Colorado head coach Deion Sanders faces mounting media scrutiny after inviting reporters to an open training session while restricting coverage. As he enters his fourth season in Boulder, interest in the program is at an all-time low under Coach Prime.
This week, Front Office Sports reporter Michael McCarthy revealed that television ratings for Colorado games dropped 67% between the 2023 and 2025 seasons.
Fans React to Coach Prime’s Buffs Ratings Slide
College football fans were quick to take notice of this drop and shared mixed reactions to these numbers. An X user, Ben Hogan, summarized the duality of the Coach Prime effect.
“Deion has always lived on the edge. His brash personality has made him both beloved and hated at the same time. Equal parts wanting to see him fail or succeed. It comes with the big personality, and I suspect he knows that,” Hogan wrote.
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Another fan offered a harsh assessment of the Colorado program: “If any of the former Pac-12 deserved to get left behind, it was Colorado. They’ve done nothing of worth in athletics for decades now.”
CBS Sports’ Bud Elliott gave a unique spin on the Coach Prime era in Colorado.
“I think everybody, with the exception of a few Tik Tokers, probably including the administration of Colorado, realized Prime was building a team and not a program, and I strongly suspect that they would sign up for that experience again,” Elliott wrote.
I think everybody, with the exception of a few Tik Tokers, probably including the administration of Colorado, realized Prime was building a team and not a program, and I strongly suspect that they would sign up for that experience again. https://t.co/CzMDRZWZUm
— Bud Elliott (@BudElliott3) August 18, 2026
A Nebraska Cornhuskers fan mocked the glory days of the Coach Prime era.
“I’m old enough to remember ‘We Comin’ and Colorado’s AD crying in Prime’s arms after he beat TCU and Prime patting him on the head and saying, ‘I told you fam? I got you,'” they wrote.
I’m old enough to remember “We Comin” and Colorado’s AD crying in Prime’s arms after he beat TCU and Prime patting him on the head and saying, “I told you fam? I got you”.
— Jim in MN (@HuskersMN) August 18, 2026
One fan was not shocked that the Buffs had regressed after all the Coach Prime hype.
“Yup, should surprise nobody,” he wrote.
When Sanders accepted the head coaching role in December 2022, he immediately turned Boulder into a national talking point. A 3-0 start to the 2023 season brought unprecedented celebrity presence and prime-time network coverage to Folsom Field.
ESPN cashed in on the Coach Prime effect and televised several Buffs games despite Sanders finishing his first FBS season with a 4-8 record. In 2024, Colorado won six games for the first time since 2016 and reached its first bowl game since 2020, and Travis Hunter won the Heisman Trophy.
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After Hunter and Shedeur Sanders left for the NFL, Colorado slipped to a 3-9 record. The Buffs were poor on both sides of the ball, ranking No. 77 in PFN’s College Team Defense Impact metrics and No. 80 in the Offensive metrics.
