Colorado football coach Deion Sanders has just finished another recruiting season with Boulder with the same very unusual track record as before.
There will be no home visits for recruits. There will be no off-campus visits to the high school.
The university confirmed this after USA Today Sports requested a record of recruitment trips he took after he made nothing before that. The latest recruitment period for head coaches to engage off-campus contact with potential players ended just before the national signing date on February 5th.
“Head Coach Deion Sanders did not do any recruitment visits from home or off-campus,” the university said recently.
This remains unique in college football as a completely different way to convince college teams to play. Also, it also features in Sanders so far, as shown by his results on the field last year and major upgrades of talent he has made on the Colorado roster since his employment in December 2022. I was doing it.
But if he invested more in adopting the high school outlook, wouldn’t he be even better in Colorado?
The recruitment expert told USA Today Sports. His employment contract in Colorado includes a $200,000 annual budget, and although he uses civil air travel to hire, he did not use it.
On the other hand, off-campus recruitment for head coaches is less important in this rapidly changing era of college football.
Sanders, 57, appears to be proving it on his own, even if other college coaches were unable to escape with this approach. He has now been following the rise of free agency that is widely open for transfer players and recruits, as coaches choose schools based on money and exposure rather than sitting at home with their mothers. , meet at the moment in his own way.
Here’s how it collapses after the third winter recruitment season at Boulder:
What is Deion Sanders’ recruitment strategy?
Instead of the standard practice of visiting homes and high schools, and even those recruits can visit campus. He recently started a weekly entertainment talk show on Tubi, helping recruits and their families to reach their screens in a different way.
“That’s how I adopt,” Sanders said last month at another show hosted by ABC’s Tamron Hall. “I don’t go to anyone’s school or anyone’s house. I don’t do that. I’m too old to go to someone’s school or someone’s house. The truth is, All the kids I employ are on the (transfer) portal. They are men who grew up with the kids. They come around their cribs and they are for me. You don’t have to try and persuade them to come and play, no.”
Sanders is primarily looking for transfer players. He is not normally recruited on off-campus visits from head coaches like high school players. Sanders’ latest recruiting classes signed during the early signing period in December – 17 transfer players and 14 high school recruits. According to 247Sports, it ranked 27th in the nation.
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Cast wider recruitment net using fame and media
Sanders made these comments in New York on January 10th. This came during a limited period of winter contacts where NCAA rules are allowed to head coaches to visit high schools and home recruits. But instead of hiring like other head coaches, he was on a public relations tour to promote another show of his documentary series “Coach Prime,” which is Amazon’s Prime Video.
These are tools other coaches want but don’t get, as they don’t have the same famous or demand as Sanders. With Stephen Colbert on CBS last month, a public relations tour that includes the Tubisho, the Amazon Prime Show and even his appearance on “Late Show.” Sanders will also grant access to three video bloggers who regularly showcase his program on YouTube, including his eldest son Deion Jr., who has over 530,000 subscribers.
Combining everything, it’s a different kind of recruitment outreach program than other programs. And it throws a wider net with potential recruits than visiting local high schools.
However, the lack of off-campus recruitment remains at risk.
What is the risk?
When he competes with other head coaches for top high school rookies, other head coaches can use this for those recruits. Do you visit you and your family at home like we do? ”
In other words, Sanders won’t go to them. Instead, the recruit is asked to come to him on the Boulder Campus. Other coaches do both – host recruits on campus and visit off campus.
“I’m sure he chose not to make the necessary effort to get all the best kids in his class, but his way of doing it definitely works for him.”
Gorney said Sanders signed a “good class” of prospects in December, but he said “if he’s actually working somewhere to fly and visit kids.” I think it will make it even better.
“He’s basically taking a different approach to this whole thing,” Gorney told USA Today Sports in December. “Before Deion, there were no rap concerts in the locker room after the game… There were no documentants on the sidelines of every play. But I wonder how much he can do. .”
How rare is Deion Sanders’ recruitment approach?
USA Today Sports contacted several top teams in college football and found that they had no record of zero recruitment visits by head coaches. In contrast, LSU head coach Brian Kelly has 257 off-campus recruitment contacts from December 2022 to early December 2024 to early February 2024, according to records obtained by LSU Today Sports. I did it. Nebraska’s Matt Rule created 486 off-campus contacts at the same time, school records show. In Alabama, Nick Saban’s home recruitment visit has become a popular feed on social media.
Rhule described it as a way to wager territory.
“The best way to establish a (recruitment) field is to establish a relationship with (high school) coach,” Rhule told USA Today Sports last April. “The best way to establish a relationship with a coach is to be present and at school.”
Rhule refused to give his opinion on Sanders’ approach. Sanders’ team defeated Nebraska in 2023, but lost to Roule’s team 28-10 last year.
Hall of Fame for recruits
Sanders’ assistant coach, like other assistant coaches across the country, made off-campus recruitment trips instead. However, another recent assistant coaching rental by Sanders demonstrates his commitment to various approaches. He hired Marshall Falk, a Pro Football Hall of Fame, as his running back coach, despite no revealing coaching or recruitment experience.
Faulk doesn’t need that experience, and his name will be enough to attract recruits, especially if those players’ goal is to make money and go into the NFL. Sanders appears to be banking about this. Colorado has three professional football hall of fame inductees on staff, including Sanders, Falk and graduate assistant coach Warren Sapp.
None of the three are recruited off campus. (NCAA rules do not allow SAPP to hire off-campus as graduate assistants.)
But is that experience important?
It depends on the perspective and outcome
Colorado offensive tackle Jordan Seton is the country’s first offensive tackle prospect in 2024 and has not received a home visit from Sanders, but Boulder from Florida’s IMG Academy I’ve come to.
He didn’t choose Colorado for money. Colorado boosters and businesses don’t offer CU players as much as schools like National Champion Ohio. Recently, there was a roster that won an estimated $20 million from name, image and portrait trades (nil).
“Nil is cool, but the real money is in the league (NFL),” Seton said in October.
Sanders, along with many others on the Colorado staff with experience in the NFL, can show him how to get there. In April, Buffalo has two top picks in the NFL Draft and is expected to hope that Sanders is a pipeline from Boulder to the NFL.
This is another way to appeal to future prospects along with all the cameras that follow Sanders. According to the school, Colorado ranked 11th in the nation last season, with an average of 3.86 million viewers per game in the regular season. The Buffs finished 9-4 last year, and Sanders arrived in 2022 after improving to 4-8 and 1-11 in 2023.
Is the coach ahead of the curve?
Meanwhile, times are still changing as schools prepare to start paying directly to players. The coach is still adapting. Some people left because of that. Some have tried new ways to do things.
Similarly, the Covid-19 pandemic has caused a change in the way many businesses do their business. Before that, working from home wasn’t that much. But now it’s a way to make some corporate jobs successful, saving workers time and money by not having to drive to the office every day.
Former Colorado head coach Gary Burnett sees similarities.
“I use that as an analogy to this whole situation,” Burnett told USA Today Sports last year. “My first response” is this (the recruitment approach) sustainable? Is this really the right thing? “However, looking at it from the other side, it is “everything (travel) is a waste of money and time.” “
It doesn’t mean that it’s wrong to be different. History may determine that Sanders is ahead of the curve. The judges are in it.
“That certainly isn’t the way I do that, but guy, there’s been a lot of changes,” Burnett said of college football. “It doesn’t make me right. It just makes me older.”
Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @schrotenboer. Email: [email protected]