In 2025, the Buffs took a step back, going 3-9. Their games early on in the season were broadcast on ESPN and Fox. As the losses began to pile up, the prestige of their TV slot went down. In their last four games of the season, Colorado played on FS1 twice, TNT, and ESPN2.

If Colorado gets off to a hot start in 2026, they could be looking at favorable TV slots as the season begins to kick into gear, which would boost their ratings and outreach to the whole country.

If they struggle, then many of their games will be buried in interesting time slots on networks that may not be the most prominent.

The goal for Colorado this season should just be to get back on the winning side of things and make a bowl game. It will be a new-look team with 43 incoming transfers. “Coach Prime” has already shown that he can engineer a quick turnaround in one year as he did from 2023 to 2024. Can he do it again from 2025 to 2026?

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