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The “Prime Experiment” has to work in 2024 … and 2025
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Over the course of the next few days, the Buff Nation, along with the rest of the college football world, will be able to start focusing on actual football, as teams across the country open Fall Camp.
Gone will be the rhetoric of the exceptionally long off-season, with pundits forced to focus on upcoming matchups, television viewing options and team injury reports, rather than dwell on the “what ifs” and the “what could/what should happen” scenarios for the 2024 season.
Well, not really.
The non-stop media coverage of Colorado and Coach Prime isn’t going anywhere. To be sure, much of the constant stream of attention focused on the Buffs and their coach is self-created, but a great deal of the attention is not.
For every Joel Klatt, who sees the CU program on the upswing and with a bright future, there is a Paul Finebaum, who seems to go out of his way to bash Coach Prime and the Colorado football program at every opportunity.
For those who would love to see the Buffs post seven or eight wins this fall, believing that a winning season would bring about an end to the criticism … think again.
Clip and save: It’s not going to be enough for the Buffs to win in 2024.
If Coach Prime, his coaches, and his players, are going to quiet the critics, CU will not only have to win in 2024 … but in 2025 as well.
Here’s why …
Sons moving on
There were a few murmurings last December that Coach Prime might move on from Colorado after only one season, either on to a Big Two program, the NFL, or back to his ranch in Texas.
That thought didn’t receive much serious play, however, as it was assumed that sons Shedeur and Shilo would return for their senior seasons. If Coach Prime’s sons were playing another collegiate season, it didn’t make much sense for Coach Prime to bring his sons to Boulder only to watch someone else coach them in 2024.
Then there was the Travis factor. Travis Hunter wasn’t eligible for the NFL Draft this off-season, so the superstar cornerback/wide receiver, an “adopted son” of Coach Prime, has to play collegiately in 2024, and it only made sense for Hunter to continue to play for Coach Prime.
After the 2024 season, though, the “will he leave” rhetoric will ratchet up several decibels.
Shedeur and Shilo will definitely be off to the NFL, and it would be a huge upset if Hunter doesn’t forego his senior year and turn pro.
So the question will be: Will those departures also bring an end to Coach Prime’s collegiate coaching career?
Coach Prime insists that he isn’t going anywhere.
“I tell them the truth,” Sanders said this spring, when asked what he is telling recruits about his future in Boulder. “I tell them I’m a father, not a baby daddy. I don’t follow my kids. I pave roads for my kids. I build generational wealth for my kids. I lead my kids. I don’t follow my kids.
“So I do not plan on following my kids to the NFL. I have work to do here.”
But merely staying in Boulder will not be enough to quiet the critics. Regardless of how the Buffs fare on the field, Coach Prime will remain subject to negative spins by the press.
If the Buffs win seven or eight games, or perhaps even compete for a Big 12 title, the question will be fashioned as:
— Sure, he was able to win with his superstar, first-round “sons”, but can he win at the Power Four level without them?
Or if, heaven forbid, the Buffs fail to make a bowl game:
— If he can’t win with a first-round NFL draft quarterback, and a generational player in Travis Hunter, how will he be able to win in 2025 now that they are gone?
The Coach Prime roster experiment
The record-setting overhaul of the team after the 2022 season by Coach Prime raised eyebrows. In an unprecedented flushing of a roster, Coach Prime and his coaching staff sent almost all of the players from the 2022 1-11 team packing.
The move was met with shock … and not a little bit of awe.
Did it work?
According to many, including the Las Vegas oddsmakers, who set CU’s 2023 over/under win total at 3.5, the 4-8 season was a success. “Would you take a 400% increase in wins?”, Joel Klatt has rhetorically asked.
But the way CU got to 4-8 led to additional off-season criticism and second-guessing.
Had the Buffs started out slow in 2023, then slowly built to a solid November and a 4-8 record, the pundits may have been more gracious. Instead, the Buffs started 3-0, were nationally ranked, and were the belles of the September, 2023, ball.
Thereafter, though, the Buffs went through the Pac-12 schedule 1-8, ending the season with a six-game losing streak.
The obvious deficiencies along the offensive and defensive lines brought about another flushing of the roster this past off-season. It wasn’t as extensive as the complete makeover of the lineup as in the previous off-season, but it wasn’t a tinkering of the lineup, either.
And what will the turnover of the roster between the 2024 and 2025 seasons look like?
If the Buffs are successful this fall, there will be scrutiny as to how many new players are being brought in. Is the high school recruiting Class again unusually small? Will the coaching staff again jettison a good section of the team, even though the team is already almost exclusively Coach Prime recruits?
