Deion Sanders needs more face time. Just not the kind on his phone.
“It sure helped CU when he first got the job,” Brandon Huffman, national recruiting editor at 247Sports.com, told me Tuesday. “But reliance on the transfer portal is dangerous.”
And in Boulder, three years into The Coach Prime Era, the Buffs are still living dangerously on the recruiting front. The early prep National Signing Day period opens Wednesday morning. As of late Tuesday afternoon, per Huffman and the 247Sports database, the Buffs had just 10 firm high school commitments lined up for the Class of 2026.
Among the 16 members of the Big 12, only Oklahoma State (four) had secured fewer. And the Cowboys have been without a head coach since Sept. 23, when they fired longtime boss Mike Gundy.
“I’m of the mindset that the transfer portal is a nice, quick, healthy fix in Year 1 or Year 2,” Huffman continued. “By Year 3 or Year 4, you should have already by then focused on high-school recruiting …
“I think you’re seeing schools such as Florida State, they hit the jackpot with Jordan Travis. The next year, they’re back in the portal, and it blew up in their faces.”
Some shrapnel was felt in BoCo, too. The ’23-24 offseason brought gold mine of transfers led by LaJohntay Wester from FAU and Will Sheppard from Vanderbilt, topping off one of the best passing games — and passing units — in CU history. The ’24-25 offseason by contrast, brought QB Kaidon Salter from Liberty, who would lose his starting job twice, while defensive tackle Jaheim Oatis (Alabama) and tailback Simeon Price (Coastal Carolina) got hurt.
“At UCLA, (the Bruins) went with a ‘Moneyball’ approach this year (via the portal),’” Huffman said. “They said, ‘We’re going to chase elite recruits who aren’t playing at their schools.’ Once they came, you could see why they weren’t playing at their previous schools.”
The 2024 Buffs already had a base in place a year ago that portal players could complement in a Heisman-worthy QB (Shedeur Sanders) and a Heisman-winning, generational talent in Travis Hunter. When that base was gone in 2025, players noted a void in locker-room leadership as well.
“I feel like the leader, he doesn’t try to lead. It just naturally happens,” CU linebacker Jeremiah Brown told reporters after a season-ending loss at Kansas State left CU at 3-9, 1-8 in Big 12 play. “And we just, unfortunately, didn’t have very many of those.”
To remedy that, Huffman suggested, the Buffs need to reverse course, away from recruiting classes that are primarily transfers, and go young. He’d like to see Sanders focus more on high-schoolers and for CU to throw more revenue-sharing money, and reps, in their direction.
“Especially because, more often than not, if a player is going into the portal, they’re going into the portal for a reason,” Huffman said. “With revenue-sharing, fewer and fewer guys going into the portal who are impact players, because they’re getting compensated at the school where they’re at.”
Money talks. Mediocrity walks. While the Buffs changed admission standards to allow more transfers into CU when Sanders arrived three Decembers ago, Buffs administrators seem to be stymied and financially stressed by the fallout from House vs. NCAA — which, as of July 1, allowed up to $20.5 million of a Power 4 university’s athletic revenue to be paid out to student-athletes. USA Today reported Tuesday that Buffs athletics is anticipating a deficit of roughly to $27 million in the ’25-26 fiscal year, largely because of House payments and Sanders’ $10-million salary. Athletic director Rick George, who told us in December 2022 that he was investing in Coach Prime with money the school didn’t have, is retiring from his position in late June.
When asked about prep recruiting recently, Sanders countered that at least half of all prep recruits are more likely to transfer out within their first two years of eligibility. Coach Prime doesn’t want to teach and nurture somebody for 18 to 24 months only for them to spend their best years somewhere else.
“Check the statistics so you understand the method to my madness,” Sanders said. “You get 30, are they gonna be here in a few years?… Nowadays, if kids aren’t playing by that spring of that second go-around, they’re out. They jump in the portal.”
You get that. Huffman gets that, too. But isn’t the retention of say, 50% of 30 prep recruits after two years a better program base than 50% of say, 10? Especially where depth is concerned?
Growing your own takes time. And money. And work. And patience. To the cynic, CU sounds like a program that isn’t interested in investing enough in those high-schoolers — in skill development, strength development, academic development, you name it — to keep them around.
“If you’re developing them,” Huffman said. “They’re not going to leave. They’re more likely to stay if you’re a Power 4 school and you’re taking care of them the way a Power 4 school does. If you get my drift.”
We do. Raising underclassmen is a grind that, more often that not, doesn’t pay off. It is, effectively, talent gardening. The Coach Prime Method wants its meals prepared, even pre-packaged, so that all you’ve got to do is add the Sanders heat, pop the transfers in the microwave, and it’ll start raining touchdowns all over Folsom Field. That’s the theory, at least.
If 2024 was the ideal, we know what a peak Prime team is supposed to look like. The problem is that portal guys are a roll of the dice, even if you’ve done CIA levels of homework on the front end. Ideally, they’re finishing pieces — a QB here, a wideout or edge rusher there — as opposed to your core and your spine.
Recruiting high-schoolers means leg work. Handshakes. Person-to-person relationships. Sanders has said he doesn’t like to visit high schools. Or parents’ living rooms. Coach Prime can close on a kid like Trevor Hoffman, but it’s hard to replicate the bridges built from having your head coach actively on the road.
Sanders insists that’s not part of his playbook. Huffman insists the Buffs won’t progress — or stabilize — as a program if Coach Prime doesn’t adapt.
“I realize college football has changed dramatically, but if you’re going to be there for a long time, then develop from within and (strengthen) from within,” Huffman said. “Then mix and match a few players here and there from the portal.
“If you keep focusing on the portal, you’re not building the culture. You’re not building sustenance. (The Los Angeles Times) did a story where Tim Skipper had to show the team a video going over the USC rivalry, because guys didn’t understand the importance of it. There’s no culture when you keep having one-year or two-year guys. You have to build from within.”