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The Rise of Coach Prime: From Instigator to Innovator
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Two years ago, at the conclusion of CU’s 2023 Spring practices, there was a purge of the Colorado roster. A week after the game, shown on national television and played before a sold out crowd at Folsom Field … over half of the Buffs who were on the team for the Spring game were gone.
It wasn’t as if the remaining members from the 2022 team – one of the worst teams in Colorado football history – hadn’t been warned. Coach Prime had told the team the previous December, when CU’s new coach first set foot on campus, that they may as well jump into the Portal, as he was bringing his own luggage to Boulder, and it was Louie.
Deion Sanders and his comments were met with criticism from Day One … and the critics have yet to let up.
The thing is, as the pundits seek out new and improved ways to find fault with his methods, the more ingrained Coach Prime’s philosophies have become in the college football mainstream.
Witness …
The Transfer Portal is no way to build a program
“You can’t build a program that way” was the cry when Coach Prime started in 2023 with a clean slate – and a locker room full of transfers. At the time, then new Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule declared he would never go about building the Cornhuskers in a similar manner. “I hear other schools (say) they can’t wait for the transfer portal, they can’t wait to go out … I can’t wait to coach my guys, let me tell you that,” Rhule said. “I’m not thinking about anybody else but this team out here.”
Coach Rhule also spoke for those who didn’t like Coach Prime’s media presence. Rhule spoke of his team’s “blue-collar” identity, noting that videos posted on Nebraska’s social media channels were “always of us working. They’re never of us talking. This program is built on work. It’s not built on hype.”
When CU went from a 3-0 start in 2023 to a 4-8 finish, the “I told you so” crowd was in full voice. With CU going 9-4 in 2024, however, finishing No. 25 in the Associated Press poll, the naysayers are quieter.
And, just as quietly, they are copying what Coach Prime has done.
2024 Big 12 Coach of the Year Kenny Dillingham said goodbye to 30 players from his 2023 Arizona State team, bringing in 31 new faces. Big Ten Coach of the Year Curt Cignetti brought in 23 new transfers to Indiana, including many players from his tenure at James Madison, taking the Hoosiers to a school record 11 wins.
Two new coaches. Two coaches who relied heavily on transfers to push their programs into the Top 25 and the College Football Playoff.
The rest of the college football world has taken notice.
So far this off-season, Colorado has brought in a pedestrian 16 new transfers, while other programs are going all-in on the Portal. With the second Transfer Portal window still to come, opening again the last two weeks of April, West Virginia already has 31 new transfers. UCF has 27 new transfers to date. Kansas? 22. Arizona? 22 … and that’s just from the Big 12. Quietly, and with far less publicity and criticism, other teams are trying to replicate what Coach Prime accomplished in Boulder.
Oh, and Matt Rhule at Nebraska? The guy who said he had no interest in building a program on transfers, the way Coach Prime was doing? This off-season, Nebraska has 16 new transfers on the roster … the same number as Colorado.
You can’t build a program without a foundation of freshmen
Coach Prime has indicated his perfect roster would include 40% graduate students, 40% undergraduate transfers, and 20% freshmen.
“Let’s just say we get 25 high school players,” Coach Prime explains. “How many are going to play their freshman year? At the most, let’s say four or five.
“Now you’ve got 20 guys redshirting. So when you go through that spring with 20 guys redshirting, how many are you going to retain after that spring? How many are going to jump in the portal on you?”
Sanders said his research suggests half will leave.
“Well why don’t I just focus on 10 [high school recruits] then?” he said. “See, when we grab a freshman, we expect that guy to play. We’re not looking to just redshirt you and develop you. No, no, no. We’re looking for you to come in and play some football.
“So our approach is somewhat different and heavily scrutinized, heavily criticized, but we know what we’re doing.”
While Coach Prime’s philosophy may not be catching on quite as quickly as his commitment to transfers, there is evidence that other schools are paying attention.
In this year’s Recruiting Class, five Big 12 schools, including Colorado, took in fewer than 20 new freshmen. Nationally, 18 of the 65 Power Four schools signed fewer than 20 new freshmen, including the likes of Clemson, Oklahoma, and Oregon.
Other schools may not have completely adopted Coach Prime’s philosophy on signing true freshmen … but they are, at the same time, edging towards having fewer freshmen on the roster.
You can’t run a program like an NFL team and be successful
Having Coach Prime, an NFL Hall of Famer, as Colorado’s head coach, was unique enough.
Then last fall, CU brought in Hall of Famer Warren Sapp to help out with the defensive line. This spring, Marshall Faulk has joined the coaching staff.
While other schools may not be able to bring in gold jackets to coach their teams the same way Coach Prime can, the emphasis on bringing in head coaches and assistant coaches with NFL coaching experience, and the NFL methodology for assembling a team, is certainly catching on.
Former New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick has been hired by North Carolina. At his introductory press conference, Belichick told the assembled media that he was bringing the NFL model to Chapel Hill:
“When I say a pro program, I would say through my experience, what we did in terms of training, developing players, running pro systems, pro techniques. So when the players leave here, this isn’t going from the wishbone to a pro offense. It will be similar terminology, similar techniques and fundamentals, similar training, similar preparation techniques that have been very successful for me through the years, whether other college teams use them or not. I mean, some are, some aren’t, but I just know that these will prepare the players for that.”
Few are questioning North Carolina’s move, and many are praising the Tar Heels and its administration for bringing an NFL perspective to the college game.
Yet when Coach Prime did it, it wasn’t seen as innovative, but a gamble which many thought would not pay off.
Spring Game competition, anyone?
This spring, Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule became a leader in the charge to eliminate spring games.
“The word ‘tampering’ doesn’t exist anymore”, Rhule complained. “It’s just an absolute free open common market. I don’t necessarily want to open up to the outside world and have people watch our guys and say, ‘He looks like a pretty good player. Let’s go get him.’ ”
Instead of backing down, fearful of losing players, Coach Prime has instead doubled down, saying he not only wanted his Spring game televised, he wanted to bring in another team to scrimmage his Buffs.
Fran Brown, the head coach at Syracuse, was quick to jump on the idea of a competitive spring game. Colorado and Syracuse petitioned the NCAA for a waiver so that they could conduct joint practices and a scrimmage, but were turned down.
The biggest hurdle to acceptance may not have been rejection of the idea, just the timing. With a year to plan (and a year to get ESPN and Fox money behind the idea), it would not be a surprise to have joint scrimmages be a part of the 2026 spring. Oklahoma State Mike Gundy has expressed an interest in a Spring game against former rival Oklahoma, while Houston coach Willie Fritz says he would love to see his Cougars match up against Texas or Texas A&M next spring.
So, while “blue blood” programs like USC, Ohio State and Texas have eliminated their Spring games, Coach Prime is leading the charge in the other direction.
In a few years, when spring scrimmages in the collegiate ranks are common, with teams making money from television while expanding their fan bases, few will remember that it was Coach Prime who initiated the movement.
But that’s the way it has been with CU’s head coach.
Coach Prime does things his way. He has been called brash, rude, egotistical, insensitive and an instigator.
But he’s also successful. His methods, unconventional as they may seem at the time of introduction, nonetheless are becoming mainstream in pretty short order.
Coach Prime … The Instigator who has morphed into The Innovator.
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