They all eventually reach the demarcation line in the new college football world, where free player movement and financial free-for-all runs directly into culture and consequence.
You can’t have one without the other.
“I’m not doing that anymore,” says Colorado coach Deion Sanders.
But is it too late?
Whatever you think of Sanders and his coaching acumen, or his Prime Time personality or everything that comes with the experience, he’s a competitor at his core.
The story isn’t that Sanders kicked several Colorado players off the team earlier this week. It’s that it took so long for the greatest cornerback in the history of college football and the NFL ― the man
who once played at a high level in both the NFL and MLB in the same season ― to accept the fine line in today’s game between competing and just here for the cash.
And that leads us to the ugly truth created over the past five years: transient and mercenary players.
It begins with no commitment to building the greater good, and ends with the central focus of making a buck and building a personal brand.
This isn’t about painting with the wide brush of all players, but it only takes a few missed spots and the entire job looks different.
Then it falls apart on the field in a 34-point loss, and off the field with players laughing while walking to the postgame locker room. Sanders, the player, wouldn’t put up with that.
Why should Sanders, the coach?
“When you start having conduct detrimental to the team, you don’t care about the team, you care about you, I have a problem with that,” Sanders said. “A year ago, I didn’t put my foot down on it enough. Then it imploded.”
It imploded across college sports long ago.
This isn’t unique to Sanders, isn’t a byproduct of his Coach Prime aura. Every coach in every NCAA sport deals with this exact scenario. Every single day.
The bench once was a coach’s greatest ally. If you don’t want to work, if you don’t want to buy into what we’re selling, we’ll play who’s behind you and move on.
This left players with two options: respond or retreat — and if you retreated, and eventually left the team, you had to sit out a season while transferring to another school. There were consequences for actions.
That’s not unfair, nor unreasonable. It’s living and learning as a young adult, many of whom push until they feel pushback.
That’s not a personal failing, it’s the human condition.
It is here where we see the major flaw in the NIL era, where fools who haphazardly constructed this system — university presidents, cash-grab attorneys, clout-chasing judges — have done open heart surgery on a broken bone.
Players deserve their fair share of revenue.
Players don't deserve free movement.
But because we have this bastardized system of player procurement and roster building that no other sport on the planet would use, there are no consequences. If it doesn’t work at one school, you transfer to another in a couple of months.
That is what's so important about Sanders’ move earlier this week. He jumped into the deep end of the NIL era when he arrived at Colorado in 2023, initially bringing 77 new players, then adding 60-plus a year later and eventually 71 more this season. All told, more than 260 in four seasons.
A ridiculous amount of turnover, and an almost impossible ask to build a roster that, at some point, won’t break. Won’t have a few stragglers who blatantly don’t care, much less others silently going through the motions and infecting the rest of the roster.
Sanders said he didn’t get control of it last year, his first season without a Heisman Trophy winner (Travis Hunter) and an elite college quarterback (Shedeur Sanders). Now he’s on it.
He’s excited about sophomore quarterback Julian Lewis, and likes the fight of this team despite the ugly loss to Northwestern. The Buffs of 2025 wouldn’t have figured out a way to win on the road in a tough environment to begin the season — like this year’s team.
We don’t yet know which players have been kicked off the team, or the extent of the loss. But does it really matter?
Sanders took a stand, and made a statement. No more ambiguity, no more flexibility.
If you’re not coaching it, you’re allowing it.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB. Listen to him daily, from 12-2 p.m., on 1010XL-Jacksonville.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Deion Sanders regaining control at Colorado. Is it too late? | Opinion
