Deion Sanders Shifted His Recruiting Focus. Colorado’s Locker Room Says It’s Working.

There’s a different feel around Colorado football this spring. And it has almost nothing to do with five-star recruits or splashy transfer portal wins.

Deion Sanders, after a 3-9 season that followed two years of hype-heavy roster construction, took a different approach when he went back into the portal this time. He didn’t chase the biggest names. He went looking for guys with something to prove.

“What I saw from this spring is a lot of guys that want to prove that they can play at this level,” former walk-on Ben Finneseth said. “They’re hungry. We brought in guys that are pissed off because they weren’t recruited out of high school.”

That’s a noticeable shift from Sanders’ earlier strategy. He landed Travis Hunter and his son Shedeur Sanders from the portal. He pulled in Jordan Seaton, one of the top high school recruits in the country. Those three players are all gone now, and the program is coming off a season where nothing went right.

247 Sports ranked Colorado’s current transfer class 23rd nationally. They brought in 43 commits. Zero of them are five-star players. The biggest names — DeAndre More, Boo Carter, Liona Lefau — aren’t bad players, but they’re not the kind of guys who make you immediately circle the calendar.

That seems to be the point.

Sanders prioritized leadership and guys who’ve dealt with real adversity. The type who came in locked in rather than expecting anything to be handed to them. Finneseth said the cohesive mindset across the roster is the biggest difference from last season.

“They came in with a competitiveness and a work ethic,” he said.

Colorado still has talent. Julian Lewis will be the quarterback this fall, and the recruiting rankings don’t disappear overnight. But the roster has a different texture now. Fewer guys looking for a spotlight, more guys looking for a fight.

Whether that translates into wins is still an open question. The Pac-12 is gone and the Big 12 won’t be kind to a team that just went 3-9. But the locker room sounds like it actually has a direction now instead of just a collection of brand names.

“The cohesive mindset of all the players is the biggest difference that we’ve had compared to last season,” Finneseth said.

That might matter more than any transfer portal ranking.