The “Prime Effect” is real in Colorado. How long Deion Sanders will remain is a question

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) – Even on Monday – two days after a thrilling victory in Colorado, back home – at The Buff, a breakfast and brunch spot, everyone knew your name and 99-cent mimosas helped wash down the alcohol, bacon-stuffed pancakes and huevos rancheros.

Deion Sanders’ arrival boosted the prestige of this restaurant in much the identical way it has now boosted all the pieces around CU. Before the celebrity bus arrived in Boulder, places like The Buff were established institutions. These are destinations.

“When we have a home game, well, I run a company and I have to make sure we double order everything and fill the room to capacity,” manager Dru Libby said of the noticeable difference between now and a few years ago in a bet he never wanted for patrons.

This story unfolds up and down Canyon Boulevard or anywhere in Boulder, where the brownstones and red-roofed buildings on campus provide the backdrop for a whole city basking in the second yr of the so-called “Primal Effect.”

The numbers that the arrival of “Coach Prime” has bestowed upon Boulder are so powerful – from school enrollment to town’s economic clout to the variety of celebrities on the sidelines – that it might sometimes be tempting to overlook the number that represents essentially the most in sports: Wins .

How many does CU need to contemplate this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity a success? What can be the timeframe? There are not any clear answers to any of the questions, but a consensus is constructing that CU, which was 4-8 in Sanders’ first season, needs to start out accumulating Ws in the end.

The comeback win over Baylor, followed by a 48-21 victory for UCF last weekend, gave CU a 4-1 record on the season at week’s end, and fans were feeling optimistic.

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“There’s a lot of hype around this team and this program,” said Tyler Odorisio, a longtime Buffs fan who was at the college’s bookstore a few hours before the homecoming game. “We finally saw a little ray of hope here. Now we just need to construct on it and see some wins.

Prime introduced to CU

In a spacious, sunny second-floor office next to the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Jeremy Bloom sits at his desk. The wall behind him is decorated with three of his CU team jerseys and bibs from two trips to the Olympics, all framed and under glass.

Before Sanders arrived in Boulder, Bloom was essentially the most consistent buffalo of the twenty first century.

He is a football player and freestyle skier who began fighting and suing college players in the early 2000s. This was long before paying players became the claim to fame – after which reality – of the generation of NCAA athletes that followed.

The model Bloom once dreamed of, Sanders turned players – including sons Shedeur and Shilo and quarterback Travis Hunter – into millionaires and transformed CU into a place to see and be seen for the primary time, and definitely rather more. than during his only national championship season in 1990.

Now 42, Bloom has a long history in Boulder. As a CU fan, he suffered mostly in silence for years because the Buffs fell to the underside of the Pac-12.

“We didn’t matter at all,” he said. “In many conversations, we were the laughing stock of the entire country. As the conference changes approached, you could see that we were excluded from any major conference, and rightly so.”

Then got here Sanders. Since then, CU has found a comfortable landing spot in the conference it left, the Big 12.

A businessman at heart, Bloom checked out the facts and figures compiled by the Boulder Convention and Visitors Bureau: The six home games last yr, when Sanders became a everlasting resident, had an economic impact of $113.2 million; direct guest spending increased by $10 million; the typical visitor spent $183 on accommodation last yr in comparison with $102 six years ago.

Other facts and figures: The University of California’s enrollment is at a record high of 38,428 students. Applications from Black candidates increased by greater than 50% in 2023-24. This fall, a record 1,046 students (including 45 football players) transferred to the University of California, thanks in part to a provision Sanders helped spearhead.

Bloom, who played a role in luring the bus to Boulder, loves all of it as much as anyone. Faced with a key question about Sanders’ stay in Boulder, the question is clear.

“He has to win without a doubt,” Bloom said. “It’s a performance business. This is not a personality-based business. Yes, he’s a very fascinating figure, but people won’t fill stadiums just to observe him walk on the touchline.

“Main Effect”

Sanders likes to start out his weekly press conferences with facts and figures from the previous weekend. They almost all the time must do with the variety of NFL scouts who showed up at CU’s last game and the variety of TV viewership that has increased since his arrival.

