BOULDER — When the bully across the road gives you a wedgie on national TV, the neighbors start to worry. Get beat by little brother? The neighbors start to talk.
“I would say (CU Buffs coach) Deion Sanders needs (Saturday) more,” CBS analyst and former NFL lineman Ross Tucker, who’s in the booth for Saturday’s Rocky Mountain Showdown at Fort Collins, told me by phone earlier this week. “The reason why I say that is when things started to go south (in 2023), they really went south. (CU) did not show the ability to really handle and overcome adversity very well.
“So based on how last year went, if you’re a CU fan or if you’re a Deion fan, you see back-to-back losses to Nebraska and to CSU, two of the four teams you beat last year, you’ve got to think about how well they’ll be able to keep the team together and in a good headspace for the rest of the season. … (It’s) not even, ‘Here we go again.’ It’s, ‘These are actually two of the teams we beat last year, so we’re going in the wrong direction.’”
Neither Sanders nor CSU football coach Jay Norvell wants to sit in front of the cameras and explain 1-2. Norvell had a bowl team last year that just missed a bowl. He’s in Year 3 with a 9-17 record, no rivalry trophies on the shelf, a new athletic director, and a new president who’s taken big swing after big swing after big swing with athletics and roped doubles off the right field wall.
The 2024 Showdown is the biggest game at Canvas Stadium since it opened in 2017 — a full house at full throat. Norvell can make a lot of friends in three hours, convert the masses with one magical Saturday night.
He could also send The Coach Prime Experiment into existential crisis mode. CU, a favorite by a touchdown, hasn’t lost to the Rams on the football field since 2014. The Buffs haven’t lost to CSU and Nebraska in the same season since 2009, the beginning of the end for Dan Hawkins. This ain’t intramurals, brother.
“It’s kind of wild to think that a lot of those (Buffs) will have to be told this week about how big a rivalry this is because they just got there,” Tucker said. “And they didn’t live it last year. You think about the (Will) Shephards and the (LaJohntay) Westers and the (new CU) receivers and a lot of guys on the offensive line. I think, if anything, the environment at Nebraska last week will help them for this environment that they’re about to play in.”
Norvell will have more chances to make whatever this is right. Regardless of what transpires Saturday, the Rams will be favored at home Sept. 21, when they host UTEP. They’ll almost certainly be favored at home Oct. 26 against New Mexico; at home vs. Wyoming, another rival, on Nov. 15; and in the regular-season home finale vs. Utah State. CSU’s a coin flip, probably, at home vs. San Jose State (Oct. 12), at Air Force (Oct. 19) and at Nevada (Nov. 2).
CU, meanwhile, might only be the oddsmakers’ choice two more times the rest of the season: against Baylor at home on Sept. 21 and Cincinnati at home on Oct. 26.
“For Norvell, it would obviously be gigantic for them if he got the win,” Tucker said. “But even if they don’t, it’s still very realistic that they go to a bowl or make some noise in the Mountain West. I feel like Norvell, even with a loss (to CU), could kind of overcome it with making the postseason for the first time and even doing damage in the Mountain West.”
Coach Prime, conversely, has more to lose. Largely because of the standard he immediately raised for both the program and himself.
The Buffs have already won as many games under Sanders as they did in all of 2021 and ’22 combined (five), and in far fewer games. With most coaches, and with most rebuilds, this would be stressed as hard evidence of a train moving in the right direction. Of a process that bears fruit over time, the way typical reconstruction usually does.
Only nothing is typical in BoCo. After beating TCU, the 2022 College Football Playoff runners-up, in last year’s season opener, Coach Prime declared the Buffs instantly changed, instantly transformed, almost instantly healed. A 36-14 stomping of Nebraska the next week at Folsom Field seemed to only underscore that and with gusto.
Then the Rams happened.
CU, a three-touchdown favorite at home, found itself gashed by CSU’s then-brand-new starting signal-caller, Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi, and forced to play catch up. Which the Buffs did, with Shedeur Sanders orchestrating an Elway-esque game-tying touchdown drive late to set up overtime. The QB kept his foot on the gas to seal a wild, 43-35 victory in double OT. CU improved to 3-0 and went rolling into a prove-it showdown at Oregon. And cue the “Jaws” theme.
Friday marked the first anniversary of Norvell throwing shade at Deion for wearing sunglasses and hats indoors. That wound up moving a ton of merch for Blenders eyewear, one of Sanders’ many business partners. But in the 365 days since “what my mother taught me,” CU has played 12 games and won three.
Sanders’ fans are still waiting, still hoping to see the progress promised for months. The Buffs’ offensive line is almost entirely new from last fall and the results, from protection to rushing production, look almost entirely the same. Travis Hunter went from celebrating acrobatic catches in the end zone against North Dakota State to fuming in Lincoln. Shilo Sanders is out for multiple weeks with what his father said was a broken arm. Shedeur Sanders took an indirect shot at his offensive line after taking several direct shots from the Blackshirts at Memorial Stadium.
“I don’t think you can overstate what this game means to these two programs for this season and moving forward,” Tucker said. “And I would say, in particular, if CSU were to win, I don’t think you could overstate how big that could be for Norvell, for his program … and where CSU is trying to go. It’s really the opposite for Deion and what he has going on with CU’s program. If CU wins, it feels like it’s almost more of a sigh of relief for CU. And a missed opportunity for CSU.”
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