It’s truly laughable to see how quickly the fair weather turned on Deion Sanders.
After swarming around Coach Prime and pumping him up the moment he landed in Boulder last December, bandwagoners did an abrupt about-face when the honeymoon phase faded and the program was revealed as a work in progress, which is what it always was. Remember, Colorado was 1-11 before Deion’s arrival, so expectations should have been tempered.
Instead, the media hype was so strong that it overshadowed the program’s reality. That’s what the media does. It seeks out the hot topic of the moment, milks it for all its worth and then abandons it like frozen concentrated orange juice in Trading Places.
Remember when ESPN launched a dedicated Miami Heat website, complete with its own staff to follow the Big Three after “The Decision” That’s the type of hype all parties involved created to cover Deion’s first year at Colorado.
And Deion delivered for all.
Colorado licensed merchandise sales surged 700%. The Buffaloes spring game, a normally meaningless contest, became a must-watch event for all, generating over 550,00 viewers for ESPN while packing in over 47,000 fans into Folsom Field to watch the game in person, resulting in a net profit of almost $200,000 for the university. Those are ridiculous numbers considering less than 2,000 fans showed up for the game last year.
The media booked Deion for every interview and behind-the-scenes segment possible. Amazon also joined in, greenlighting a second season of Coach Prime.
And then there’s Fox and ESPN.
In week 1, the Buffaloes upset TCU on the road, pulling in 7.26 million viewers and setting a record for Fox as its most-watched Week 1 Big Noon Saturday game in history.
Coach Prime did it again for Fox in week 2, delivering 8.73 million viewers in the Buffaloes win over Nebraska. Deadline reported it was “Fox’s best Pac-12 regular season game ever” and also the 10th most-watched college football game in Fox Sports’ history.
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