Deion Sanders’ Colorado football team blown out by BYU. What happened?

On By Littum

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SAN ANTONIO – Colorado head coach Deion Sanders hopped on a golf cart next to his bodyguard and zoomed down a stadium tunnel on his way out of town.

He had just answered questions from reporters about what happened here Saturday night in the Alamo Bowl — a 36-14 loss to BYU in his final game coaching his two youngest sons in college.

He just didn’t want to dwell on it.

“It’s a wrap,” Sanders said. “It’s over.”

He said the loss won’t overshadow the greater journey he’s had in Colorado because they’re already “on the road to the next one.” Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter and Sanders’ sons will try to climb the ladder to the NFL next season after two seasons in Colorado.

“They’re going to have a great career,” Sanders said. “They move on. They flush it out.”

But it was still quite an egg they laid at the Alamodome in front of a sellout crowd of 64,261, especially after all the build-up about how emotional this game would be for Sanders. Before the game, ABC television cameras even focused on him as he took his final pregame walk with his quarterback son Shedeur and safety son Shilo.

Then came the kickoff and – poof – their edge was gone.

Why did it end this way for the Sanders family?

BYU (11-2) seemed far more eager than Buffaloes (9-4), which has been known for slow starts this season, most notably in a devastating 37-21 loss to Kansas last month in which they fell behind 17-0 and never recovered.

In this case, they did it again, following their live bison mascot, Ralphie, who tried to run onto the field before the game, but instead just walked before heading for the exits.

The Buffs fell into a 20-0 halftime hole, failed to score on their first six possessions and managed just 61 yards of total offense in the first half.

Where did the attack go wrong?

“Everywhere,” said Shedeur Sanders, who was sacked four times and completed 16-of-23 passes for 208 yards and two touchdowns with two interceptions. “It wasn’t something we did well tonight.”

“Ditto,” said his father.

Shedeur Sanders still didn’t do what Cam Ward did

Despite what happened Saturday, Shedeur Sanders could still be the first quarterback selected in April’s NFL draft. It’s probably him or Cam Ward, the quarterback for the Miami Hurricanes.

But both took decidedly different approaches to how they handled their final college games on Saturday. Sanders decided to play the game even though it could have cost him millions of dollars in future earnings if he got hurt playing it despite the insurance he got for it.

Ward also decided to play in his bowl game Saturday, but not after halftime. His Hurricanes, who led 31-28 at the half, ended up losing 42-41.

By contrast, Sanders played to the end in the fourth quarter, even when the game was well out of reach after BYU took a 36-7 lead with 5:28 left.

Why risk it?

“We started it, so we had to finish it,” Sanders said. “Whatever it was, if it was the other way around … we’d still be playing regardless.”

Hunter, the two-way star, also played most of the game, finishing with four catches for 106 yards and a touchdown as a receiver, along with four tackles on defense. Fortunately, there were no significant injuries.

‘You expect us to be exciting’

In many ways, the Buffs resembled last year’s team when they finished 4-8 in Deion Sanders’ first season. They committed five penalties in the first half as Shedeur Sanders felt constant pressure from the BYU defense. They faded away at times, looking nothing like the team that finished tied for first with BYU and two other teams in the Big 12 Conference.

At one point in the fourth quarter, BYU linebacker Isaiah Glasker intercepted a pass from Shedeur Sanders and then did Deion Sanders’ old “Deion Shuffle” dance to celebrate in front of the Colorado sideline.

“I’m excited going into this game, especially watching Travis Hunter and Shedeur and these great players at Colorado, I feel like nobody on our team was nervous,” Glasker said. “We were just ready to play.”

Colorado wasn’t, which was surprising for a reason, just two years after the Buffs finished 1-11 before hiring Sanders as coach.

“We established expectations,” Deion Sanders said. “So now you expect us to perform a certain way. You expect us to win. You expect us to be exciting. You expect us to be a lot more disciplined than we just played today. You just have expectations of us now. That’s what we’ve established.”

It was still Colorado’s best season since 2016, when the Buffs finished 10-4, including a loss in the Alamo Bowl. But it will be difficult for Colorado to live up to those expectations after losing Hunter and Shedeur Sanders.

“It felt great to represent Colorado and bring it back to where it was in the past,” Shedeur Sanders said. “We laid the foundation for the program so now it’s able to allow the other players that come in to leave and pick up where we left off.”

Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: [email protected]

(This story was updated to add new information.)