And, again, if the team isn’t successful in 2024, how great will be the criticism of Coach Prime’s methods of roster building? How smug will the pundits be in decrying how the “Coach Prime” experiment for roster development has proven to be a failure?
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Coach Prime’s Coaching Tree
The tried and true philosophy for building a coaching staff is to bring in assistant coaches with extensive backgrounds in the college game, coaches with years – if not decades – of coaching experience. The rich mix of backgrounds, with exposure to multiple methods for developing players and game plans, it the accepted means to achieving success.
But, at CU, Coach Prime is again thumbing his nose at convention.
Instead of bringing in crusty old assistants who have spent more time in film rooms than with their families, Coach Prime has brought in coaches with NFL playing experience.
The pitch to recruits at Colorado is that the Coach Prime staff has a combined 127 years of NFL playing experience.
The offensive line was a mess last year, giving up an absurd 56 sacks. Coach Prime’s answer? Bring in Phil Loadholt, who has never been an on-field assistant … but does have seven years’ experience playing for the Minnesota Vikings.
The defensive line was a sieve last fall, with the Buffs finishing 107th in rushing defense in 2023; 127th in total defense. Coach Prime’s new guys? Hall-of-Famer Warren Sapp, his new “graduate assistant”, and Damione Lewis, who has been CU’s defensive line coach for … a few weeks. Lewis has zero experience as a collegiate coach … but was in the NFL for ten seasons.
Coach Prime also changed both of his coordinators, with offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur and defensive coordinator Robert Livingston having extensive NFL coaching experience … but precious little time spent in the college game.
If the Buffs are successful in 2024, the off-season attention will be on retention of the staff. Can Coach Prime keep his staff together, developing at least a modicum of stability in the Champions Center.
If the Buffs are not successful in 2024, the daggers will most certainly be out, questioning Coach Prime’s insistence of shunning coaches with collegiate experience in favor of hiring friends from his NFL days.
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The long and often frustrating 2023-24 off-season is coming to a close. There have been multiple wars of words about the current status of the CU program and near-future possibilities for success. Those wars, mercifully, are about to be replaced by actual battles on the field of play.
But the jury will still be out on the Coach Prime era during the 2024-25 off-season. After the “Will he stay in Boulder at all?” questions are answered, new debates will rage:
- Can Coach Prime sustain success after his first-round NFL draft pick “sons” are gone?;
- Has Coach Prime learned his lesson, turning his attention from gutting the program to instead developing the players he has already brought in?; and
- Will Coach Prime continue to insist on having an emphasis on NFL playing experience on his coaching staff, or will it be necessary to bring in some old time X-and-O coaches in order to take CU to the next level?
And that’s if the Buffs are successful.
What will the off-season landscape look like if the Buffs post yet another losing season?
We don’t even want to know …
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14 Replies to “The “Prime Experiment” has to work in ’24 – and ’25”
The Prime Experiment has to work in 2024/25??? The Prime Experiment has been a resounding success so far by most metrics and an astounding success by the rest of those metrics! Football is entertainment, are you not entertained?!?! The biggest success ever, which has dwarfed anything else including the years CU was a National Championship winner/contender, is the VAST amount of publicity/revenue CU has garnered over the last year and a half….the “prime experiment” yea, a complete success. The future of CU and CU football has never looked better after a coaches first year then it does now. The BIG12 only paid CU to come to the BIG12, no one else, that is the Prime Effect.
I think you are 100% on. On all facets, Transfer Portal, Winning now with Travis and Sheduer, and a coaching staff built around NFL experience. 2 of the 3 are experiments and the second is a reason why those experiments might work better on 2024 and not in 2025.
Here would be my initial answer only knowing what I know today and not seeing us actually play in 2024…..
1. I have long known that someone who is great at doing something may not be great at teaching something. But I don’t think I am unique in that knowledge, nor do I think this is a surprise to Coach Prime. It is a legitimate fear and question, but I believe Coach Prime deeply understands this and he is collecting people he believes can teach and connect with college kids.
2. It is resonating with kids. When you hear them talk about coming here they talk about that. We MUST win though following that and I have a feeling the floodgates will open in the recruiting space. (I think JuJu may be a Buff waiting for us to prove we can protect the QB).
3. Coach prime learns from his mistakes. Last year he said we recruit from the outside-in. This year he recruited from the Inside-out. He recognized his most glaring deficiency and went about it expeditiously.
4. Same goes for coaching. Last year things occurred on the field that Coach prime felt should be the responsibility of his coaches. Instead of just blaming the players, he moved on and brought in new coaches. I think some of the old choices were guys he was told he should look at. I know I was excited to see the Kent State offense applied with more talent. And it sure worked until the opposing teams figured it out. I think that the defense would have gotten better in year two. Complicated systems just need time. I understand moving on from Kelly, but I think the d would have improved in year 2 under the same defense.
