Deion Sanders says he plans to retire at Colorado
Deion Sanders wants to be in Boulder for the long haul. The Colorado Buffaloes coach opened up about his future and addressed the naysayers, who believe that he'll be out after a few short years. He set the record straight on his plans during an interview Friday.
"I love Boulder, Colorado and Colorado," Sanders told NBC News Now. "I'm not chasing finance. I'm not chasing the bag. I'm not chasing notoriety. I'm not chasing hype. I love what I do and I do what I love... and I love Boulder, Colorado. I don't plan on being anywhere else in my coaching career."
The 2023 SI Sportsperson of the Year has dealt with the question many times since coming to Boulder last year. Coach Prime has always been upfront about not wanting to be in the NFL coaching ranks and isn't chasing another Power Five school. It's been part of the spin cycle despite Sanders saying he's committed to CU.
The Hall-of-Famer became the first African-American coach to receive Sports Illustrated's award since its inception in 1954. The honor is bestowed upon an athlete, coach or team who best "represents the spirit and ideals of sportsmanship, character and performance."
The "Prime Effect" was a movement in Boulder this season. The top sports with Sanders taking a one-win team from being one of the worst in college football to an instant success nearly overnight. While Colorado finished with a 4-8 record, the Buffs exceeded expectations set by oddsmakers prior to the season. Not to mention, the cultural and economic impact with Sanders being at Colorado.
SI's Pat Forde broke down how Coach Prime was moving the needle in college football.
There are numbers that define the Prime Effect upon the University of Colorado in Boulder, a place that hasn’t always had a chummy relationship with football. First-year applications are up 26.4% year over year; Black or African American applications are up 80.6%; nonresident applications are up 29.8%; and international applications are up 38.4% from 97 countries, including 16 that didn’t have any applications last year. While those numbers cannot be definitively linked to Sanders, others can be: September sales at the school’s online team store were up 2,544% over the same month in 2022. Every home game in 50,183-seat Folsom Field was sold out for the first time in school history
There are numbers that define the Prime Effect on Boulder, a quirky, affluent and extremely white city of 108,000 that is picturesquely situated northwest of Denver at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Visit Boulder, the convention and visitors bureau, calculates that the total economic impact of the first four home games—where attendance was up by nearly a third over last year—was an estimated $77.8 million, a massive jump from 2022.
Sanders puts the "Prime Effect" on full display with season two of Amazon Studios' hit docuseries Coach Prime. The first two episodes are currently available on Prime Video.
