BOULDER, Colo. — Deion Sanders hadn’t even been formally introduced as the CU head coach, and he already had a blue-chip recruit in his pocket.
Sunday morning, the Buffs picked up a commitment from five-star receiver Winston Watkins Jr. Then, in the afternoon, at a packed press conference inside the Dal Ward Athletic Center, Sanders told his son Shedeur Sanders to stand up as QB1.
“This is your quarterback,” Sanders said. “He’s going to have to earn it, though.”
Shedeur Sanders threw for 6,614 yards and 66 touchdowns over the past two years, leading Jackson State to consecutive SWAC championships as an underclassman. Watkins, meanwhile, said Coach Prime is why the IMG Academy (Fla.) star chose CU over the likes of Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State and Tennessee.
It’s a good start for Sanders, who proclaimed in his opening statement that “we’re going to out-recruit” the rest of the country.
“Commitments are already coming on the way as I speak,” he said.
But Sanders also emphasized that in a college football landscape now defined by Name, Image and Likeness, those commitments are going to come at a price for university boosters. To this point, CU’s been behind in leveraging NIL deals to help attract top recruits and transfers.
“The kids, they want exposure, they want to be on television, they want the (big) lights and action — we’re going to give them that,” Sanders said. “We’re going to give them the followers, we’re going to give them the attention, we’re going to give them the love and the support.
“And we need each and every one of (the CU donor base). Because the caliber of players that we’re getting ready to bring to you, they’re going to want something.”
To that point, in Sunday’s news conference, CU chancellor Phil DiStefano outlined changes in the university’s “transfer credit review processes” that will provide “expedited assessment of the transferability of academic credits from other institutions to be accepted at CU Boulder.”
Translation: There will be less red tape for Sanders to get his desired transfers into school and immediately qualified.
“This not only promises benefits to (all potential) student-athlete transfers, but also Colorado residents who decided to go to another university but want to come back to Boulder to finish their degree,” DiStefano said. “This new initiative, combined with the NIL collective… will set our football program up for long-term success.”
While Sanders promised winning, he declined to put a timetable on when. The immediate question in-state becomes whether Coach Prime can start keeping Colorado’s handful of blue-chip prospects each year from continually going to Power 5 programs elsewhere.
Former CU tight end and Thomas Jefferson alum Daniel Graham believes that with Sanders’ personality and reputation, top high school players both in Colorado and around the country will be seriously considering coming to CU.
“The elite local athletes, they’re going to start staying here,” Graham said. “We’re no longer going to lose the Christian McCaffreys, or top Colorado players like that. And with Coach Prime coming in here and the name recognition that brings, there’s going to be (a swell) of players signing or transferring here. I look at us doing what USC did this year (under new coach Lincoln Riley), next year — how they went from (4-8) to the Pac-12 title game. It’s a possibility.”
