Feldman: Deion Sanders is exactly what Colorado needs, and folks are downright giddy

JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI SEPTEMBER 17: Coach Deion Prime Sanders warms up his team before the start of the first home game of the season against conference rival Grambling State University. (Aron Smith/Jackson State University via Getty Images)
By Bruce Feldman
Dec 4, 2022

Mike McCartney doesn’t really know Deion Sanders, but the son of Bill McCartney — the only coach to ever lead Colorado to a national title in football — is downright giddy about the new era. The younger McCartney, a player agent for VaynerSports and formerly an NFL scout and a quarterbacks coach and recruiting coordinator under his father, sees a lot of similarities between Coach Prime taking over the dismal Buffaloes now and when his father took over in Boulder, Colo.

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“I think this is gonna be awesome,” the younger McCartney told The Athletic.

McCartney knows all about how abysmal this program is: Colorado has had just one winning season in the last 17 years outside of the COVID-19-shortened year of 2020. He knows how dreadful the roster is from a team that just went 1-11 and has been further sunk by challenging admissions policies when it comes to trying to get transfers into school. After Colorado fired Karl Dorrell in early October, McCartney began doing research, talking to different people he knows in the football world about who could possibly fix the Buffaloes.

McCartney, who worked under current Colorado athletic director Rick George when the latter oversaw the recruiting program for his father, said he had nothing to do with Colorado’s search, but that wasn’t going to stop him from expressing his opinion to some key people. Sanders, 22-2 and having beaten everyone in college football last year for the nation’s No. 1 recruit Travis Hunter to get him to go to a SWAC program, was the one who got him excited.

“His pedigree is unlike any other coach in college football with what he accomplished on the field as a player. (He) then quickly has had great success at Jackson State, and you can’t ignore the fact that he’s getting four- and five-star players to go to Jackson State,” McCartney said. “I said, ‘Hey for whatever it’s worth, this is what I see. I’m involved in both college and pro football and personally, this could be a home run hire for the Buffs.’”

Sanders’ aura of confidence and belief reminded McCartney of his father’s.

Bill McCartney took over in Boulder in 1983. The program had won a total of seven games in the previous three seasons. Making matters worse, McCartney took over the team in June, after the Buffs had gone through spring football. Bill McCartney has said it was the most out-of-shape football team he’d ever seen in his career. He only won seven games in his first three years but by the end of the decade, Bill McCartney’s relentless recruiting and spirit had brought a national title to Boulder.

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“It starts with players,” said Mike McCartney. “We did a great job of recruiting in Los Angeles and in the state of California and in the state of Texas. We dabbled a little bit in New Orleans and dabbled a little in Detroit — we had to go where the great players were.”

The younger McCartney said he’s only met Sanders once. It was while one of his clients, former Green Bay Packers linebacker A.J. Hawk, was filming a commercial for AT&T with the Pro Football Hall of Famer. But McCartney, who recruits and works with big-time athletes all the time as part of his job as an agent, was wowed by Sanders’s presence and charisma and his ability to carry the room.

“When you hire a head coach in college football, he needs to be excellent in one of these three areas: recruiting, culture or scheme,” McCartney said. “Not to say he wouldn’t be excellent in scheme but I have great confidence that Deion would be great in recruiting — he’s got this magnetic personality that attracts people to him. I think he’s gonna set a great culture. I’ve watched a lot of the videos from Jackson State of him. It seems clear to me that he cares about the kids, yet he also holds them accountable. He has a good culture and he gets the most out of them and still holds them accountable.

“Those two things right there is a start to the recipe to turn things around. You have to bring in really good players obviously but today, with NIL and the transfer portal, you can’t sustain without a great culture. I really believe Deion will have a great culture at Colorado, where they’ll work very hard and compete every day. Deion is old school in many respects. You see many of his influences of his playing background. I know he’s been very out front that Mike Zimmer, for one, has been a strong influence on him. There’s an old-school nature to Deion, where he’s going to hold kids accountable but they’re also going to have fun along the way. He’s so appealing to today’s young athletes.”

Sanders will inherit the worst roster in Power 5 football. It’s also a program that has been nationally irrelevant since before most recruits were born. Then again, Sanders took over a Jackson State program that hadn’t had a winning season in the six years before he arrived in the SWAC and he wasted little time making that program into a buzzy one almost immediately, and the wins soon followed.

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There’s expectations that many of the big-time players he recruited to Jackson State, including his son Shedeur Sanders, a gifted former four-star quarterback, will follow him to Boulder. Word is to help reel in Sanders and give him a chance to resurrect Buffs football, the school is going to change some of the policies that have been in place for years that coaches have said have made it so hard to get transfers and junior college recruits admitted.

One current assistant coach told The Athletic about how frustrating it is to keep bringing prospects to compliance but either many of their credits won’t transfer over or they simply won’t get admitted. Several of those same players end up on the opposing sideline. If Colorado is, in fact, on board with making some exceptions for Sanders, it would give him a real chance to change the roster in a hurry.

McCartney thinks Sanders, who was bypassed by several Power 5 programs with vacancies this year, will relish the opportunity to do something at Colorado most don’t think is realistic.

“The fact that we hired him couldn’t have me more excited as a Colorado Buffalo fan,” McCartney said. “We’re gonna see him change the roster quickly and you can do that. Obviously, USC has shown that you can churn the roster in one year and present a completely different football team.

“It’ll be interesting to see the players especially in the portal who are going to reach out to Colorado. We haven’t had that before. Does Colorado have some challenges? Of course. We also have a lot to sell. We do have tradition. We’ve won a national championship in 1990. We have an unbelievable facility. Is there a better setting in college football than Folsom Field on a Saturday? Maybe the rest of the country doesn’t realize that because we haven’t been on national television much, but it’s an unbelievable setting and a great place.

“This year we’re 0-and whatever, and we still filled up the stadium to watch Coach (Mike) Sanford beat Cal. That place has energy when there’s a good football team. Boulder and the Denver area will get behind the Buffs. My dad used to say that if we can just get ’em on campus, we have a great chance to sign ’em. I think Deion will get them on campus. I really think a lot of kids will say, ‘Colorado isn’t in my top couple, but I’m so intrigued to go and meet with Deion,’ and when he gets them on campus, he’s gonna turn a lot of those guys to sign with the Buffs.”

(Photo: Aron Smith / Jackson State University via Getty Images)

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Bruce Feldman

Bruce Feldman is the National College Football Insider for The Athletic. One of the sport’s leading voices, he also is a sideline reporter for FOX College Football. Bruce has covered college football nationally for more than 20 years and is the author of numerous books on the topic, including "Swing Your Sword: Leading The Charge in Football and Life" with Mike Leach and most recently "The QB: The Making of Modern Quarterbacks." Follow Bruce on Twitter @BruceFeldmanCFB