Deion Sanders and Colorado will be newsworthy regardless of the outcome in 2024

Sports Illustrated celebrates 70 years of service to America’s sports fans this month. Your scribe remembers, as a sports-crazy kid, anxiously waiting for each week’s delivery. Read it front cover to back before getting any homework done. The obsession was pretty deep. Each week, after reading the latest news, “Faces in the Crowd” and enjoying the incredible writing, this freckled-faced southpaw would carefully remove the SI cover and place it on his bedroom wall.

Who knows? Maybe someday? Never happened. A long-time television sportscasting career offered a career-full of opportunities to engage with the athletes who made the covers of a magazine, now far more including online like this, founded August 16,1954 by Henry Luce and bold TIME staff members who believed America was ready for a sports journalism magazine.

The 2024 Colorado Buffaloes football team is going back to the future. Back to the Big 12-actually 16 teams, name ‘em, go! – and what many alleged experts on college football believe might be the most competitive conference among the four behemoths by size and power in the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and conflicted ACC

Sports Illustrated has changed in those seven decades and certainly so has college football. USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington in the Big 10, actually 14? Four time zones? Travel? Holy smokes. Crazy. What will the Big 12 produce in its far-flung conference? There is no clear-cut favorite. Utah and Kansas State seem to be slightly ahead of the likes of Central Florida, Oklahoma State and Iowa State. The Buffs? Ranked eleventh out of the conference’s 16 teams. Sports Illustrated has been around for a long time, so have all the so-called “experts.” That’s the beauty of athletic competition.

Some teams rise to the challenge and others, for a variety of reasons, wither. Lots of factors come into play: Injuries, locker room issues and off the field incidents. A once promising season can end up in a dumpster fire. Year two of the “Prime” effect kicks off later this month. Will the second year be as good as advertised? Lots of new faces on the field and the coaching sidelines. Will the celebrities dot the sidelines like last season? What will unfold? Will Sports Illustrated put these Shedeur Sanders-led Buffaloes on the cover for its excellence this season?

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It makes me think of the 2001 Colorado Buffaloes under the direction of head coach Gary Barnett. CU fans shoulder to shoulder Buffs to the bone remember that season well: Stomping Nebraska 62-36, beating Texas in the Big 12 Championship game and deserved a chance to play for the national title but didn’t. Great team. It’s the last University of Colorado football team to ever win a conference championship. In 12 years in the Pac 12, CU played in one conference championship game losing to Washington.

Back to the future. The 2001 team had running back Chris Brown, a steady quarterback in Bobby Pesavento, talented tight end Daniel Graham, strong offensive line and an opportunistic defense. Back then, your correspondent hosted the “Gary Barnett” show. For whatever reason, the program decided to award me a championship ring from that season. Honored. My son will tell anybody listening, “When dad croaks? I want that ring!” It’s become a family heirloom. It represents excellence.

Will Sports Illustrated write about excellence this season? Will Sanders stay healthy? Can the offensive line protect him and open holes for this new stable of running backs? Can a porous defense of 2023 improve? Buffs were near the bottom in yards and points allowed last season. All kinds of new faces there. Coaching staff? New coordinators on each side of the ball.

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The 2001 Buffs went 10-3, won the Big 12 and earned the school’s first BCS appearance, the precursor to today’s College Football Playoff system with no computers and real people. Sports Illustrated wrote about them often. I checked, after shellacking the Huskers, SI mentioned it on the cover but the Washington NFL football team, then known as a different name, was the cover picture.

Here we go. As former CU Hall of Fame Coach Bill McCartney loves to say, “Football’s here, goodbye dear!” Buffs fans sure hope year two is newsworthy.