Deion Sanders is receiving more accolades.
On Monday, Coach Prime was named Sportsperson of the Year by Sports Illustrated — the historical sports magazine's biggest annual honor.
Sanders had a polarizing year as head coach of the Colorado Buffaloes, who went over their season win total of 3.5 in early October but never saw another victory the rest of the way. The Buffaloes finished on a six-game losing streak, a disappointing end to a once-promising season.
Still, four wins for a team that had zero in the season before Sanders arrived in Boulder is a great building block for the future.
Amazingly, despite losing all of those games at the end, the Buffs covered four of their last five games, giving them a 7-4-1 mark against the spread for the season.
Sanders' Buffs were underdogs during eight games and covered six of those as dogs. When they were double-digit dogs this season, the Buffs were even better, covering five of six games.
So how did a 4-8 coach become Sportsperson of the Year? Colorado wasn't as bad as its final record indicated, and Sanders' impact off the field was clear and significant.
According to the Sports Illustrated article:
"First-year applications are up 26.4% year over year; Black or African American applications are up 80.6%; nonresident applications are up 29.8%; and international applications are up 38.4% from 97 countries, including 16 that didn’t have any applications last year. While those numbers cannot be definitively linked to Sanders, others can be: September sales at the school’s online team store were up 2,544% over the same month in 2022. Every home game in 50,183-seat Folsom Field was sold out for the first time in school history."
Sanders also was responsible for bringing College Gameday and Big Noon Kickoff to Boulder. ESPN shows such as First Take and the Pat McAfee Show were filmed live on campus. And the ratings for the games were off the charts to start the season.
Sanders and Colorado's turnaround were the biggest stories in sports this year, and that's why he's Sportsperson of the Year.
