Less than a year ago, Colorado athletics was sputtering.
Although several of CU’s teams were doing well, the football program was in the midst of a nose dive, while the Buffs, along with the rest of the Pac-12, were uncertain about their future in the conference.
Now, the Buffaloes are gearing up for the most anticipated football season in decades and the future is set after CU’s decision to ditch the Pac-12 and move to the Big 12 in 2024.
“This is a very exciting time, between changing conferences, the extraordinary work that’s going on in all of CU-Boulder athletics and with Coach Prime coming on board,” University of Colorado president Todd Saliman said. “It’s just a transformative time for us.”
While athletic director Rick George and chancellor Phil DiStefano handle the day to day operations in athletics and have been at the forefront of the transformative decisions by CU in the past year, Saliman has been by their side, giving full support on moves that he believes have put CU-Boulder in good position for the future.
The transformation began with the hiring of Deion “Coach Prime” Sanders as head football coach on Dec. 3, completely flipping the fortunes of the football program and changing the perception of the Buffs locally and nationally.
“People are just excited,” Saliman said. “Students are excited and faculty and staff feel the vibe; they’re excited. The community is, the entire state is. I get asked for tickets all the time, which is great. That didn’t happen too much last season; it happens a lot now.”
The impact has been tangible. The Buffs not only sold tickets to the spring game – for the first time since the 1980s – but the tickets sold out. Season tickets sold out. Student passes have sold out. Two home games – against Nebraska and Stanford – have already been announced as sellouts. And, on Wednesday, CU announced that the Buff Club received a school record of roughly $28 million in donations, nearly $8 million more than last year.
“He’s already transformed the program,” Saliman said. “It’s an extraordinary thing what’s going on and there’s such excitement about him, about his coaches, about the student-athletes and these incredible athletes that are going to help transform the program.”
Sanders likely never would have come to Boulder, however, without Saliman and others making the decision last fall to alter CU’s transfer policies. It’s now easier for students to transfer from other schools to CU, which, in turn, makes it easier for Coach Prime and other CU coaches to actively recruit better players.
“We took real steps to change how we’re doing business, in terms of the ability of students to transfer in efficiently and not just student athletes, but all students,” he said. “That’s a huge thing for the University of Colorado. … I think that helped (Sanders). It’s things like that that we did to make it clear that we’re serious and the fact that they helped all students, not just student-athletes, is wonderful.”
Saliman said that at one point CU was projecting a slight decline of about 0.7% in enrollment for the 2023-24 school year, but there is now a projection of an increase of about 0.5%. The difference in those numbers, Saliman said, is “several hundred students.”
“We don’t know exactly why there was that swing, but I suspect (Coach Prime) has something to do with it,” Saliman said. “There’s this excitement and people want to be part of it, including students.”
While CU was enjoying the initial impact of Coach Prime’s arrival, the wheels were in motion for the move to the Big 12. With the Pac-12’s inability to secure a long-term media rights deal over the past year, CU officially announced on July 27 that it will leave the conference next summer.
“I think we were all hopeful and wanting to know how things were going to shake out (with the Pac-12),” Saliman said. “It just got to the point where we needed to have certainty for ourselves and certainty for our student-athletes. We feel like the Big 12 is a great fit. It’s a good move for the university, it’s a good move for student-athletes and I think it sets us up well for the future.”
Saliman said the decision to move to the Big 12 “evolved over time” and that CU became anxious to know what was going to happen with the Pac-12.
“We needed to know what would work best for the university and what would work best for our student-athletes,” said. “It just became clear that this path was just better for the university for the long term.”
Saliman said CU was comfortable making the move on its own, but the Buffs are glad to have Arizona, Arizona State and Utah join them. Those three schools announced their decision to leave the Pac-12 about a week after the Buffs did.
“It’s nice to have some regional colleagues in the Big 12 and we’re ready to compete with anyone,” Saliman said.
With the Prime era set to begin and the move to the Big 12 coming up next summer, Saliman is looking forward to CU’s future.
“CU Boulder absolutely has a bright future, bright year ahead of it,” he said.
