Sports

Coach Prime Is ‘Hard To Find’ For HS Recruits, Will Rely On Transfer Portal After Signing Just 5 Players

#University of Colorado
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Deion Sanders walks the field before a Colorado football game.

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Deion Sanders’ recruiting motto is “I ain’t hard to find.” That might not be true for high school prospects after seeing Colorado’s signing day haul.

The Buffs signed just five high school players on Wednesday, as it seems likely the head coach will continue his unprecedented approach of relying on the transfer portal.

The day started with optimism, but was largely uneventful.

We saw it last season in Boulder when Coach Prime replaced upwards of 60 players on the roster, using the portal to bring in both talent and experience. It was a bold but necessary approach given the circumstance.

With Sanders being hired in December, he had very little time to assemble a class of high school players due to the timing of the early signing period.

Instead, he brought with him proven contributors like Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter as a bridge to the future. While immediately inserting star power into the lineup, many believed it to be a band-aid.

Could Coach Prime land long-term success with short-term rentals? Most believed he’d hit the high school ranks hard in his first full cycle as a way to bring stability to the program.

That doesn’t seem to be the case.

On Wednesday, the first day of the early signing period, Colorado signed just five players in its 2024 recruiting class.

There is a sixth high school player in the class in five-star offensive lineman Jordan Seaton, but he chose not to send in his paperwork which has many speculating about a potential flip.

That group ranks 98th(!) in the 24/7 HS rankings.

A top-ranked transfer class, his second in a row, brings the class as a whole up to 22 players with a No. 21 overall ranking, but the recruiting approach has many skeptical.

“After NSD… Colorado football has 5 commits. Y’all can make whatever excuse or just scream ‘PORTAL’ at me but CU’s recruiting efforts right now are poor. The base of your team is HS recruits,” said former NFL OL Geoff Schwartz.

“Deion took off recruiting HS kids this cycle and I have absolutely no idea how he thinks that’s going to work out,” wrote the CFB Live 247 account.

Deion Sanders has drawn his line in the sand when it comes to transfer portal vs. high school recruiting. It will be interesting to see if it pays off in 2024.