Colorado Buffaloes football coach Deion Sanders is leading a 3-6 team down the stretch of the 2025 season, and there are legitimate questions about whether there will be much of an audience to see it.
As Coach Prime turns the offense over to true freshman Julian Lewis, Buffs fans have accepted that CU has entered a full-on rebuild in the post-Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter era of the program. There haven’t been many viewers during Kaidon Salter’s run, and there are likely to be fewer now.
While college football analyst and former Penn State tight end Adam Breneman believes the floor for Coach Prime’s program is two million viewers, USA Today’s Brent Schrotenboer revealed the stark reality: even with Coach Prime’s son under center and a Heisman winner on both sides of the ball, Colorado never averaged that.
As Schrotenboer notes, the Buffs are nowhere close to the Alabama Crimson Tide, Georgia Bulldogs, and Ohio State Buckeyes in viewership.
“An average audience of 2 million this season is still strong and would be envied by many major college football teams. It’s just not what Colorado got in the previous two seasons under Sanders when he also had more star players on his team, including his quarterback son Shedeur and two-way star Travis Hunter. By contrast, the most-watched teams this year are averaging around 6 million to 8 million, such as Alabama, Georgia and Ohio State,” Schrotenboer wrote.
Colorado hasn’t been the biggest story in sports for two years
All the media coverage Colorado received during their 3-0 start to the 2023 season gave many college football fans “Prime Time” fatigue off the bat. CU’s ratings took a big dip from 2023 to 2024, when the team was actually good.
Now, with the stars gone and fatigue from their numbers being retired, the audience is gone. Perhaps laying an egg during the Alamo Bowl contributed to the Buffs not being taken seriously anymore.
If Coach Prime couldn’t win with last year’s team, clearly, there isn’t much faith that he can win with who he replaced them with.
As the viewership for Alabama, Georgia, and Ohio State shows, viewers tune in to winners.