Univ. of Colorado officials have a name for the increased enthusiasm surrounding the football program since the hiring of Deion Sanders as coach: "The Prime Effect,” according to Sean Keeler of the DENVER POST. Since Sanders’ hiring last Saturday, the football program’s Instagram feed has “seen its followers increase by 142%" and followers of CU’s football feed "went up roughly 27%.” The athletic department recorded its "single-highest day of online merchandise sales ($49,800) with at least 6,000 season tickets 'in the pipeline' for 2023 already." This has given CU AD Rick George "early hope that the return on the investment into Sanders and his staff will “eventually bear fiscal fruit.” With Sanders, CU becomes a "national brand." And at a time of "uncertainty for the Pac-12," the league office is "loving the fact that its eastern-most outpost just made one of the biggest splashes in North American sports." George, along with using a search firm, “consulted regularly with a small committee composed of Buffs’ football alums and partisans” on the school's next football coach. Sources said that at least one “suggested approaching Sanders shortly after (Karl) Dorrell’s dismissal.” George also “received a text” from CU alum and former NFLer Jeremy Bloom who volunteered to “help grant CU an audience with Coach Prime.” Bloom "asked four friends in early October to make direct pitches to Sanders,” including former NFLers Shawne Merriman, Steve Smith, Myron Rolle and Brandon Marshall. The worse CU performed on the field, the "more appealing the opportunity became,” as Sanders “embraced the idea of building an FBS program of his own from scratch" (DENVER POST, 12/11).
TURNING HEADS: In Seattle, Larry Stone wrote the Pac-12 just “got immensely more interesting with Coach Prime’s arrival.” It has been “easy for the rest of the country to write off the conference as a largely irrelevant and mostly inferior brand of football.” But Sanders will “force people to pay attention by the sheer force of his personality.” Pac-12 Commissioner George Kliavkoff, for one, could “barely contain his glee, believing the attention Sanders will garner for the conference should help spike the payout of the vital media-rights package he’s in the process of negotiating.” And opposing Pac-12 coaches, though “none will admit it, must be wary of Sanders’ recruiting prowess.” Sanders is “making people take notice," and CU is "receiving the kind of attention they haven’t had since the Bill McCartney glory days in the late ’80s and early ‘90s” (SEATTLE TIMES, 12/9).
