On Saturday, the Colorado Buffaloes won their sixth game of the season against Cincinnati, 34-23. This is notable because it officially makes the team bowl eligible for the first time since 2020, and only the third time since 2007. It is also notable because Deion Sanders's method—despite the turnover both by him and because of him—is working.
The Buffaloes are still selling out every game, still getting good TV ratings, and Sanders is still every bit the confidence man he's always been. But the national attention and overbearing expectations are mostly gone, as are the party-like atmosphere on the sidelines and (some of) the Instagram-tailored bravado. What's left is a team that's winning the games it's supposed to and competing in the others. With two more victories, they'll have doubled their win total from last year, which had already been a notable upgrade on the mess Sanders walked into when he first took the job.
Because he is Coach Prime™️, Sanders had plenty to say after the team got that sixth win—that his team hasn't achieved anything yet, and that the national writers and voters shouldn't bother to rank them this week, as the team prefers to be underdogs. Nevertheless, the Buffs have nabbed themselves one of those tenuous spots at the bottom of the top 25, where they now sit in 23rd. That feels about right. They're fourth in the Big 12 currently. They are winning where they should, though the competition so far hasn't been terribly stiff. The Utah game will be their best measuring stick, and winning out or coming close would put them in position for at least a New Year's Six bowl, given how this season has gone for everyone else.
What's important is that Colorado has been powered by arguably two of the best players in the sport. Shedeur Sanders has played mostly clean football, including against Cincinnati where he went 25-for-30 for 323 yards and two touchdowns. Travis Hunter has been pretty much the best player in all of college football, pulling double duty at safety and wide receiver and staying mostly healthy throughout the season. Both players should be in consideration for the Heisman, and Hunter would be my odds-on favorite.
More important than any of this, Colorado has gone from being an abject disaster to a program on an upswing. The real test will come next year, when the Buffs lose Shedeur and Travis to the NFL, but it feels like the team has put itself in position to recruit quality players looking to join a program on the rise. In that position, the prospect of being under Deion Sanders's wing seems like it could be genuinely alluring. Outside of but also because of the bluster, Colorado is just another program getting better slowly and surely, and that's all it ever needed to be.
