Late Saturday night, with 11 seconds remaining and most of the East Coast nodding off or asleep, Colorado QB Shedeur Sanders, down by seven points, launched a perfectly thrown deep pass to his receiver that would have put them inside the five-yard line.
But the ball bounced harmlessly off of his chest and to the ground, leaving the team and its home crowd fans dismayed.
Yet Shedeur didn’t pout. He still had 2 seconds remaining to make a miracle happen.
And that’s just what he did.
The Buffaloes’ star QB rolled to the left, giving his team enough time to get to the end zone, and then unleashed another bomb. This time, receiver Lajohntay Wester, one of the smallest players on the field, slid to the ground and cradled the ball for the miracle TD that the entire state of Colorado was praying for.
It was a prayer that Shedeur believed God had answered when he threw it.
“I just trusted God,” said Sanders after the game about the throw. “I just threw it up to God and God answered the prayer.”
More prayers were answered after the extra point forced overtime, as Travis Hunter forced a fumble on what would have been a game-tying run by Baylor in OT, which gave Colorado the 38-31 come-from-behind miracle victory in Boulder.
It was a thrilling game that many missed due to their time zone, but it was another exciting game reminiscent of the games Colorado played in 2023.
Last season, his first as the Buffaloes head coach, Sanders was a ratings volcano for Fox and ESPN, giving the networks some of their highest-rated college football telecasts either had experienced in years.
In week 1 last season, the Buffaloes’ upset of TCU on the road pulled in a record-setting 7.26 million viewers for Fox, making it the most-watched Week 1 Big Noon Saturday game in history.
The ratings eruption continued over the next few weeks in games against Nebraska, Colorado State and Oregon, where Sanders’ team delivered “Fox’s best Pac-12 regular season game ever,” (8.73 million viewers), one of ESPN’s largest college football audiences in history (9.3 million viewers) and won the highly coveted primetime ratings war for ESPN/ABC (10.03 million viewers, beating NBC’s Notre Dame vs. Ohio State game at 9.98 million viewers), respectively.
While there were other highly-rated games, like those against USC and UCLA, the Deion Sanders fervor slowly dissipated as the losses mounted.
And some of that fatigue delivered racially tinged criticisms.
Unfortunately, that fatigue appears to have lingered into this season.
In week 1 this season against North Dakota State, the Buffaloes’ 31-26 win generated a solid 4.76 million viewers for ESPN’s Thursday primetime game, but that paled compared to last year’s ratings smash hit for Fox in Week 1.
The 2024 CU-CSU rivalry game only delivered 3.25 million viewers for CBS’s primetime game, a 65% decline from last year’s matchup.
According to Sportico’s Anthony Crupi, “Colorado is averaging 4.56 million viewers per outing, down more than half (-51%) versus the 9.35 million viewers the team dialed up over the analogous period in 2023.”
While the ratings are down, the Buffaloes are not.
After being destroyed by Nebraska in its Big 12 opener last weekend, Colorado rebounded, won its first Big 12 game over Baylor and sits at 3-1. They play an undefeated UCF team in Florida next week and will face three teams currently ranked in the Top 25 (Kansas State, Utah and Oklahoma St.), so they have an opportunity to make a jump in the rankings.
Colorado also has Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter, Heisman Trophy candidates and two of the country’s best and most exciting players. They make the team a must-watch every weekend and proved that again last night by making the two biggest plays in Colorado’s miraculous win.
While ratings have dipped this season, the excitement has not. The team is winning and seems poised to finish better than its 4-8 record last season.
So is the Deion Sanders fatigue real or is it just a temporary moment?
The networks are hoping for the latter, but as coach Prime said last year, “This is the worst we’re going to be. You better get me right now.”
So don’t sleep because Deion and his team are making things exciting in Colorado.
