Continuity

Interesting, if a little nerdy…

Yesterday, a reader reached out asking if we were going to do the 2023 version of our article listing all the FBS schools that return their head coach, both coordinators, and starting quarterback from last season. A search of our archives found no such article, but the idea was so good we decided to do it anyway.

A study of all 133 FBS teams found that 28 return their four most important figures, roughly one-fifth of the subdivision.

Only two of those are SEC schools.  Can you name them?

Sorry Charlie

Yesterday, while Deion Sanders was busy pulling out Colorado’s roster by the roots, Charlie Baker was speaking to a group of athletic directors, to whom he offered this no doubt deeply researched observation ($$):

“I don’t think you’ll find very many student-athletes who want to be employees,” Baker said at the LEAD1 Association’s annual spring meeting. “I haven’t found many, and there are a lot of really good reasons for that. Obviously, there’s a lot of traffic in the courts at this point about this issue these days, which is going to limit what I would choose to say about it. But I think student-athletes want to be student-athletes, and it’s up to us to figure out how to make that work for them in a variety of environments and in circumstances that are different.

He’s talking out of his ass, and that would have been stupid enough even on a quiet day, but to say that at the same time Sanders was purging players in record numbers off Colorado’s roster, it’s especially tone deaf.

With each day’s passing, the transition from Emmert to Baker appears more seamless.

“I’m a change agent.”

By my count, Colorado's now lost all 4 QBs who threw >20 passes, 3 of 5 RBs, all 9 players targeted >8 times, 5 of 8 OLs and 7 of 8 DLs with >100 snaps, all 4 LBs with >200 snaps, and 12 of 17 DBs with ANY snaps.

Obviously added like one jillion transfers, too, but GOOD GOD.

— Bill Connelly (@ESPN_BillC) April 24, 2023

I admit I haven’t been following the Coach Prime Goes To Boulder saga that closely, but with what went down yesterday ($$), I’m on it now.

At Colorado, Monday morning began with second-year linebacker Shakaun Bowser entering the NCAA transfer portal at 8:14 a.m. local time.

Wide receiver Montana Lemonious-Craig, one of the breakout stars of the Buffaloes’ spring game on Saturday, entered a few minutes later. Backup offensive lineman Jackson Anderson was next. And then safety Tyrin Taylor, a 10-game starter last year.

At noon, it was time for the big roster purge: 11 scholarship players became available in the transfer portal in less than an hour.

By the end of the day, 18 players were in the portal.

Eighteen in a day has to be some sort of record, doesn’t it?  And yesterday was just the exclamation point to Sanders’ effort to completely remake Colorado’s roster seemingly overnight.

… After Monday’s departures, Colorado has now seen 46 scholarship football players enter the transfer portal in 2022-23, with 41 exiting since Sanders took over. No other Power 5 program has lost more than 29 in this cycle.

Colorado had 83 scholarship players at the start of the 2022 season. Only 20 are still on the roster as of Monday night.

Not sure what adjective best describes what’s going on.  Unprecedented?  Sure.  Aggressive?  Absolutely.  And while the article makes clear it’s impossible to say how many left voluntarily and how many were forced out, it’s clear that Sanders is doing some heavy lifting, as he flat out admits.

“We’ve got to make some decisions,” Sanders said. “That’s gonna be on me now. That was on them. Now it’s on me.”

I have no idea how this plays out in ’23.  On the one hand, Colorado finished last season with a 1-11 record and a points differential of minus-349, so it’s not as if Sanders could make things a lot worse with this wholesale roster shuffle.  On the other hand, that’s a shitload of turnover.  Expecting all those new faces to mesh in a relatively short period of time strikes me as overly optimistic.

The other part of this that intrigues me is the dog that didn’t bark aspect of the story.  Let’s face it, Sanders is canning players left and right.  Yet there’s very little outrage or even mild questioning about what’s supposed to be a no-no with um… student-athletes.  All of which leads me to wonder if what he’s done will become a standard template going forward for coaches coming in to resurrect substandard programs.