On an idyllic Sunday afternoon in Boulder, a black Tesla turned right onto Stadium Drive just north of Folsom Field. As he came upon a man standing outside a nearby parking garage waiting to be picked up, the driver rolled down his window.
Blasting from his car’s speakers was “Prime Time Keeps on Tickin", a single from Deion Sanders’ 1994 album called – what else? – “Prime Time”. While the song played, the driver stuck his head out the window and looked at the stranger on the sidewalk.
“That’s our new coach on the radio!” he shouted.
The bystander responded nonchalantly, offering up a half-hearted “Cool” more intended to appease a fired-up stranger than express genuine excitement.
If the past 24 hours have been any indication, he might be one of the only people in Colorado who’s lacking any enthusiasm.
Even as the early afternoon window of NFL games raged on Sunday, the attention of a good part of the football world was somewhere that it hasn’t been in quite a long time – Boulder. And, really, that’s a big part of the reason why the unlikely marriage of Sanders and Colorado was forged. As Sanders was formally introduced at a press conference Sunday, he officially got an eagerly awaited shot at a Power Five head coaching job and the once-proud Colorado program now matters in a way that it hasn’t in two decades, if not longer.
In a tightly packed 30 minutes, Buffs fans got everything for which they could have hoped. The benefits of hiring Sanders – the charm, the charisma and, as even he put it, the swag – were all on full display. Even the placard placed in front of him, which read “Coach Prime,” showed this wasn’t just another introductory press conference for just another coach. Colorado seemingly had its choice of intriguing candidates, but none of them could have brought what Sanders did Sunday.
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He practically radiated from the podium. Though it came in front of a jubilant, eager-to-be-entertained crowd, every promise was met with raucous applause, every one-liner was greeted with uproarious laughter, and as he discussed the role religion played in helping him decide whether Colorado was the next step in his coaching journey, a few screams of “Amen!” could be heard in the audience.
The scene beyond the podium was telling. In the same stadium where maybe a few thousand remained to see the end of perhaps the worst season in school history a little more than a week earlier, seemingly as many people were crammed into the Dal Ward Athletic Center to forget that nightmarish fall and absorb the intoxicating first whiffs of what the future might have to offer.
