CU Buffs
Op-Ed: The truth behind the media against Deion Sanders' Buffs
Many college football spectators witnessed the Colorado Buffaloes travel to Fort Worth and do something they weren't expected to do. The word “upset” has been thrown around by most anyone covering the game. Except some of those inside the Centennial state. I would love to say all the Colorado media have been unified in their “belief” in this Buffs team, that would not be true.
Even in the media gaggles present in Boulder on almost a daily basis have its fair share of doubters. Deep in the basement level of TCU’s Amon G. Carter Stadium immediately following the game, Coach Prime and Coach Hart were heard pushing back on the idea this win was an upset at all.
The term “upset” suggests the outcome was surprising or unexpected. This outcome of Prime’s CU not just playing well, but beating a team no one thought they would, was not an upset if you were paying attention. Anyone calling it an upset or those that could not see any possibility of a CU win are for primarily two reasons.
They likely are not the reasons you think. As we begin to see the many "experts" backpedal so hard they sprain something on both the "TCU will embarrass CU," and the "Won't win over three games" narratives. Let's revisit why so many took that approach. You must have confidence to cover sports of any league or any level. You must think you're right whenever you speak on those subjects, otherwise you’re just a person with an opinion. The backend of that has become a sense that you must protect your truth whenever possible. Even though sports analysts and reporters are rarely held to the fire for bad or irresponsible takes.
Until Sanders started checking receipts, nobody would've talked about it.
If you look around, even beyond the CU coverage, people with a platform are only saying things they think they can't be proven wrong on. So, whenever possible they will lean on the safe bet. Align yourself with what is more likely to be true. There is safety in numbers. If one personality is wrong that’s one thing, but if most everyone ends up being wrong, no harm no foul. Which is why people listen to any of these talking heads that predicted a TCU rout, they were all saying the same thing. CU was 1-11 last year and TCU was in the national championship game.
Even though both of those statements are nowhere close to being factually accurate. The national media is even worse because the individual literally doesn’t have the time to get any sort of comprehensive grasp on all 133 division I schools or even half that many to be honest. Most of them base their entire narrative on what information they do have. Which again, is why most of them sound the same. I can't begin to explain how many times I heard people saying, "CU is not going to beat TCU."
The biggest elephant in the figurative room is not the hate for Deion. It’s not hate for Colorado, either. It’s not even an establishment of the powers within college football. It’s much smaller and more revealing than that. It’s laziness. There is one core concept at the center of everything that will happen for the remainder of this college football season when it comes to Coach Prime and the CU Buffaloes. What is happening now, has never happened before.
Prior to the transfer portal era, which started five years ago, the idea of completely flipping a roster in one off-season was not only unheard of, but it was also a literal impossibility. There simply was no path to do such a thing. This is an important detail because the largest issue facing CU and the media that covers them is the media has nothing to compare this to.
If the question is “when has a failed NFL coach gone on to become a successful college coach?” There are a number of examples of that. If the question was “has a true freshman RB ever led his conference in production?” There are plenty of examples for that. There are NO examples of a coach leaving one level of college football to go to a higher level, flip 90% of the entire roster in one offseason, and then go on to win a serious number of games.
Such a comparison simply does not exist. And why? Because this has never happened before. This poses a huge dilemma for media people who are always concerned with being right or not. Without something to compare this to, there are no conclusions to draw from with any certainty. In order to draw any likely conclusions, the media personnel would have to trust what they can see against what they have seen from other teams and other players over the vast years of their experience, but without any sort of historical confirmation. That makes their ‘take’ risky.
Make no mistake about it, whether we’re talking about college football, other sports, movies, tv, music, or anything else we consume for entertainment, we are living in a “its perfect or its trash” era of humanity. There was a time, not that long ago (most of you reading this are likely old enough to remember this time) when analysis of any form of entertainment was straight-forward. Here’s what I see, here’s what I think it means. Take it or leave it. It’s obvious there has been a shift. From factual analysis to a more sensationalized attempt to make every expert on every show “entertaining”. Sometimes sports analysis is boring. But boring doesn’t equal bad.
The idea that Coach Prime flipping 90 percent of the CU roster for better players being viewed as a negative was laughable. Yet, all we heard coming from the pro TCU crowd was, Chandler Morris was the starter before he got hurt, so he’ll be as good as Max Duggan or better. Quentin Johnston is gone but they brought in two WR transfers to replace him (yet nothing quantifiable about their ability to actually replace that level of production). It was just assumed that TCU’s path was better because it was more familiar.
Yet no one stopped to ask, “Is JP Richardson and JoJo Earle actually better than Travis Hunter, Jimmy Horn Jr, Xavier Weaver, Javon Antonio, Adam Hopkins, etc?” The reason it was not asked was because the answer would lean emphatically towards CU. Talking about Colorado is comparatively exhaustive because you have to include everything that’s new. What’s new is 90 percent of the team or virtually the entire team. It requires a person to talk longer and about more people to get an objective read on the situation.
That’s what you typically get from local news. But they only have a very short amount of time to dedicate to sports. Most of the time, you get a very surface level analysis. That’s perfectly expected from local news when they only have a minute and half to three minutes to say what they need to say. The bulk of the CU-TCU narratives were not provided by local news, they were provided by dedicated sports only platforms. That is the result of laziness and choosing not to give a team the amount of time and discovery they deserve to arrive at an objective conclusion, is lazy journalism.
They don’t have to like the sentiment, but it’s factually accurate. All they had to do was watch with a critical eye, take what they see and apply it to the volume of football they’ve watched over the years. This idea that new means they won’t be good or that we won’t really know anything until we see them play another team is convenient.
It gives an out so they don’t have to actually analyze.I wish I could tell you that overcoming a 20.5-point spread to beat a team no one outside of Colorado thought they could beat was enough to adjust the narratives that failed in every way, but I’d say don’t hold your breath.
This is how things have evolved. It's quick, sensationalized, hot takes as “entertainment” has overtaken logical, well thought out analysis long ago. For now, we’ll have to settle for Coach Prime and these new Colorado Buffaloes to continue to write their own narrative on the field. They’re no longer coming, they’re here now.
This journey should be something special to experience. Enjoy the ride. I honestly can’t remember a time when CU football felt this exciting.
