High-end fashion tends to change by the season, so perhaps that’s what happened these last few months at Colorado. Last year’s Louis Vuitton? Old news. Twenty-three of Deion Sanders‘ 2023 additions left the program this spring, while the Buffaloes have added six players (and counting) to what is already a 34-player transfer class.
That group of departures includes starters like left tackle Savion Washington. It includes key contributors like wide receiver Tar’Varish Dawson. It even includes banner signees from Sanders’ 2023 class like running back Dylan Edwards or cornerback Cormani McClain.
The Buffaloes have seen 24 players enter the transfer portal since it opened April 16. Of those 26, all but 10 of them arrived previously at Colorado as a transfer. One of them, four-star tight end Chamon Metayer, arrived in January.
That’s starters and depth just walking out the door. Let’s take a deeper dive into the transfer numbers:
- Colorado signed 72 new scholarship players in the 2023 class (high school and transfers), with 61% of them no longer on the roster.
- Thirty-five of the team’s 51 transfer additions from the 2023 cycle are no longer on the roster with 21 of them (43.1%) entering the portal either during the winter or this spring.
- Ten members of Colorado’s 21-player 2023 high school class (47.6%) have already entered the portal.
- It’s worth mentioning again that Colorado is replacing its entire offensive line.
A year ago, when Sanders led a roster overhaul unlike anything we’ve ever seen in college football — only 10 scholarship players returned from Colorado’s 2022 roster to 2023 — it seemed like a bold, yet reasoned, move, especially considering Colorado’s incoming transfer class ranked No. 1 nationally.
Not only could Sanders remake his team on the fly with experienced pieces, but those players were also locked in over the long haul under former NCAA rules that barred underclassmen from transferring more than once without sitting out a year in residence.
That calculus changed in December, when the NCAA lost a court case in West Virginia in which the judge issued a 14-day temporary restraining order against the NCAA that prevented it from enforcing its multi-time transfer rule. A few weeks later, the NCAA issued a memo telling schools it had paused its multi-time transfer rules for the rest of the 2023-24 academic calendar year, which opened the doors for all former transfers to do so again. Colorado’s players took advantage.
The Buffaloes aren’t the only school impacted by this, of course. Iowa felt it when it briefly added Kadyn Proctor from Alabama, only for him to reenter the transfer portal two months later. Louisville has seen two high-profile recent transfers, running back Peny Boone and defensive end Tyler Baron, hit the portal already. Louisville’s outgoing transfer count hit 30 by May 1, the date college football’s spring portal window closed. But nobody’s been impacted more than Colorado, where more than 50% of the scholarship roster was made up of transfers.
Could you argue that Colorado wanted to get rid of some of the player it’s losing? Definitely. Sanders, like many college coaches, isn’t shy about cutting players, as detailed recently in an excellent story by The Athletic. Even a starter like Washington was the subject of much criticism this year as the Buffaloes’ o-line came under fire. And some of these outgoing players have allowed the Buffaloes to sign a new wave of transfers this cycle, including seven four-star transfers.
“There have been a few guys that have left the program that Colorado would like to have on its roster in 2024,” said Adam Munsterteiger, publisher of 247Sports’ BuffStampede.com. “However, a lot of the guys that left were not going to be starters. It is tough to keep depth around in the portal era. You’ve got this revolving door with depth pieces. The big picture still looks very promising for Colorado. There’s been an overreaction when guys hit the portal at the beginning of every portal window. Were they better off from a total talent at the end of each window? The answer is yes every time.”
Five former Buffaloes have signed with Power Four teams this offseason. Three others will play at Oregon State, an independent in 2024. Many others will stay on the powere-conference level. Many, too, will drop down a peg.
Did former highly ranked recruits like Myles Slusher and Demouy Kennedy emerge as starters? No. But they stepped in during some key moments and could have been contributors in 2024. That type of natural progression — from talented reserve to contributor — defines the patient roster approach to which most programs subscribe. Instead, the Buffaloes will be introducing 40-plus new scholarship players once again.
It’s no surprise that two consecutive years of churn have led to a strange cultural brew. An unfortunate consequence of The Athletic’s exposé was one of its interviewed subjects, former safety Xavier Smith, coming under fire from star quarterback Shedeur Sanders. Smith was a Colorado signee in 2022 under the Karl Dorell regime who missed that season with an injury. He transferred out of Colorado during the spring of 2023, played a year at Austin Peay and is now at UTEP.
“Ion even remember him tbh. Bro had to be very mid at best,” Shedeur Sanders wrote, reposting a pull-quote graphic from The Athletic detailing Smith’s comments on Colorado.
Scotty Walden, who coached Smith at Austin Peay and will do so again at UTEP, defended Smith on X.
“He is the furthest thing from soft. He is a great kid/player and led us to a conference title,” Walden tweeted. “He answered a question honestly in an interview and was just telling his side. He was a freshman (All-American) and has an extremely bright future on and off the field. I am glad he is on my team — check the tape.”
Perhaps the NCAA’s rule change ends up being a positive for Colorado, allowing Sanders a second chance at a grand reset for a team coming off a 4-8 campaign that was fun for a month but ultimately disappointing. Unquestionably, new additions like running back Dallan Hayden and defensive lineman Rayyan Buell make the Buffaloes better. Early win totals for Colorado are at 4.5 at some sportsbooks, and of course it will be a different type of road in the new-look Big 12: Less elite competition weekly, but arguably better depth.
But those additions didn’t have to be mutually exclusive with keeping talent on the roster. Mostly, it feels like last year’s designer clothing that would have remained in rotation is able to just walk out the door and find a new home.
A roster churn unlike anything we’ve ever seen in college football continues.
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