Getty Image / Justin Tafoya
Deion Sanders has completely transformed the public perception of the University of Colorado Buffaloes football program since arriving. While the Buffs weren’t bowl eligible after losing six games in a row to end the season, they did improve to 4 wins on the 2023 season after only winning one single game in 2022. And 4 of those 6 losses to end the season were 1-score games.
In the offseason, Colorado head coach Deion Sanders hired a new defensive coordinator (Robert Livingston) and a new offensive line coach (Phil Loadholt). Both have extensive NFL experience and both are looking to help elevate Colorado to one of the premier programs in College Football.
Speaking with Sean Keller of the Denver Post, Deion Sanders’ new offensive line coach Phil Loadholt believes he can change history at Colorado by doing something nobody has been able to do in years: recruit in-state talent.
Since 2017, there have been 7 offensive line prospects rated 4* or higher according to 247Sports and Colorado has only managed to recruit ONE of those players to remain in state.
It gets worse when you take a look outside of just offensive line prospects…
This decade (since 2020), there have been 109 recruits from the state of Colorado in the ESPN 300 rankings. Of those 109 recruits, the Colorado Buffaloes have only recruited a measly 8 of them.
For anyone keeping track at home, that’s a meager 7% success rate of recruiting top in-state talent. Now, Colorado’s offensive line coach Phil Loadholt is seeking to change that.
Loadholt told Sean Keller “We want to recruit the top talent, as you’ve seen with Jordan (Seaton) coming in. And then hopefully keep the guys that are in-state (in Colorado), keep them here.”
He added “I know we’ve got some good linemen (from Colorado) that are at other places right now. And we hopefully can build a fence around that and keep those guys here so that we don’t have look at other places, you know what I mean? So hopefully, we can start building that relationship around the state.”
Easier said than done, right? Recent history suggests top talent either prefers Colorado State or to get out of the the state of Colorado entirely.
7%! And that’s obviously not Deion Sanders’ fault since he’s only had one full season at the helm. He is also a coach who brings in top talent through the recruiting portal in lieu of developing young talent. That’s been his style thus far.
Theoretically, Coach Prime would be the man to convince in-state recruits to stay at home. But of the 2024 recruits on the ESPN 300 list, zero went to the Colorado Buffaloes.
Should Colorado and Phil Loadholt turn things around and figure out how to recruit homegrown talent, it could be a major boon for the Buffaloes. Georgia and Alabama were 1 and 2 at recruiting homegrown talent in the 2024 recruiting cycle, according to Bleacher Report. That should tell anyone all they need to know about the importance of Phil Loadholt’s new strategy.
With all this in mind, it is worth noting that Deion Sanders hasn’t done a single off-campus recruiting visit since arrive at Colorado. His new assistant coaches like Phil Loadholt may change this, but a recent look at records shows every recruiting visit Coach Sanders has done has been on-campus.