Keeler: CU Buffs gave Deion Sanders 5-year, $54-million contract a year ago. It hasn’t aged well.
Unless you can spare a dime, Prime’s got time.
A few days back, FOX Sports asked its staffers which college football coach was under the “most pressure” in 2026. One picked Wisconsin’s Luke Fickell, whom I’m amazed still has his job. Another took Lincoln Riley at USC. A third chose Deion Sanders at CU.
Pressure?
No question. That 3-9 doesn’t go away.
Hot seat?
Not the way Sanders’ contract is structured.
If terminated without cause, Coach Prime is owed 75% of all of his remaining base supplemental salary through 2029. Which means the Buffs would be on the hook for $33 million this year; $25.5 million in 2027; $17.25 million in 2028; and $9 million in 2029.
Boulder’s not a drinking town with a football problem. It’s a drinking town with an accounting problem.
CU has confirmed multiple reports that project its athletics department was, as of December, on a pace to finish the ’25-26 fiscal year with a $27 million deficit.
Sanders landed a $5-million raise a year ago. He’s slated to make about $10 million this season. That five-year, $54-million extension celebrates its first birthday in a few weeks.
Which begs the question: Was it worth it?
According to USA Today’s database, only 13 FBS coaches at public schools were paid more than Sanders last year. Of that club, Brian Kelly was 5-3 when he was fired by LSU midway through the year. Mark Stoops went 5-7 and was fired by Kentucky after the season.
Among the coaches who collected the sport’s top 15 salaries last fall, only Sanders (3-9), Stoops (5-7) and Bill Belichick (4-8) had losing seasons. The latter was in charge of a college program for the first time. It showed.
But outgoing Buffs athletic director Rick George has been at this a long time. He should know better.
Why, 11 months after the fact, does it feel as if George was pretty much outbidding himself last winter when it came to Coach Prime’s services?
The Cowboys? Come on. Yeah, Jerry Jones is wacky enough to try anything once. But Sanders grasps the politics of an NFL locker room and the mindset of NFL veterans better than anybody. His approach wouldn’t land the same with grizzled adults.
ESPN? Maybe. That off-ramp is always there, though. Sanders is ratings gold, a TV master, and he knows it. Disney gave Pat McAfee a five-year, AAV deal of $17 million in 2023. The Mouse will pony up for personalities that bring eyeballs.
Another college, though? Not likely. It’s hard to picture many major collegiate athletic directors giving Coach Prime the power/perks/protection/political capital he covets. CU had an empty throne and a lonely, waiting crown.
Was it worth it?
George and CU didn’t really have a choice, did they? Not when it came to an extension. A hot coach always commands some gesture of good faith, even if it’s symbolic.
After last fall went so badly off the rails, the wiser play for the Buffs surely would’ve been to wait until this year to re-negotiate — to see what a post-Shedeur/post-Hunter roster looked like.
Or perhaps the school could’ve offered a 50% raise for 2025 after 2024’s 9-4 record, instead of basically doubling Sanders’ pay ($5.7 million two seasons ago) right from the get-go. Stagger those incentives.
Hindsight, alas, is for suckers and columnists. The Buffs, who open spring ball Monday, are full-speed ahead at pretending 2025 didn’t happen — so much so, in fact, that nearly half the roster, both coordinators and a chunk of the coaching staff are brand new.
For months, CU faithful wanted changes. Wise-cracking scribes wanted changes. Sanders listened. Or someone told him to listen.
Coach Prime replaced offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur with Brennan Marion — a move widely considered an upgrade, if simply for the fact that Marion isn’t Pencil Pat.
The more surprising turns came a few days ago. This past Tuesday, The Post’s Luca Evans, among others, reported that CU’s wonderboy defensive coordinator, Robert Livingston, was leaving the Buffs to join the Broncos as defensive passing game coordinator — largely the same position he’d held with the Bengals before coming to Boulder.
The plot thickened later in the week when CU confirmed reports that longtime Sanders friend and confidante Warren Sapp, who was elevated to defensive pass rush coordinator in ’25, had resigned from the program.
Sanders is on his third defensive coordinator and third offensive play-caller since March 2023. Ordinarily, $10 million is the kind of money a university typically pays for Saban-like stability — not volatility.
CU just doesn’t have the money to buy out big mistakes. Or even little ones, frankly.
Was it worth it?
The Buffs remain a mandatory selection for TV executives, almost entirely because of Sanders. Although from mid-November 2024 to mid-November 2025, reported broadcast ratings for Buffs games had dipped 44%. Irrelevant football is irrelevant football, no matter who’s coaching it.
Enrollment of black students at CU-Boulder in fall 2025 was up 13.8% over fall 2024. Undergraduate enrollment and out-of-state undergraduate enrollment jumped in ’23-24. These are all good things. Football is a school’s best marketing front porch.
The Buffs reported $31.216 million in 2023 football ticket revenue to the NCAA; CU’s 2024-25 report, released last month, said football ticket sales brought in $24.026 million during the 2024 campaign.
The website Oddspedia.com recently pegged CU with the most expensive average FBS college ticket in the country for 2025, at $114. Assuming that’s reasonably in the ballpark, it would mean CU athletics lost $1.6 million off ticket sales during its final two home games of last season when compared to its last two home contests in 2024.
Meanwhile, the Buffs listed a departmental profit of $8.24 million in ’23-24. They reported a net of $160,189 in ’24-25. And all of that was before the House vs. NCAA ruling went into effect — which will account for an additional $20.5 million in expenses for student-athlete revenue sharing in ’25-26.
Was it worth it?
Ask us at Halloween. What limited history we have to go on says the Buffs, and Sanders, will be better this fall. For sanity’s sake, they’d better be.
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