Colorado head coach Deion Sanders stood at the podium for Big 12 Media Day on Tuesday and did what he does best: he held the room. But the reason he gave for being excited about the season opener was not what anyone expected to hear.
“First of all, I can’t wait to get to Atlanta. We have curfew on the coaches, not the players,” Sanders said, according to ESPN. He was joking about the setup for Colorado’s Week 1 game against Georgia Tech on September 3. But the line landed because it’s true — the guy who built a program around celebrity and swagger is clearly feeling himself again.
And that matters because last year was brutal. The Buffaloes finished near the bottom of the Big 12 standings, winning just one conference game. Losing Travis Hunter and Shedeur Sanders gutted the roster. The 2025 season felt less like a rebuild and more like a hard reset.
The Swagger Is Back
“Now I’m here with full strength, full energy,” Sanders said at Media Day, per USA Today. “I got that thing back. I got that swagger back. I’ve got that dawg back. I got that charisma back.”
Sanders is entering his fourth season at Colorado. He has posted two losing seasons in three years. But he also beat cancer last season — something he acknowledged on Tuesday. “My younger self would be proud,” Sanders said. “Proud that I was here last year fighting a battle called cancer and now I’m here at full strength.”
Colorado gave Sanders a shot when he was still a media personality with no head coaching experience above the high school level. He took over a program that went 1-11 the year before his arrival. The Buffaloes moved from the Pac-12 to the Big 12 ahead of the 2024 season. The transition has been messy.
But Sanders isn’t backing down from the expectations he created. He talked about being grateful for the opportunity Colorado gave him, and said he wants to exceed what people think this team can do. Whether that happens depends on a roster that lost its two biggest stars and hasn’t proven it can compete in a league that is getting tougher by the year.
Georgia Tech is not a gimme. The Yellow Jackets played in a bowl game last season and return enough talent to make things uncomfortable for a Colorado team still figuring out its identity. Sanders might be itching to get to Atlanta and enjoy that coach-curfew loophole. But what happens after kickoff will tell us a lot more about where this program is actually headed.
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