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00:00All right, welcome back to Newswire here on Sports Grid.
00:06College football starts up back again tomorrow night.
00:08Brian Howell is with us.
00:09He covers the Colorado Buffaloes.
00:11They play tomorrow night.
00:13He's a beat writer for Buff Zone and also the Boulder Daily Camera.
00:16Brian, thanks for coming on the show.
00:18I really appreciate you spending some time.
00:20It's going to be a busy night for you tomorrow.
00:22Yeah, yes, it will be.
00:24I'm looking forward to it, though.
00:25It's just, as I tell people, after nine months or whatever of talking about the next
00:29season, I'm just glad it's here.
00:32Yeah, I would agree.
00:33And I think that, especially when you're covering one team every day, like you are the Buffaloes,
00:37speaking of which, look, it's North Dakota State tomorrow night.
00:40Most anticipate Colorado winning, I don't know by how many points.
00:44I mean, that's probably a subject for another day, but I think they'll probably win the
00:48game.
00:49But, you know, I got to tell you, this team was the story of college football for the
00:54first month of the season.
00:56It was all Colorado, all Deion Sanders, all Shador Sanders all the time.
01:01And then after starting off four and two, the wheels absolutely fell off, although there
01:05were some close games.
01:06I mean, this shouldn't have really been 0-6.
01:09If you just talk about some regression to the mean, maybe it's 2-4 or 1-5, a bad bounce
01:14here and there, a bad play on defense.
01:16But I guess that is the narrative.
01:19Is that fair?
01:20The slow finish has to be corrected going into this season?
01:23Yeah, absolutely.
01:25And you know, I agree with you, it probably shouldn't have been 0-6.
01:31They were closer than that.
01:32And I honestly, you know, I know we want to focus more on this year, but I honestly think
01:37if they don't cough up that Stanford game when they're up 29-0 and lose the game, that
01:41would have put them at 5-2.
01:43I think they absolutely would have won at least another one and been in a bowl game.
01:46So I think they never recovered from that one.
01:50Not fully.
01:51I mean, they were still in games, like you said, but I think that one hung over them
01:53for a while.
01:55And they've got to prove that they can get on the winning track and not be 4-8, 5-7 again.
02:01Yeah.
02:02And look, that's what everyone is certainly looking at.
02:05Let's kind of move this over to Coach Prime, Deion Sanders, who is arguably the most popular
02:12figure right now going in college football.
02:14I mean, maybe we could have made the case Prime was like Nick Saban or somebody else,
02:18but it's not.
02:19Like, everything he says and everything he does always is making headlines.
02:24I think it's absolutely great for the sport.
02:27I mean, I love it.
02:28I love the fact that we're talking about a former player, a Hall of Famer, that's coaching
02:34college football.
02:35But this is a results-based business.
02:36I think he understands that, too.
02:38The results are going to have to be better.
02:40Yeah.
02:41And he fully acknowledges that.
02:43He says he's the first to say that.
02:46The results have got to be better.
02:47He knows that.
02:48And he's also the first one to say, look, if you're going to talk, you better back it
02:52up.
02:53And you're going to deal with the backlash if you don't.
02:55He knows that.
02:56I mean, this is a guy that we know has been one of the brashest and most confident athletes
03:02we've probably ever seen.
03:03At least for me, I put him right up at the top, and I'm sure for you, too.
03:08But he always backed it up as a player, or 90% of the time or whatever it is.
03:12But as a coach, he backed it up at Jackson State, and now he's got it backed up at Colorado,
03:17and he knows that.
03:18Yeah.
03:19I mean, for Peter Sanders, he is 40-1 to win the Heisman.
03:21He threw 27 touchdown passes last year.
03:23He was not the problem.
03:24It was the defense for most of the season.
03:27Do you think those numbers pretty much are repeatable this year, better, worse, about
03:31the same?
03:32What do you think?
03:34They should be better.
03:35And those are pretty good numbers.
03:36I mean, those passing yards was a school record.
03:39His completion percentage was a school record.
03:42Touchdowns was one off the school record.
03:45And that's with missing the last game and a half with injury.
03:47So I think the offensive line was not very good last year.
03:51If they're better on the offensive line and can run the ball a little bit, then those
03:55numbers should be a lot better.
03:56I've always said, if he gets good protection, he can be in New York for the Heisman ceremony.
04:02And I absolutely think that that's a ceiling for him and something he can shoot for.
04:06Yeah.
04:07No, I mean, look, he's right on the cusp of that in terms of the odds.
04:10Now, as far as the deepest group that Colorado has, probably a wide receiver, although they
04:14did lose one player to injury.
04:17Is this a significant one?
04:20This is not an offense to this young man, but no.
04:23He's a really talented young player.
04:25He's a redshirt freshman transferred from TCU.
04:28Good player, Cordell Russell.
04:29But there's four guys that are really the top four for them, and he's not in that group.
04:35So Travis Hunter, Jimmy Horn, Will Shepard, and LeJonte Wester are going to be their four
04:41main guys.
04:42And so as long as they stay healthy, they'll be all right.
04:45Yeah.
04:46So Travis Hunter projected to be a first-round pick in next year's NFL draft, as is Sanders,
04:51too.
04:52So we'll see there.
04:53OK, so now before we go, let's sort of shift over to the daily beat of you covering the
04:58Colorado Buffaloes.
04:59I've been in this spot before with different players and coaches and athletes, and there's
05:04some unusual circumstances going on right now in that media room that you're dealing
05:07with, Brian, which is Coach Prime essentially doesn't like the way that his team is being
05:13covered by an individual reporter.
05:17We've seen some reports that this individual reporter is not going to be allowed to ask
05:21questions at different press conferences and things of that nature.
05:25We don't see this happen that often.
05:27It's been talked a lot about in national media, but I feel like with you sitting in the room,
05:31you have a much better understanding as to what's actually going on.
05:34Yeah, and that's a pretty good summary of it is that this columnist from the Denver
05:41Post has written a lot of pieces that that Coach Prime has taken as personal attacks.
05:47And you can see why if you look at some of the pieces and he's taken offense to that
05:52and called out the reporter at a recent press conference and said, why do you do this?
05:58Just asked him and the reporter couldn't really answer.
06:00And so he's like, well, until we figure it out, you can't ask any questions.
06:03And so, yeah, it's it's created a different dynamic.
06:08You got media people that have jumped all over him and, you know, it's a weird dynamic
06:13covering Deion Sanders in a lot of ways.
06:16But I get along with him.
06:18I feel like I think in a lot of ways, he's much like every other coach I've covered.
06:24But in a few ways, he's not.
06:26Yeah.
06:27And I think that's really what needs to get figured out.
06:30I think both for Deion and maybe even the media, too, is just some middle ground, because
06:34in the end, he's trying to do a job.
06:37And the columnists and even you are trying to do a job as well.
06:40Usually, these things do get sorted out.
06:42And I do feel like this has made a lot of attention about something very little that
06:47probably can just be handled off the camera.
06:49And I think in the end, hopefully, that's the way that this works out.
06:52Ryan, thank you so much for coming on the show.
06:54Have fun tomorrow night.
06:55First game of the season.
06:56We'll be watching.
06:57Thanks again.
06:58Awesome.