Colorado head coach Deion Sanders’ trolling online is poor form as team makes transfer portal moves

When a new college football head coach takes over a struggling program, one of first priorities becomes flipping the roster. They want to bring players in who can help turn the program around and in order to do that, they must first weed out players from the previous staff who do not have a place in the future trajectory of the team. It’s cutthroat and even ruthless at times, but it’s how the sausage gets made.

Deion Sanders aggressively did this upon his arrival to Colorado, with over 50 players leaving Boulder by the end of his first spring as the head coach. He famously foretold this during his first team meeting back in December of 2022, saying that he’s bringing “Louis luggage” with him and encouraging returning players from the Karl Dorrell-era to go ahead and hit the transfer portal. While it was it was a bit off-putting to see this on camera, these types of frank discussions aren’t uncommon. There’s an anecdote about Brian Kelly telling returning Notre Dame players in 2010 something to the effect of “you motherf****** got the last coach fired. That’s not happening to me.”

What is uncommon, however, is a head coach taking to social media to tweet through it well after the fact, and that’s what we’ve seen from “Coach Prime” and the Colorado contingent over the past few days. As you’ve probably seen by now, Max Olson of The Athletic caught up with some of the former Colorado players who were ran off by Sanders’ staff and allowed them to share their experiences of leaving the program. Former Austin Peay and current UTEP safety Xavier Smith’s comments sparked the most discussion, prompting CU quarterback Shedeur Sanders to respond by calling him “mid” and even hosted a Twitter spaces to disparage said comments. The QB has simply taking his cue from his father, who decided to dip his toe into some good old fashioned trolling as well.

That’s him trolling Jaheim Ward, a former teammate of Smith’s at Austin Peay who has gone back and forth with other Colorado players online since the article dropped. It’s one thing to boisterously defend your program against criticism and skeptics. It’s another thing to punch down at an FCS player defending his former teammate. And revel in the backlash afterwards.

This is just poor taste, man. There’s no reason to fire a shot at a player online in the aftermath of the article. He culled the roster in Year 1, culled it again just a few weeks ago, and will roll into the fall with a bunch of new faces in new spots. Sure, he and his players have a right to defend themselves against criticism. But this flippant attitude is growing tiring and is a reason why some are beginning to sour on this experiment in Boulder

But hey, we’re talking about Colorado football on May 1 and I guess that’s what it’s all about.