BOULDER — Gerry DiNardo doesn’t know Deion Sanders from Adam Bledsoe.But he knows this: If ex-CU Buffs coach Bill McCartney had his mitts on the transfer portal four decades ago, he would’ve used that bad boy the way Rembrandt used a brush.
“Bill was a master of trying to bring teams together,” DiNardo, the offensive coordinator of the Buffs’ national championship team in 1990 and an analyst with the Big Ten Network, told The Post recently. “I’d say the more that anybody uses the transfer portal, the better they better be with personal relationships. And with team-building skills.”
So how proficient is Coach Prime on both fronts? For better or for worse, CU fans are about to find out.
Since Nov. 27 of last year, according to the 247Sports.com database, the Buffs have seen 40 football players enter the portal — a turnover of roughly half the CU football roster for the second spring in a row.
But while Sanders promised wholesale roster changes at this time a year ago, and delivered on every word, the last five months have presented the same song with a slightly different verse. Even Sanders’ 2023 luggage is being replaced by newer, snazzier models.
Of the 40 reported portal departures in the ’23-24 cycle, 29 of them are players from the Buffs’ Class of ’23, Sanders’ first full recruiting haul as CU’s football coach.
If that sounds like a lot, it is. For context, the other three “Four Corners” programs leaving the Pac-12 this summer for the Big 12 — Arizona, Arizona State and Utah — had an average of seven players out of their respective 2023 classes decide to hit the portal over the last five months.
In the “Portal Age,” combined with varying temptations of Name/Image/Likeness (NIL) opportunities for student-athletes, meaty roster churning is becoming a college football constant. As Sanders and his proponents frequently point out, it’s happening everywhere. Yet it’s rarely happening anywhere else to the historic, sweeping degree that it’s happened in both Year 1 and Year 2 of the Coach Prime Era.
“A lot of people are fighting for backups. When a guy is a starter and he transfers, you’ve really got to think about that,” Sanders said last month when asked about the comings and goings. “We can attract those type of players, but I don’t think we’re losing those type of players. And if we do, we’re good. We’re good.”
Sanders is banking on a familiar formula, one proven during his successful tenure at Jackson State: Enough Jimmies and Joes (talent) will win out, eventually, over Xs and Os (scheme). Prime inherited a 1-11 roster and sent most of it packing before he’d even held a formal practice. That makeover produced a 4-8 season, although the silver lining rolled over the Flatirons with several clouds. There was a disappointing 1-8 mark in Pac-12 play; recurring leaks along the offensive and defensive lines; and issues with overall depth.
Sanders and his staff are doubling down on the idea that if replacing the majority of a roster quadrupled CU’s win total in one season, then replacing the “less-talented” half of the 2023 depth chart could double the Buffs’ win total from four to, say, eight or nine.
It’s an NFL team-building model, fronted by an NFL legend with a staff steeped in NFL experience. But will it translate to a winning program at the collegiate level? And, more to the point, can that much turnover of the so-called “bottom” of a roster be sustained in a way that sets the Buffs up for long-term success?
“I think the biggest issue is not (Coach Prime’s) numbers,” DiNardo continued. “It’s how you take these complete strangers and make them a complete team. I’ve always been (a proponent of) coaches building relationships on the individual end (in) team meetings with players, spending time with teams and getting to know them and trying to get good chemistry … and if CU has a head coach that can do that, they can be a power in this new Big 12.”
“It’s happening everywhere”
Not every portal story ends up involving two schools. But several of them have two sides.
CU last August looked poised to build its long-term defensive corps around five-star recruit Cormani McClain at cornerback, the No. 1 high-school defensive back in the country 16 months ago. But the Florida teen landed in Sanders’ doghouse, struggled to get on the field during CU’s 3-0 start, and got called out by Coach Prime at news conferences for his work ethic and study habits.
So while it wasn’t surprising to see McClain enter the portal last month after barely a year in Boulder, more surprising was the earth he scorched on the way out the door. The young defensive back posted a video on social media insinuating that he wasn’t getting proper development by Sanders or his assistants and that he wanted to join a program that wasn’t about “clicks” — a dig aimed at the Buffs by Oregon coach Dan Lanning last September just before his Ducks handed CU a 42-6 thrashing led by future Broncos first-round pick Bo Nix.
