I’ve watched more college football in the past four seasons than I did in the previous ten. The reason is one person: Deion Sanders, first at Jackson State where he carried the flag for HBCU football and now at the University of Colorado where he revived a struggling football program.

On Thursday, Colorado opened the season with a nail-biting 31-26 home win over North Dakota State, the Buffaloes’ first victory since Oct. 7, 2023, when they defeated Arizona State. I watched every minute of Thursday’s game, and I will watch every minute of Colorado’s next few games, and will be there in person more than a few times.

What are we trying to determine and what questions are we trying to answer? Is Coach Prime a great college football coach? A better promoter than coach? Will Colorado have a winning season? Will Colorado make it to a bowl game? And finally, with his son Shedeur Sanders and potential Heisman Trophy candidate Travis Hunter entering the 2025 NFL draft, will Sanders stay with Colorado after this season?

Some of my colleagues called Thursday’s season opener the most important game of Coach Prime’s coaching career.

With all due respect, no.

Thursday’s game was the most important game until the next game. And the next. And the next.

The one thing Colorado proved Thursday was that it had two more super NFL-ready players than North Dakota State: Hunter and quarterback Shedeur Sanders — Hunter, a spectacular two-way player and Sanders, a legitimate top-5 quarterback prospect in the draft. Hunter caught seven passes for 132 yards and three touchdowns. On defense, he played more than 40 snaps at cornerback.

Shedeur picked up where he left off last season, and that’s good news and bad news. Sanders plays a unique brand of hero ball, and it’s largely worked. He’s thrown 100 touchdowns in his career, and finished last season with 27 touchdowns on an impressive 69% completion rate. But that comes at a price.

Last season, he was the most sacked quarterback in major college football, taking so many shots to make plays that he missed the final game of the season. On Thursday against North Dakota State, Sanders was sacked just once and kept plays alive. He also took several shots on the fly. Can he sustain his reckless quarterback style for an entire season? And can Colorado win if Shedeur plays differently?

After the game, Shedeur was criticized by his father, Coach Prime, for throwing a long pass to LaJohntay Wester in the fourth quarter when the offense should have been stalling. But Sanders rationalized that his son was just trying to be a good teammate by including Wester on a night when Hunter and Jimmy Horn Jr. were having a great one.

“Shedeur is such a good kid, sometimes it costs him because at the end of the game we just want to run the ball,” Sanders said, rationalizing his son’s poor assessment.

The relationship between Sanders and his sons, Shedeur and Shilo, is the most fascinating aspect of the Coach Prime phenomenon at Jackson State and now Colorado. Sanders has coached his sons at every level of football, and in his candid moments, Sanders admits that the line between father and coach is often blurred.

That’s why I’d like to see Prime coach after Shedeur and Hunter — his adopted son — leave for the NFL. Only then would we get an accurate picture of who Sanders really is as a coach, although I’m not sure that’s high on Prime’s list of priorities. Coaching his sons has been such a unique experience that life after they’re gone might be anticlimactic.

But there will still be plenty of time for that guess.

There’s a long season to play at this point, and Prime, Shedeur and Hunter share a burden of proof. Hunter wants to prove he’s a legitimate Heisman Trophy candidate. Shedeur wants to prove he should be one of the top three quarterbacks taken in the 2025 NFL draft.

Of course, Sanders is in a position to prove that he is more than the football equivalent of a snake oil salesman whose main commodity is promoting his program. He can demonstrate that he is a tactician who can match the elite coaches in the country.

You do that by winning.

Coach Prime is also in a position to prove that his scorched-earth approach to roster building is effective. Sanders is not one to plant seeds and watch them grow. He prefers to plant mature trees.

Last year, he made headlines and hurt many feelings by drastically changing his selection, bringing in 68 new scholarship students, 47 of whom came from other four-year programs.

He did it again this season, bringing in 50 new scholarship students, including 39 new transfers. Will it work? We’ll see.

What complicates the assessment of Deion Sanders purely on football criteria is that he does more than coach football. He does other things, and I take his word for it that he is concerned about the well-being of the young men he coaches. Not necessarily the ones he drives away, but the ones he coaches.

Last week, for example, we learned that Sanders has partnered with a bank to open “529 accounts” for the eight fathers and one expectant father on his team. Each account starts with $2,121 (in recognition of Sanders’ number from his NFL playing days). A 529 is a tax-advantaged savings account designed to be used for the beneficiary’s education expenses. The idea is that if players can regularly contribute $200 of their own money to the account, they can eventually pay for their child’s college education.

The bigger issue surrounding the University of Colorado and its football program is how freely the press reports on Coach Prime.

Closely related to this is whether the media buys what Deion is selling. Sanders, like many college coaches — HBCU, FBS, FCS — tend to be dictators, or strive to be. Sanders has a difficult relationship with the media and has cunningly created his own media machine to present his story the way he wants it presented.

In Colorado, he deals with the press by picking and choosing, singling out entities he finds too harsh and critical. This includes banning a Denver Post columnist whose criticism Sanders felt had become too personal. With the university’s blessing, the reporter was banned from asking questions.

In an ideal, all-for-one, one-for-all world, when the Denver Post columnist was banned, the entire press corps would have objected and boycotted Sanders. Imagine Prime walking into a press conference with no cameras, no reporters, no microphones. Colorado is riding a wave of regeneration precisely because the head coach of its football team donned cameras and microphones. Imagine if there were no more cameras and microphones.

Colorado doesn’t really need to imagine that. The university knows what it feels like, because it experienced it itself in the years before Prime came: lethargy, indifference, darkness.

Anyway, a media boycott will never happen and that’s the crux of the matter: the media can’t afford to boycott Coach Prime. He’s a ratings machine. Right now he’s news and we’re reporting the news.

We all have our standards. Sanders and the university have established standards for what they consider “out of line” reporting. I have my standards for what I consider compelling news.

Coach Prime won at Jackson State. He talked about Black empowerment and institution building, but he won. The news in college football is whether Coach Prime can lead Colorado to a winning record and a bowl game. The Buffaloes will be compelling when they win, average and boring when they lose. Pure and simple.

One game down, 11 to go.