Getty Image / Matthew Stockman
When Deion Sanders took over as the head football coach for the Colorado Buffaloes, he made it clear that he’d be making some changes.
Those changes came quickly.
Sanders lost a huge chunk of the roster he took over to the transfer portal.
However, he also made the most of his opportunities in the transfer portal, putting together college football’s top transfer class for the year.
Still, there have been some complaints about how Deion Sanders has gone about putting together his new roster in Boulder.
One person it seems you won’t hear complaining is USC coach Lincoln Riley.
At Pac-12 media day, Riley commended the way that Sanders has been able to build his program since heading to Colorado.
— BuffsBeat (SI Colorado) (@BuffsBeat) July 21, 2023
“I give (Sanders) credit,” Lincoln Riley said via BuffsBeat. “We all know what the rules are. We all know what the parameters are. And our job is to build the best teams that we can for the universities that give us the opportunity to do it. No excuses.”
Riley also added, “There obviously needed to be a roster transformation there in coach Sanders’ opinion, and he went about it aggressively. Obviously, the success of that for us or anybody else will be determined on the field as time goes on.”
Colorado needing a roster transformation wasn’t just an opinion that Sanders held when he took over the program. It was a matter of fact.
The Buffaloes have only finished above .500 once in the last 6 seasons and were particularly bad last year.
The Colorado Buffaloes went 1-11 last season and was awful on both sides of the ball. They had college football’s worst defense, allowing 44.5 points per game.
The offense wasn’t much better. Their 15.4 points per game was 5th worst in the nation.
While the pre-season voters still don’t have high hopes for the Buffaloes heading into the 2023 season, they should be a whole lot better than they were a year ago.