BOULDER — If anyone’s flash­ing a big­ger smile these days than Deion Sanders over the offen­sive line­men he’s land­ed in the trans­fer por­tal, it’s his quar­ter­back son.

Shedeur Sanders com­plet­ed near­ly 70% of his pass­es this sea­son but was sacked an NCAA-high 52 times as Col­orado fin­ished 4–8. He took such a beat­ing that he missed the Buffs’ final game with a frac­tured bone in his back.

His father told The Asso­ci­at­ed Press in a Zoom call on Mon­day that he antic­i­pates Shedeur being back under cen­ter for the Buffs’ spring practices.

“Oh yeah, most def­i­nite­ly. He will be,” Sanders said. “He just needs some rest and to heal up a lit­tle bit because he took a tremen­dous beat­ing. And that pro­voked some things in me to do some things dif­fer­ent­ly because the beat­ing that he took — some­times peo­ple for­got that I’m not only his coach, but that’s my son — so I under­stand that’s not how this is sup­posed to go.

“We’ve played youth league, high school and at an HBCU and we’ve nev­er been beat­en up like this,” Sanders added. “So, some­thing had to change in that aspect.”

The first change was hir­ing for­mer Min­neso­ta Vikings offen­sive line­man Phil Load­holt to be the team’s offen­sive line coach. Then, Sanders went about beef­ing up his O‑line via the trans­fer por­tal, which he likens to the quick fix­es that can be found in NFL free agency.

In a wide-rang­ing inter­view with The AP, Coach Prime also said his QB son was ecsta­t­ic over the line­men who are com­ing to Boul­der to bol­ster his pro­tec­tion and allow the Buf­faloes to both bal­ance and super­charge the offense.

“He’s elat­ed, but more so than any­thing, he’s think­ing foot­ball, he’s think­ing, OK, now we have more bal­ance. Now we get to dis­play a run­ning game. You got eight men in the box try­ing to stop the run. Now you got 1‑on-1s on the outside.

“Not only did we upgrade the line, I don’t know if you’ve seen the receivers. So these are starters that we’re bring­ing in here,” Sanders said. “So every­thing has gone tremen­dous­ly to anoth­er lev­el. The defen­sive line­men, we put them out spo­rad­i­cal­ly to keep peo­ple wait­ing. But we got the whole thing solved but maybe one defen­sive tack­le. We’ve already got com­mit­ments from the oth­ers and so we’re good now, we’re on the line­back­ers and a cou­ple more DBs and we can call it a day.”

The Buf­faloes’ weak­ness up front and in the offen­sive back­field were major rea­sons the team lost eight of nine games after turn­ing the col­lege foot­ball world upside down dur­ing a 3–0 start. 

Sanders was fea­tured on the cov­er of Time Mag­a­zine and he was named Sports Illustrated’s Sportsper­son of the Year. He accept­ed that award ear­li­er this month at an event that includ­ed the pre­miere of the sec­ond sea­son of “Coach Prime,” the docuseries from Ama­zon Prime Video that pro­vides an inside look at the CU program.

All of these things helped him recruit from the trans­fer por­tal and high schools, he said.

Even though most pro­grams still keep a tight lid on their work behind the scenes, Sanders embraces social media and the trans­paren­cy and unvar­nished nature that comes with hav­ing cam­eras around 24/7.

“I have not met a kid yet that said that he or she didn’t want more fol­low­ers or atten­tion or focus or didn’t want more oppor­tu­ni­ty for NIL or col­lec­tives,” Sanders said. “I’ve met coach­es that don’t know how to han­dle media and atten­tion in the spot­light. But I’ve been in this realm since 1985. So this is noth­ing new to me. I know this business. 

“I was in tele­vi­sion for 19 years, as well. So I under­stand this whole­heart­ed­ly. So I’ve sat in each seat of the play­er, coach, of the par­ent and as the media per­son­al­i­ty, as well. So I kind of under­stand all these trap­pings and what these kids real­ly want,” Sanders said. “Most coach­es want to be seen the way they want to be seen when they want to be seen.”

Sanders said win or lose, he wants the cam­eras there.

“It’s a tremen­dous bless­ing to me because you use this as a recruit­ing tool, a men­tor­ship tool, an expo­sure tool,” Sanders said. “There’s noth­ing neg­a­tive to it to me.”

Sanders said the few assis­tants who have left Boul­der and a spat­ter­ing of decom­mit­ments were nat­ur­al attri­tion and noth­ing to fret over.

When asked about his alma mater, Flori­da State, going unde­feat­ed but get­ting snubbed by the Col­lege Foot­ball Play­off because its star quar­ter­back is hurt, Sanders said he only wish­es he had such wor­ries in Boul­der but felt the playoff’s expan­sion to 12 teams next year will pre­vent sim­i­lar snubs.

“Expan­sion is going to help it tremen­dous­ly. I love it. I love it for us. I love it for a mul­ti­tude of schools, a mul­ti­tude of coach­es. I love it. I real­ly do,” Sanders said. 

He added he’s eager for CU’s move from the Pac-12 into the Big 12 next sea­son along with Utah, Ari­zona and Ari­zona State. 

“We plan on hav­ing a tremen­dous impact on the Big 12,” he said. “I mean you can see what we’ve done in the por­tal and you’re going to see on Wednes­day what we’ve done in high school. You may see a sur­prise or two that you’re gonna say, ‘Wow, like they are build­ing some­thing special.’

“When peo­ple see the quar­ter­backs that we retain, they should say, ‘Dang, they’re real­ly think­ing not just for now; they’re tak­ing the future because every­body knows Shedeur is gonna be this guy. But look what they built behind him.’”

Want more sports news? Sign up for the Sports Omelette to get all our analy­sis on Denver’s teams.