Colorado might not be a College Football Playoff contender in 2023, but few teams will be as interesting to watch after new coach Deion Sanders came in and cleared house. Urban Meyer has called it ‘the ultimate experiment.’
And this experiment could have potentially long-standing implications.
“I saw coach Prime when he said the guys don’t like football and some of their eyes, look dead in their eyes, and I’m thinking, ‘Yeah, when you have a takeover team that’s going to happen,’” Meyer said on Urban’s Take with Tim May. “But now if you can just transition your roster like that, which is legal, you know what’s going to happen if he wins, which I do, I think he’s going to win some games this year.
“Every AD and every new coach in the country’s going to come in and kick guys off the team, and that’s what you have to ask yourself: Is that really good for college football?”
The transfer portal has made the ultimate experiment possible. While many coaches have made notable use of the transfer portal early in their tenure — Michigan State‘s Mel Tucker comes to mind — few have embraced it as wholeheartedly as Sanders.
He has literally gutted the roster and stuffed it with whoever he can get that fits his mold from around the country.
To Meyer’s seeming surprise, the operation was pretty smoothly run.
“I went to watch him practice about three weeks ago and I was really impressed,” Meyer said. “I did not expect that. It’s the grand experiment. He took over arguably the worst program in the country, they were 1-11 last year. The point differential was one of the worst I’ve ever seen, it was 500-something to 100. That means the opponent scored that many more. It was a terrible team.
“He comes in and says, ‘You’re a terrible team, I’m getting rid of everybody.’ That’s what he did. When I say grand experiment, this is something you’re going to have to watch, all of us. Bob Stoops and I had a little text about it kind of laughing about it and you were never allowed to just get rid of guys. You couldn’t do that.”
It’s not that Sanders is alone in using the transfer portal to quickly turn over his roster. Florida coach Billy Napier has done similar in his first two years, though not to the extent that Sanders has.
Even Meyer’s former squad, Ohio State, has used it to patch holes.
“It’s interesting, Ohio State needed help at offensive line and they said, ‘OK, let’s get name and likeness, let’s get the transfer portal and go find a starting offensive lineman,’ and they did,” Meyer said. “A great athlete, I think San Diego State where we got him. I’m not sitting here and saying it’s bad.”
But the ultimate experiment will test the strategy in ways that other coaches haven’t.
“There’s advantages to both, but I just think the grand experiment that CU is going to experience — and I like Deion Sanders, I’ve known him a long time, he was gracious to me to let me spend a whole day in the meetings and everything, they have good players, his son’s a really good quarterback — if this works, college football will be different for the rest of our lifetime,” Meyer said.
“If this experiment works, mark my words, that’s what’s going to happen every time someone takes over a downtrodden program.”