We’ll see. Super excited.
Looks like Boyd from Michigan State isn’t going to make it to Boulder.
If CU can win 7 by signing day and it looks like Shedeur is gong in the top 5, maybe, just maybe, the Lewis kid will come over. Unfortunately USC only has 4 games it could lose on its schedule……but who knows?
do you really think it will end if the Buffs win 8 reg season and their bowl? Do you really think jerks like Finebaum and Staples or gonna come a light year from saying “yeah, I’m am an overpaid idiot?”
What they will do is a “yeah….but….” and then mealy mouth around their trash mouths and continue to pick away. These self serving prostitutes are just like the politicians these days. Instead of votes its clicks and until the fandom following the Buffs reaches that of the top ten schools it will never change.
“What they will do is a “yeah….but….”
… “but Prime had his “sons” including Hunter, two early first round draft picks and a top QB with Silo drafted after them… and [ fill in whoever else maybe].”
“they” will gloss over the fact and talk about how he won because of that top talent, who’s leaving for the NFL and how he won’t be able to continue his winning in 2025 because of lost talent. It won’t be because of coaching (in their opinion), but a few talented players. But I ask, who brought all that talent together?
Getting Hunter to go to JSU was just an amazing get!
Who coached his sons? Who developed their winning attitude? Who taught Shedeur how to be a top competitor, to train for it all his life and all the other intangibles needed to be a top QB talent?
Who recruited the team and put together the staff that won those 8 games and a bowl that you described in your post?
Nope, you’re right, those two won’t give Prime credit for all of that. And if he does win in 2025 without those players, their narrative will change to “Prime’s leaving CU for…” And after that, “they” will bash Prime for not leaving CU to take “a better job”.
Let’s scrutinize the new coach and the program at Washington to see if they can get to the playoff this year. The media and especially social media expose the ugly side of human nature by turning up the volume 1000%. It’s a shame; let’s just watch football
That’s a lot of ifs, and until the games begin, we just don’t know. We know about the upgrades on both lines, but until we see them play we know little else. It seems like nine or ten Big12 teams have, returning productive QBs, and winning records, and up & coming coaches, and… if you know what I mean, they all have a story on why they will contend for the Big12 title.
We believe Coach Prime can duplicate his record at JSU, it just takes a little more time and effort at the P4 level than at the lower levels. But, we’ve also seen successful G5 coaches fail to duplicate their success at the P5, now P4 level, so there’s no guaranties of success for Prime.
I do think Prime will have the players to compete in the Big12, but it’s hard as a fan who’s proclaimed the team’s back from the dead before, only to be let down… again.
I think that the high school recruits are waiting to see this season’s start before all are jumping on board, but a successful start will increase the size of that class and maintaining that class will depend on finishing the season strong; December could be big if the team is winning. So, I’m not worried about the 2025 class of HS recruits until then.
The fan in me wants to believe that Prime demands excellence and will repeat his success at JSU and the Buffs will surprise many this year and win 8 or more.
The fan in me wants to believe Prime will stay and make his mark in college football at CU.
The fan in me is for the first time in a long time is patiently waiting for the games to begin.
The fan in me will wait for the season to start before worrying about the ifs anymore, there’s been too many years of ifs and it’s Prime Time until proven otherwise.
The only way Deion’s coaching tenure in Boulder will be deemed a success by those hoping or thinking he will fail is if he stays a decade and wins a national championship on the way.
Go Buffs
All fair questions. It isn’t Prime bashing to ask them.
Kenny Dillingham and Coach Prime both started last year. Both coached in the Pac-12 last year, and will be in the Big 12 this year.
Both took over programs which were a mess.
ASU went 3-9 in Dillingham’s first season; Coach Prime went 4-8, including a win over ASU in Tempe.
Yet here is what ESPN has to say about ASU and Dillingham …
After landing 31 transfers in 2023, Dillingham went for another 29 in 2024 … ASU will have to improve a ton to reach a bowl. Last year was an extreme Year 0 for Dillingham, and this almost feels like a Year 0.5.
Despite starting at the same time, in the same conference, and Coach Prime doing better last season, it’s a “bowl game or bust” for Coach Prime, while Dillingham is getting a pass, not only for his first year, but for his second season as well.
If similarly situated coaches aren’t being held to the same standard … sounds like Prime bashing to me to me.
Damn Good Point Stuart.
Welp, the beds are in place, the sheets have be replaced and/or cleaned and so it begins.
Prime Laundry.
This was a good article. Thanks,
I am a Buff 4 life.
Prime or no Prime
Buffs Up.
the majority of your comments seem to prefer no Prime.