Deion Sanders signed future Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter — the nation’s No. 1 overall recruit — to Jackson State without ever stepping foot on his high school campus.
No one on his staff visited, either. It was unprecedented, an unthinkable recruiting victory that established Sanders as a force in the sport.
But now entering his sixth season as a college coach and third season at Colorado, Sanders has a recruiting approach that has grown more traditional as his program has matured. No, Sanders still isn’t making home or school visits, a much discussed choice that is believed to have made him the only one of 136 FBS coaches to have never made off-campus contact with recruits. Even new North Carolina coach Bill Belichick is making the rounds.
But in two seasons, Sanders went from taking the most transfers of any team in college football history to a class that closely reflects the norms of roster building in a rapidly shifting sport in 2025. Colorado didn’t respond to interview requests for this story, but the adjustment illustrates a lack of need for quick fixes at a program that’s markedly improved from the 1-11 Colorado team Sanders inherited.
The Buffaloes’ 2025 class is 45 percent high school prospects (14) and 55 percent transfers (17), with 31 new faces, quite a change from the massive, unusual turnover he conducted in his first two seasons.
In 2023, Sanders brought in 73 new players, with 21 (28 percent) being high school prospects. In 2024, the high school ranks dropped even more, with 43 transfers and 12 high school prospects (21.8 percent of the class).
“The (high school prospects) that we take, we want them to play immediately,” Sanders said in November. “We want them to produce.”
Sanders highlighted Colorado’s 2025 class by flipping quarterback Julian Lewis, the nation’s No. 6 quarterback, from USC after he was committed to Lincoln Riley and the Trojans for more than a year. Weeks before the December early signing period, with USC mired in a disappointing 7-6 season, he joined the Buffs class instead as Colorado stayed in late contention for the Big 12 title game.
Julian “Ju Ju” Lewis arrived at Colorado in December. (Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)
With former Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders, Deion’s son, NFL-bound, Lewis will compete to win the starting job this spring against Kaidon Salter, a Liberty transfer who helped lead the Flames to an undefeated regular season and a New Year’s Six bowl in 2023 and rated as The Athletic’s No. 7 transfer quarterback.
Colorado opens spring practice on March 11 and will host a spring game on April 19.
The Buffaloes’ class ranked second in the Big 12 and 27th nationally, per 247Sports. The top two prospects behind Lewis are offensive linemen. Carde Smith of Mobile, Ala., was committed to Auburn and then USC before flipping to Colorado a week before the early signing period. Fellow four-star Chauncey Gooden, from Nashville, Tenn., committed to the Buffaloes on the same day.
The Buffaloes’ class features six four-star high school prospects, more than any other Big 12 team but Texas Tech, which fielded the conference’s top class. That’s up from four high school recruits four-stars or better in each of CU’s previous two classes. The 2025 class featured prospects from Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, Texas and Michigan.
How is Colorado doing it, beyond coming off a 9-4 season?
While Sanders hasn’t changed his stance on taking visits — “I don’t go to nobody’s school or nobody’s house. I’m not doing that. I’m too old to be going to somebody’s school, somebody’s house,” Sanders, 57, told talk show host Tamron Hall in December — that strategy doesn’t extend to his staff.
Sanders left untouched a $200,000 allowance in his contract for private air travel for recruiting purposes, per USA Today, but the Buffaloes spent $943,504 on recruiting in the 2024 fiscal year, according to Colorado’s NCAA financial forms obtained by The Athletic, which puts Colorado in the same ballpark as what is reported by many of its peers.
Former Colorado offensive line coach Phil Loadholt, who left for Mississippi State after last season, visited Smith in person four or five times, according to Smith’s high school coach, Antonio Coleman.
“(Loadholt) was always in constant contact with Carde, and they built a relationship that made him feel like he was at home,” Coleman said. “If (Sanders) showed up on campus, he’d probably get bum-rushed. Safety is a big deal in that also. Nick Saban came to campus, but he was always well-protected and well-surrounded.”
Sanders began his second season at Colorado with new coordinators. This year, both offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur and defensive coordinator Robert Livingston are back. They have been fixtures on the road in recruiting, high school coaches said.
Many coaching staffs around the sport assign assistant coaches to build relationships in specific geographic areas and later put prospects in touch with the program’s position coaches. Colorado largely leaves position coaches to recruit their position, wherever the players may be.
