Colorado coach Deion Sanders chuckled a bit Tuesday after being asked about navigating the transfer portal and other college football coaches who complain about it.
Take Penn State coach James Franklin, for example. His backup quarterback entered the portal and left the team before Penn State’s playoff game Saturday against SMU, leading Franklin to say he hated the timing of the portal being open from Dec. 9-28.
“We got problems in college football,” Franklin said Monday.
But Sanders sees it differently. He said player defections through the transfer portal should be “no surprise” for the most part.
“I don’t think it’s difficult to navigate around the portal,” Sanders said Tuesday. “I just think the portal is surprising some these coaches that didn’t understand what it was. I understood what it was Day 1, don’t you think?”
Sanders said this even though he’s had a few portal defections of his own before his team plays BYU in the Alamo Bowl Dec. 28, including starting linebacker Nikhai Hill-Green. Sanders spoke about this and other topics Tuesday at a news conference in Boulder, including Travis Hunter’s Heisman Trophy win Saturday in New York.
`We’re in the Ark now’
Sanders’ rise as a college coach coincided with the loosening of NCAA transfer rules in 2021, which allowed athletes to move more freely between teams. As an outsider who was new to the college recruiting game, he saw it as an opportunity to acquire talent in a way that was quite different than the traditional way of accumulating high school players.
Last year, he brought in an unprecedented number of scholarship transfer players during his first season at Colorado. Then he flipped his roster again with 39 new scholarship transfer players from other four-year colleges in 2024. This year, his team is 9-3 and includes Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter, a transfer from Jackson State.
On Tuesday, he likened it to the Biblical story of Noah building his Ark for the coming flood.
“I was willing to look like a fool for a period of time,” Sanders said. “I listened to y’all (in the news media). I watched it, and we understood it. But Noah looked like a fool too when he kept saying it was gonna rain, right?… The rain is coming now for everybody right?
“Yeah, we good,” Sanders said. “We’re in the Ark now.”
Sanders noted he’s been doing it this way for years. Even coaching youth football in Texas, Sanders joked how “we had to get everybody out of the portal for 5-year-old kids to 12-year-old kids. That means from other teams.”
Colorado might even be in the market for a transfer quarterback, offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur said Tuesday. The Buffaloes recently signed Julian Lewis as their QB of the future but might have room for a transfer with a year of eligibility left, Shurmur said.
Reflecting on Travis Hunter’s Heisman Trophy?
Colorado two-way star Travis Hunter brought the Heisman Trophy back with him from New York, giving Colorado two Heisman’s since 1994. Asked Tuesday about when he knew Hunter was capable of winning the Heisman, Sanders didn’t flinch.
“When I saw him practice his first day at Jackson State: That’s when,” Sanders said. “When he went out there at receiver and did his thing, then went from playing receiver to defensive back and shut it down. I knew right then. I knew right then it was something special.”
“You know when you see something that’s abnormal,’ he said.
Hunter transferred to Colorado last year, following Sanders from Jackson State to Boulder. In Hunter’s case, Sanders also took an unconventional approach, much like he did with the transfer portal. He allowed him to play both offense and defense with seldom any breaks.
“Most coaches in college football won’t allow it… because they can’t fathom it,” Sanders said.
But Sanders had done it himself as a player to a lesser degree. So he didn’t get in Hunter’s way.
“I allowed him to be unapologetically who he is,” Sanders said.
Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com