Colorado football coach Deion Sanders just finished another recruiting season in Boulder with the same highly unusual track record as before:
No in-home visits for recruits. No off-campus visits to high schools.
The university confirmed this after USA TODAY Sports requested records of any recruiting trips he’s made in the last year after not making any before that, either. The latest recruiting period for head coaches to make off-campus contact with player prospects ended earlier this month, shortly before national signing day on Feb. 5.
“Head coach Deion Sanders did not make any in-home or off-campus recruiting visits,” the university said recently.
This remains unique in college football as a completely different way of convincing recruits to play for a college team. It’s also worked for Sanders so far, as shown by his results on the field last year and the major upgrade in talent he’s made to Colorado’s roster since his hiring there in December 2022.
But wouldn’t he be even better at Colorado if he invested himself more in recruiting high school prospects?
That’s one way of looking at it, recruiting experts told USA TODAY Sports. His employment contract at Colorado even includes a $200,000 annual budget for him to use private air travel for recruiting, which he didn’t use.
On the other hand, off-campus recruiting for a head coach doesn’t matter nearly as much in this rapidly changing era of college football.
Sanders, 57, seems to be proving that singlehandedly, even if few other college coaches could get away with this approach. He’s meeting the moment in his own way after the rise of wide-open free agency for transfer players and recruits now picking schools based more on money and exposure than having the coach sit down to dinner at home with mom.
Here’s how it breaks down after his third winter recruiting season in Boulder:
What is Deion Sanders’ recruiting strategy?
Instead of the standard practice of visiting the homes and high schools of recruits – and having those recruits visit campus, too – Sanders has used his national fame to lure in recruits to meet him on campus only. He even recently started a weekly entertainment talk show on Tubi to help reach recruits and their families another way – on their screens.
“That’s how I recruit,” Sanders said last month on a different show, hosted by Tamron Hall on ABC. “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. All the kids that I’m recruiting, as a matter of fact, they in the (transfer) portal. They’re grown men with kids. They don’t need me to come around their crib and try to convince them to come play for me, nah.”
Sanders primarily has recruited transfer players, who generally aren’t recruited with off-campus visits from head coaches like high school players are because they’re older and have been through the recruiting process before as high school players. Sanders’ latest recruiting class signed during the early signing period in December − 17 transfer players and 14 high school recruits. It ranked 27th nationally overall, according to 247Sports.
All the players and the plays: Sign up for USA TODAY’s Sports newsletter.
Using fame and media to cast wider recruiting net
Sanders made those comments in New York on Jan. 10, which came during the limited winter contact period when head coaches are allowed by NCAA rules to visit recruits at high schools or homes. But instead of being on the road recruiting like other head coaches, he was on a publicity tour to promote another show of his on Amazon Prime Video – the documentary series “Coach Prime,” which showcases his program in Boulder.
These are recruiting tools that other coaches would want but aren’t getting because they’re not as famous or in-demand as Sanders – a Tubi show, an Amazon Prime show and a publicity tour that even included him appearing on ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’ last month on CBS. Sanders also grants access to three video bloggers who showcase his program regularly on YouTube, including his eldest son, Deion Jr., who has more than 530,000 subscribers.
All combined, it’s a recruiting outreach program of sorts that’s unlike any other program. And it casts a wider net with potential recruits than a visit to the local high school.
But the lack of off-campus recruiting still comes with risk.
What is the risk?
When he’s competing against other head coaches for top high school recruits, the other head coaches could use this against him by telling those recruits, “If Sanders cared as much about you as we do, why doesn’t he get to know you better by visiting you and your family at home like we are?”
Sanders doesn’t go to them, in other words. The recruits instead are asked to come to him on the Boulder campus. Other coaches do both – hosting recruits on campus and visiting them off-campus, too.
“I definitely think he’s chosen not to put in that needed effort to get all of the best kids in the class, but the way he’s doing it is definitely working for him,” said Adam Gorney, national recruiting director for Rivals.
Gorney noted Sanders signed a “good class” of prospects in December but thinks he’d do even better “if he really put the work in of getting on a plane somewhere and going to visit kids.”