And though Sanders doesn’t travel to recruit, he does frequently FaceTime prospects, usually from his office in Boulder. Players — and more importantly in some cases, players’ parents — are familiar with Sanders’ persona and playing days, which can allow Sanders to make an impression on prospects’ families long before he makes contact.
“These days, you’re dealing with a lot more people and kids where NIL is the biggest thing, and it’s the biggest topic of conversation,” said Jamie Graham, who coached Gooden at Lipscomb Academy. “Colorado didn’t forget about NIL but understood the relationship part of this and what is going to make Colorado special and stand out to someone like Chauncey.”
Coleman said Smith and his mother kept private the amount of an NIL offer Smith had been promised by Colorado but said it was less than what USC had offered.
Willie Gaston, who coached four-star wide receiver Quanell X Farrakhan Jr. at Galena North Shore in Texas, said Farrakhan — who signed with Colorado in December and enrolled last month — didn’t take the highest offer given to him by other schools.
“I know that for a fact. It was a pretty big gap. But he was going somewhere he felt comfortable,” Gaston said. “All these kids want to play at the next level, and the biggest thing for him was who could develop him to play on Sundays. That was the biggest thing for him.”
Sanders has leaned into that talking point in his program every year. It resonates with players who see the NFL credentials of Sanders and his staff and buy into the idea they enhance their pro prospects.
Shurmur and Livingston have spent nearly their entire careers in the NFL. Sanders has continued to stock his staff with former NFL players who lack experience coaching but have on-field bona fides.
Hall of Famer Warren Sapp was promoted to pass rush coordinator after joining the staff as a senior analyst last season for a $150,000 salary. He was around the program in an unofficial capacity in 2023, too. Sanders hired Hall of Famer Marshall Faulk as running backs coach last month, despite Faulk never coaching at the high school, college or professional levels. Faulk and Sanders worked together at the NFL Network. And former Colorado star Andre Gurode is expected to help coach the offensive line after an All-Pro career and having spent two seasons as a coach in the XFL.
“We, as in Deion, myself, Warren (Sapp), and a lot of guys that played that coach right now … the game has given us so much. Coaches poured into us so much. We have to give that back to these young kids coming up in football, to teach them how to get to the next level, but make sure that they go to the next level the right way,” Faulk, who will make $400,000, told the “Rich Eisen Show” last month. “It just all made sense.”
Jerrime Bell, who coached defensive lineman Christian Hudson in Daytona Beach, Fla., said multiple Big Ten schools offered Bell more money than Colorado.
“You don’t get the helicopter landing like you do with the bigger schools. But they did a good job of zeroing in on him, letting him know he’s their guy,” Bell said. “Georgia, Florida, Miami, when they recruit a kid, they come flying in and they put the full-court press on. Colorado went about it a different way, and it was more just about relationships.”
Hudson committed to UCF last summer but flipped to Colorado two weeks after taking an on-campus visit in October. He also took official visits to Iowa, Maryland and Iowa State, but Colorado was the only visit he took once his senior high school season began.
“It wasn’t about the money for him. It was about getting on the field and the relationships he had,” Bell said. “And eventually, ‘I’ll make the money up on the back end when I make plays playing college football.’”
Whether Colorado is maximizing its recruiting potential under Sanders if he’s available only in Boulder is up for debate, but it does provide an added incentive for recruits to make visits to a campus to which they may have minimal exposure and an area of the country that infrequently produces elite talent.
“It’s Deion Sanders. If you’re in America and know sports, you know Deion Sanders,” Bell said. “You know what you’re gonna get.”
Smith had never been to Boulder before his campus visit. Once he visited, his mind was made up, Coleman said.
“Him going up to Colorado was the biggest reason they were able to make him reconsider,” Coleman said. “And he saw Jordan Seaton (the No. 1 offensive tackle prospect in the 2024 class) and the success he had and he wanted to bet on himself. That’s why he chose Colorado.”
As for Sanders’ ironclad no-visit policy, even for prospects as highly rated as Hunter, who made good on his status as the nation’s No. 1 recruit to become Colorado’s second Heisman Trophy winner?
Graham said with as much exposure and access as Colorado offers on YouTube, he can get a feel for what life is like for his former player there. He suspects recruits can get a feel for Sanders and the program in the same way.
“I find myself naturally following Colorado,” Graham said. “Him not being out on the road, I don’t see it being a big deal. He has so many good people around him that can get out on the road and speak for him.”
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Ric Tapia / Getty Images)
