BOULDER — At 6-foot-3, Daniel Graham felt a little cramped and more than a little thrilled.
“For a long time, we (Buffs) have not been on the same page,” the former CU, Broncos and Thomas Jefferson High School standout told The Post amid a standing-room-only crowd inside the Dal Ward Athletic Center for Deion Sanders’ introductory news conference Sunday as CU’s newest football coach.
“And I feel like the last relevant team (here) was my senior year (in 2001). And that’s too long. But this? This is a whole different excitement. A whole new era.”
The Coach Prime Era officially began Sunday afternoon, a ray of football sunshine along the Front Range while the Broncos were busy losing (again) via gut-wrenching fashion (again), this time in Baltimore.
Sanders, athletic director Rick George and chancellor Philip DiStefano walked into the news conference to a rapturous ovation from an estimated 400 fans, boosters, coaches and administrators inside CU’s Touchdown Club.
Sanders, 55, joins the Buffs from Jackson State, where he posted a 27-5 record over three seasons and put together one of the top programs in the country at the NCAA’s Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). But this wasn’t just your typical case of a highly successful coach at a smaller school leaving for a better-paying, higher-profile opportunity at a bigger university.
Coach Prime, as Sanders prefers to be known, is arguably the most famous and celebrated sports figure ever hired by CU. A member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the Fort Myers, Fla., native is the only man to ever play in a Super Bowl and a World Series and the only athlete to ever score a touchdown in an NFL game and hit a home run in an MLB game in the same week. His on-field swagger translated into a series of commercial endorsements and, later, a career in broadcasting.
And Coach Prime showed Sunday at CU that, when it comes to commanding an audience, even after losing two toes, the man hasn’t lost a step.
“I’ve never been one for peer pressure; I put pressure on peers,” the new Buffs coach said. “I’ve never been one to worry. I make people worry.
“I don’t worry because I know the resources and the staff that were afforded here. And I know the work ethic that we have. And I trust — as the Bible says, ‘Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.’ This staff is going to comfort the heck out of me. And we’re gonna be good. We’re really going to be good. I do not worry. You need to worry about getting a spot in (this building) the next time we do this, because there’s gonna be more people than this.”
While contract terms were not immediately disclosed, George said Sanders had agreed to a 5-year deal. Multiple sources indicated to The Post that the contract would be worth from $4.5 million to $5 million annually, making it the largest financial investment by the CU athletic department toward a new football coach.
It could well end up being the largest institutional investment, too, at least from an academic perspective. Before George and Sanders spoke, DiStefano formally announced what had long been assumed and reported: That CU would be modifying its “transfer credit review processes … providing expedited assessment of transferability of academic credits from other institutions to be accepted at CU.”
The chancellor’s declaration drew a hearty applause from the assembled, many of whom had been openly and privately frustrated with prior academic policy regarding transfer credits. The liberalization of NCAA transfer rules has effectively granted student-athletes immediate eligibility, but in fewer cases when those student-athletes transferred into CU, requiring time for them to make up the credits required by the university in order to retain their academic eligibility.
“We’re working,” DiStefano said, “to give (Sanders) and all of his student-athletes the tools they need to succeed.”
Coach Prime’s introduction felt more like a combination Hollywood red-carpet premiere/pep rally than a standard athletic department media event. As Sanders spoke, Graham watched, shoulder to shoulder, with fellow Buffs football alums such as Jeremy Bloom; administrators such as CU president Todd Saliman; and Buffs regents such as former gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl.
One well-wisher turned up wearing a white Cowboys jersey with the number 21 and the words “Coach Prime” — Sanders’ nickname of preference these days — written over masking tape where the jersey’s name plate ordinarily would be. The Buffs’ new coach wore No. 21 with Dallas, with whom he won a Super Bowl at the end of the 1995-96 season.
The contrasts from a similar event held at the Dal Ward Center for Sanders’ predecessor, Karl Dorrell, held in February 2020, could not have been more stark. For one, the attendance. For another, the amount of fans who turned up with sports memorabilia they wished for Sanders to sign.
For another, there was both a time and a question limit for gathered media, owing to what CU officials said was Sanders’ travel schedule. But in the 26 minutes or so he was at the microphone, the spirit and showmanship of the loquacious Sanders was almost a complete 180-degree turn from the more measured, careful tones of Dorrell.
Coach Prime, a Florida native with no prior playing or professional ties to Colorado, joked about his playing career and even kidded reporters, male and female, about their attire. He also wore his faith on his sleeve from the get-go, referencing God at least 13 times during his question-and-answer session, including when asked about any criticisms taken for being a Black coach who just left a historically Black college or university in Jackson State.
“Maybe God is really using me to open doors at this level,” Sanders said. “The thing that alarms me the most is just because I’m leaving Jackson (Miss.), they think that I’m leaving African Americans. I don’t know if you notice or not, but I’m Black. I can never leave who I am, what I am, or how I am, or how I go about being that.
“So it is still my task to look in that locker room and see 65% to 70% of African American men, trying to help them get to the next level, as well as all the others. My calling is for young men, young women and people of all walks of life, all social climates and all ethnicities. That’s my calling.
“My calling is not built on a location. It’s built on a destination.”
He paused.
“Now that was good. You’re supposed to clap for that.”
Cue the applause. And the laughter.
“You’re just getting started,” Sanders countered with a grin, “and it already went in the bag, baby, let’s go.”
This is Sanders’ first collegiate coaching job at a Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) program. It’s only his second college coaching position, period, since he joined Jackson State in 2020.
He admitted that it’s going to take some time for him to learn about CU, Boulder and their collective idiosyncrasies. And Coach Prime is going to take Front Range faithful some time to get used to as well. But as Graham noted, happily, that last part’s off to one heck of a start.
“Today means excitement again,” Graham said. “Because I never left being a Buff. I’ve always been a Buff. So it’s exciting. As an alum, I don’t have to hit the transfer portal.”