“Whether people like it or not, they’re watching it,” Sanders once said after the Buffs drew a TV audience for a game against North Dakota State that might have been unthinkable three or 4 years ago.

Part of Sanders’ skill comes from one among the oldest moves in the coaching playbook: By making himself a lightning rod, he takes among the pressure off players who, he admits, have even greater responsibilities to meet now that a few of them are millionaires, but who’re also still teenagers.

So for a week, the coach was the title that attracted attention criticizing the columnist he felt like he was hitting below the belt. The following week he handled the erroneous report he had received ordered the CU marching band to not play a fight song when his quarterback son, Shedeur, scored a touchdown. “It’s idiotic. You all know that,” Sanders said.

Coach has his own series on Netflix. His sunglass sales are legendary, though that is not the one accolade he’s earned since moving from Jackson State to the big-time college football team. To come to CU, he urged the college to streamline its restrictive policies transfer rules this had an impact on the status of the football program, which was also implemented.

Sometimes, amidst all of the hype and glitz surrounding the new edition of Buff football, one other well-worn page from the school textbook on which Sanders is putting his own stamp is lost.

“We don’t just want to coach them, we want to shape them and mature them and love them,” said Sanders, who is not the primary college coach to tackle the role. “We love these young men in so many ways. Some of these young men have never heard this word from a man. So it’s important that they not only hear it, but we show it.”

In an effort to mold players into good residents, Sanders has been playing the sport too long to lose sight of the outcomes.

He recruited greater than two dozen four- or five-star players to Colorado through the portal and traditional highschool recruiting. This yr’s lineup includes not one, but possibly two top-five NFL draft picks, including Shedeur Sanders and Hunter, whose Heisman Trophy resume grows with each passing week. The coach bristled last month when asked if he was still trying to search out his identity at CU.

“I’m not looking for an identity, I want to win,” Sanders said. “We’re attempting to take the blokes to the subsequent level, we’re trying to coach young men and switch them into men, not boys. There’s a lot happening here, not only on the pitch. It’s deep on the pitch. This is an echo of all the pieces. First of all, we’re attempting to win.”

Does CU need Deion greater than Deion needs CU?

Fans like Odorisio expect a bowl game this season – Colorado has only reached this point twice since 2008.

UCF’s victory in a game in which CU was a nearly two-touchdown underdog gave the Buffs a 2-0 conference record, but in addition status as a contender for the conference title and a trip to the College Football Playoff, unlikely because it could seem.

How much patience do fans have for a coach who, in almost every way, has single-handedly made CU a more attractive school to attend, visit and watch football in?

Well, it’s complicated.

Hunter, together with each of Sanders’ sons, will retire from college football after this yr. This brings with it a real fear that the coach may simply drive out of town after they accomplish that. If Sanders leaves for a latest coaching job in 2025, his latest employer will only owe Colorado $8 million.

CU fans see signs in all the pieces, despite the fact that they don’t seem to be entirely sure what they mean. For example, Sanders’ 2025 recruiting class is off to a slow start, although the transfer portal has not yet opened. Everyone here has noticed the bad start at Sanders’ alma mater, Florida State, and is wondering if there will be a gap in the long run. Seminoles coach Mike Norvell will owe $63 million if the college parts ways with him after this season.

Sanders has repeatedly said he got here to Boulder to construct something. Asked what he tells parents of recruits who wonder if he’ll be here in a yr or two, he replied: “I tell them the truth.”

“I tell them I’m the father, not the baby daddy,” Sanders said. “I don’t follow my children. I pave roads for my children. I am building generational wealth for my children. I lead my children. I don’t follow my children. So I have no intention of going to the NFL with my kids. But I’m grateful.”

With each victory, CU supporters turn out to be much more grateful that Sanders has arrived to tug this system out of the doldrums. Many agree that he has built a great brand. Now they hope he stays with the team long enough to construct a great football program.

“We’d like to keep it,” says Libby, the restaurant manager. “And if not, we will still put the identical heart and love into what we do here. We are a tourist town. We will still have latest people. But the impact: Yes, he had a wonderful, positive impact. I hope he stays when Shedeur is gone.