“He’s taking a different approach to basically this whole thing,” Gorney told USA TODAY Sports in December. “Before Deion, there weren’t rap concerts in locker rooms after the game … There weren’t documentarians on the sidelines on every play. But I do wonder how much more he could do.”
How unusual is Deion Sanders’ recruiting approach?
USA TODAY Sports contacted several top teams in college football and found none that had a record of zero recruiting visits by a head coach. By contrast, LSU head coach Brian Kelly made 257 off-campus recruiting contacts from December 2022 to early February 2024, including 46 home visits, according to records obtained by USA TODAY Sports from LSU. Nebraska’s Matt Rhule made 486 off-campus contacts during that same time, school records show. At Alabama, Nick Saban’s home recruiting visits often became popular fodder on social media.
Rhule described it as a way to stake out territory.
“The best way to establish (recruiting) areas is to establish relationships with the (high school) coaches,” Rhule told USA TODAY Sports last April. “The best way to establish relationships with the coaches is to go be present and be at their school.”
Rhule declined to offer his opinion on Sanders’ approach. Sanders’ team beat Nebraska in 2023 but lost to Rhule’s team last year, 28-10.
Hall-of-Fame pitch to recruits
Sanders’ assistant coaches have made off-campus recruiting trips instead, just like other assistant coaches across the nation. But another recent assistant coaching hire by Sanders signals his commitment to his different approach. He hired Pro Football Hall of Famer Marshall Faulk as his running backs coach, even though he has no apparent coaching or recruiting experience.
Maybe Faulk doesn’t need that experience, and his name will be enough to draw recruits, especially if those players’ goal is to make money and move on to the NFL. Sanders seems to be banking on this. Colorado now has three Pro Football Hall of Famers on staff, including Sanders, Faulk and Warren Sapp, a graduate assistant coach.
None of the three have recruited off-campus. (By NCAA rule, Sapp is not allowed to recruit off-campus as a graduate assistant.)
Does that experience even matter, though?
It depends on the viewpoint – and results
Colorado offensive tackle Jordan Seaton was the nation’s No. 1 offensive tackle prospect for 2024 and came to Boulder from the IMG Academy in Florida despite not getting a home visit from Sanders.
He didn’t choose Colorado because of money, either. Colorado boosters and businesses haven’t provided nearly as much to CU players as those at schools like national champion Ohio State, which recently had a roster earning an estimated $20 million from name, image and likeness deals (NIL).
“NIL is cool, but the real money is in the league (NFL),” Seaton said in October.
Sanders can show him how to get there, along with many others on the Colorado staff with NFL experience. In April, the Buffaloes are expected to have two top picks in the NFL draft, starting what Sanders hopes is a pipeline from Boulder to the NFL.
It’s another way to appeal to future prospects, along with all of those cameras that follow Sanders. Colorado ranked 11th nationally last season with an average of 3.86 million viewers per game in the regular season, according to the school. The Buffs finished 9-4 last year, improving from 4-8 in 2023 and 1-11 before Sanders’ arrival in 2022.
Is Coach Prime ahead of the curve?
Meanwhile, the times are still changing as schools prepare to start paying players directly. Coaches are still adapting. Some have left because of it. Some tried new ways of doing things.
Similarly, the COVID-19 pandemic sparked changes in the way many companies do business. Before that, working from home wasn’t as much of a thing. But now it’s an efficient way to get the job done for some companies, with workers also saving time and money by not having to drive into the office every day.
Former Colorado head coach Gary Barnett sees the similarities.
“I sort of use that as an analogy with this whole situation,” Barnett told USA TODAY Sports last year. “My first reaction would be ‘Is this (recruiting approach) sustainable? Is this really the right thing to do?’ But if you look at it from the other side, it’s ‘All of that (travel) is a waste of money and time.’ ‘
Being different also doesn’t mean being wrong. History might even judge Sanders as being ahead of the curve. The jury’s out on it.
“It certainly wouldn’t be the way I would do it, but man, there’s a lot of changes that have occurred,” Barnett said of college football. “That doesn’t make me right. It just makes me old.”
Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com