If you paid attention to this media company last month, you noticed that I am fully involved in the Deion Sanders experiment in Colorado.
It’s fun to watch. This aroused enormous interest. And Deion is exactly the kind of coach who should bring a struggling NFL team to the sidelines with a blank check, even if Deion is fully committed to college football in general and the University of Colorado in particular.
But it’s not fair to get so caught up in the hype and enthusiasm that real football matters fade into the background at Coach Prime’s extensive and boundless love fest.
I watched the whole game on Saturday. Even if it was a blowout, I thought Colorado had a chance. And then, after quarterback Shedeur Sanders threw an NFL-quality laser sight at freshman Omarion Miller to cut the score to 48-34 with 11:55 left in the game, it looked like extra time.
Then the two teams exchanged possessions. USC drove into the field goal area. A 38-yard miss gave Colorado the ball with 5:58 to go, first to 10 on its own 22. Although Colorado didn’t have a timeout, there were enough ticks left to allow the Buffaloes to get on the field, score, compete, stop and hope to force overtime before the quarter was over.
That’s when it got weird. Colorado offensive coordinator Sean Lewis called for an inside attack without a shotgun. It came to nothing. The clock kept ticking.
There was a lack of urgency throughout the trip. The clock kept ticking. A total of five races. The clock kept ticking. A total of five passes. The clock kept ticking. There was never any real indication that Lewis realized it was the fourth quarter, not the third.
When Colorado scored with 48:41 left, the Buffaloes had no choice but to try an onside kick. USC recovered. Game over.
When access to Deion Sanders began, the reporters covering the match had the lowest fruits on hand and fell at their feet. I found the full press conference. I’ve seen it all. In more than 19 minutes of back and forth, there was not a single doubt about the clock management on the drive, which reduced the margin to seven.
It was the most terrible thing. No one asked the most obvious question.
And even if the praise for Coach Prime had sparked the subtle beginnings of a personality cult in Boulder, it would have been all too easy for someone to tiptoe around the general topic of whether Sanders would have done something different on the last goal attempt.
Colorado had nothing to be ashamed of. They played well. They scared a top-10 team. They dug deep as they fell 27 points behind. But the mood in the press room was almost solemn, as if no one wanted to rain at the graduation parade, but without a cigar, pointing out that the historical potential of victory exploded in the face of the team. thanks to wrong decisions made by the offensive coordinator at that time.
These questions are asked constantly. They are more than fair. Perhaps no one wanted to upset Coach Prime. Perhaps everyone thought that someone would ask such a basic and obvious question.
In the end, no one did it. And then it remains to be seen what Deion thinks about the way in which his chance to make a big comeback in a dramatic way was undermined by the most stupid game and time management that a team can show at any level of the game. Football.
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