High-level success in college football starts with high-caliber players, and first-year Colorado coach Deion Sanders is already winning in that all-important category. Sanders delivered for the Buffaloes in his first recruiting cycle despite a short turnaround, hauling in the nation’s fifth-best transfer class and No. 21 overall class, according to 247Sports.
Seven of those players hail from the talent-rich state of Florida — somewhere Sanders, who went to Florida State from North Fort Myers High School, is quite familiar with. Colorado is a long way from the Sunshine State, and Sanders explained his approach to recruiting the state with Patrick Peterson and Bryant McFadden on the All Things Covered podcast.
“I’m trying to introduce these young men to the other side of the country that they never thought about,” said Sanders. “When you get out there, they say ‘You got mountains with snow on it and it’s not even cold?’ Because when it’s really snowing, it can’t be so cold. It’s really not that cold. Like, 30 [degrees] in Boulder is like hoodie weather.
“Once I get these Florida guys over that hump and they see it,” he continued, “and the summers are unbelievable in Boulder.”
Sanders’ sales pitch to high school and transfer prospects generates from a mindset that he developed from his own time as a coveted recruit.
“Guys from the South like us, we didn’t have the financial means to travel. We never traveled. So the furthest we went was Georgia. We aren’t seasoned on the other side of the country. We never fathomed it. It wasn’t our thing. We always thought it was too cold. I didn’t own a jacket in high school. I remember going to visit the University of Georgia with no socks, no jacket.”
Sanders’ success on the recruiting trail…
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