On the other side of the ball, the Buffs offense looked as if it had a keeper in freshman running back Dylan Edwards, a 4-star prep recruit out of Kansas who scored four touchdowns at TCU in his collegiate debut. Edwards’ size (5-foot-9), ineffectiveness in short-yardage situations and inconsistency as a blocker factored into decreased snaps as the season wore on. At the same time, an offense centered around quarterback Shedeur Sanders often had the coach’s son running for his life.
When Edwards entered the portal, it came as something of a surprise to fans and outside observers, although he made a point to praise Prime and the CU staff before electing to join Kansas State. Circle the calendar: Edwards’ Wildcats, an old Big Eight/Big 12 rival who’ll become a regular sparring partner with CU again, visit Boulder on Oct. 12.
“I think guys always think the grass is greener (somewhere else),” FOX Sports analyst and former Oregon and NFL lineman Geoff Schwartz told The Post. “And the truth is, sometimes, a coach is allowed to ‘portal’ a player … and that’s legal now. It’s allowed, in a way.
“So I think if you look at CU, which is trying to be good really fast, they looked at (freshmen) like Cormani and (said), ‘Well, he’s going to take a couple more years to develop, and we want to win as quickly as possible, so let’s move on.’”
Some departures, sources said, were motivated by playing time, or a lack thereof. For others, NIL may have played a role.
The Post this month reached out to four ex-CU players who’d left the program since November. Two didn’t return phone and text messages; two others, both of whom started for Sanders this past fall, declined to comment when reached.
“I think it’s happening everywhere,” Schwartz said. “I don’t know if it’s happening (elsewhere) at the same numbers as at CU. Now you go somewhere and if you don’t like the situation, boom, you’re gone. It’s that CU is interesting. Deion is exciting. People go overboard. Northwestern (changed coaches) and went from 1-11 to 8-5. They’re boring. And so Colorado gets covered more. It’s not that it’s any worse (as a program). Or we dislike (them). They’re interesting. They give us content that’s very interesting.”
“There’s a difference between depth and getting playable depth”
At what point does all this impatience at CU — Sanders wanting to win now and players wanting to play now — make that “interesting” become “incompatible” or “insupportable”?
Per 247Sports, CU saw 41% of its Class of ’23 enter the portal over the past five months. The other three “Four Corners” schools averaged a 17.5% departure rate from its ’23 recruiting class. Arizona, which weathered a coaching change, saw only eight of its 33 signees for 2023 reportedly seek a transfer.
Meanwhile, CU’s turnover of recent transfers also rolls on at a rate that’s more than twice as hefty as its Four Corners peers. The Buffs as of April 30 saw 35.3% of the 51 transfers who joined Sanders’ first full recruiting class re-enter the portal. The two Arizona schools and the Utes, by contrast, averaged a 14.9% portal re-entry clip from its ’23 class. UA, ASU and Utah have lost, on average, three of their 2023 transfers. The Buffs are replacing 18.
“Just because you’re getting bodies doesn’t mean they’re good bodies,” explained Brandon Huffman, national recruiting editor with 247Sports. “(Sanders was) adding bodies (last year) for the sake of adding bodies. They were adding bodies for the sake of building depth. But for every Travis Hunter, you were getting (more) guys that barely saw the field at their previous schools. Sure, they were providing you bodies and subs and depth. But there’s a difference between getting depth and getting playable depth.”
To Sanders’ point, CU this summer expects to see a bump in terms of talent. While eight of the aforementioned outgoing transfers had found homes at other Power 4 schools as of May 1, the Buffs replaced them with 22 players who are coming into Boulder from other Power 4 programs.
Although DiNardo knows this, too: Even along the offensive line, the bigger dude doesn’t always mean he’s the better one.
“How do you put together a portal team?” DiNardo asked. “I think the coach better be a genius. I’m as serious as a heart attack. I think that coach better be an interpersonal communicator genius. Just because you’re taking the best players doesn’t mean you’re going to have the best team.“
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