Coach Prime is loyal to a San Andreas fault. Dick Monfort’s stubborn streak crosses three time zones.
Easier mind to change: The CEO of CU Buffs football? Or the CEO of the Rockies?
Crazy as it sounds, I’d probably rather be Monfort’s head of baseball operations right now than Rick George’s replacement at CU.
“Moneyball” maven Paul DePodesta will have more control over his office than George’s successor will have as athletic director under Coach Prime.
If you’re a prospective CU A.D, ask yourself this: How would you tell Sanders he has to fire Robert Livingston? And Pat Shurmur?
OK, maybe that second one isn’t so hard.
But what about, say, Warren Sapp?
CU heads into Saturday’s home finale with Arizona State with a 3-7 record. The Buffs have dropped three straight. The Julian Lewis Era is upon us. The bowl talk is behind us.
Coach Prime has said, game after game, that CU features more talent than the opposition. Fair enough.
So what does that say about the coaching?
I covered Domata Peko, CU’s defensive line coach, when he was with the Broncos. Super dude. He and Sapp have been equal parts engaging and insightful with reporters whenever they’ve taken a turn at the media tent. I don’t give a hoot how many pylons Sapp, an old Sanders pal, kicks over before a game.
But Buffs fans should care about this: A year ago, CU led the Big 12 in sacks, averaging 3.0 per game. Once the ’24 Buffs got a lead on you, which was often with Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter, the edge rushers pinned their ears back and went to town. Going into the weekend, though, CU’s pass rush ranked 14th out of 16 Big 12 programs in 2025, with just 1.2 takedowns per contest.
In 2024, the Buffs gave up 151.38 rush yards per game (eighth in Big 12) and 3.87 yards per carry (sixth in the league). As of last Friday night, they ranked last (210.9 allowed per game, 5.01 given up per carry) in both categories. Even when the fits are right and the spirits are willing, the Buffs tackle sporadically.
When CU announced George was retiring on Thursday afternoon, panic among Buff Nation set in. When it came to luring Sanders to Boulder, George went from salesman to sycophant in about 1.2 seconds flat. They’ve been joined at the hip since the fall of 2022, George’s last Hail Mary into the mountain wind.
But the timing of the announcement was curious, to say the least. The Buffs administrator told us three years ago that Sanders would be the last football coach he would hire. George is still on the clock through the end of June — and sticking around in an advisory role after that.
It’s also hard to see Coach Prime hanging up his whistle, given how hard he fought to make 2025 work after beating cancer and with a 3-9 or 4-8 record as his potential Boulder farewell.
“I do think (Deion is) definitely going to be here and roll the dice again,” Roger Pielke, a professor emeritus at CU, told me after the George announcement. “If it’s a bad season next year or (Sanders has) health issues, who knows? I think the timing is curious enough to suggest this is Rick throwing Deion a lifeline.”
Pielke was director of Buffs athletics’ Sports Governance Center, and a professor of environmental science at CU from 2004-2024. He’s a Rick George fan, even if he sometimes shakes his head at the Coach Prime experiment — and how the Buffs will pay for it over the long term.
“I looked at the (athletics) budget and I’m not sure what the right word is,” Pielke laughed before offering one up anyway. “It’s dire, I would say.
“If you look at the contributions to the program, they’ve been cannibalized … the last two years, just in the NCAA findings, it’s a $30 million direct (institutional contributions) each year. And if you add $20.5 million in (revenue sharing) going forward, that’s a $50-milion difference. There’s not some obvious source of big new money. You don’t have a T. Boone Pickens sitting out there.”
Football brought in 44% of CU’s athletic revenue for the 2023-24 fiscal year, the most recent report provided to the NCAA. The Buffs’ $146 million in athletic department revenues were up roughly $20 million over 2022-23, pre-Deion, and more than $50 million more than was reported in 2021-22, per public disclosures.
CU’s report included $27.1 million in direct institutional support from the university for ’23-24. It reported $27.8 million in ’22-23 after collecting $8.02 million in ’21-22.
“If college football does go to a Super League, I know there’s this feeling (of), ‘We’ve got to invest to be in.’ (But) CU is on the bubble, if they’re lucky. And even if the (Buffs) got in, it’s hard to see CU being a football powerhouse.”
George’s replacement could be walking into one whale of a balancing act — keeping Sanders happy while also finding him the dollars to upgrade his staff. Coach Prime’s College Football Playoff aspirations require CFP-level game-callers. CFP-level game managers. Strategists. Teachers.
At some point, results on the field are going to matter to the gate. And honeymoons aren’t forever. Per SportsMediaWatch.com, the Arizona-Colorado game in prime time on FS1 drew just 374,000 viewers two weeks ago. The lack of competitiveness on CU’s part — the Wildcats led 38-7 the half and rolled, 52-17 — likely led many to bail on the broadcast.
Through its opening nine tilts, CU averaged 2.02 million viewers and its games’ average rank among national games was a 9.4 (top-9) in their respective weeks. Yet through nine games a year ago, CU was averaging 3.64 million viewers and averaging a top-5 (5.4) placement among the ratings charts.
By SportsMediaWatch’s numbers, viewership for CU football is down 44% from mid-November 2024. Meanwhile, that homecoming stinker against the Wildcats came in front of the smallest Folsom crowd of the Coach Prime Era — 48,223.
“The question,” Pielke said, “is what happens next.”
It doesn’t take a genius to see that what has happened the last three weeks isn’t working. But it might take one to convince Sanders to turn his back on a friend.
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