DROP THE MIKE

The Buffaloes are about to find out just how the sausage is really made

Dec 7, 2022, 6:43 AM

For years, I’ve said this about major college football and basketball – it’s the ultimate sausage factory. Translation: No one wants to know how it’s made; you only want to enjoy it.

The University of Colorado, thankfully, is realizing this with the hiring of Deion Sanders. A university like Colorado cannot be a big-time player in college football doing it the “right” way, whatever that is. Go ask David Shaw. No one tries to do it the right way more than Stanford, but when you no longer have guys like Christian McCaffery and Andrew Luck, you go 14-48 over a four-year span and you walk away.

Props to CU, athletic director Rick George and their powers that be for pursuing Prime, paying Prime, relaxing transfer regulations and loudly proclaiming to their long-suffering alumni and fan base, “We’re ready to go big time!”

Let’s be honest. Hiring Deion Sanders is what it means to jump into the sausage factory. This is why big-time college football and basketball coaches get paid so much. It’s not for their playbook. It’s not for their X’s and O’s. It’s because they are charismatic men, backed by seemingly unlimited resources, available to be used to attract the greatest talent.

Entering the sausage factory means coming in during your opening press conference and saying that you’re going to try to run you current players off; that you don’t want losers. That you want to create more room for your guys.

That CU football player studying to get his degree and be that good student-athlete that the NCAA laughingly promotes as what big-time college sports is suddenly is collateral damage in the pursuit of the almighty college football treasure trove. “You’re a great student who goes to all his classes, but you can’t cover a running back in the flat? See ya.”

Entering the college sports sausage factory means lessening academic requirements. It means accepting transfers that will only be around your university for a couple of years and will make a minimal impact on campus but hopefully will help you win a Pac-12 championship.

Please don’t get me wrong. I don’t have a problem with any of it. I went to Syracuse. You think I feel less about the ‘Cuse winning a national title because Carmelo Anthony was only there one year? Nope. I want my school to spend money. I want my school to make it easier for athletes to get in. I want my school to compete. If that means cutting a few corners and not always doing things the “right” way, then so be it.

And before you climb up on your soapbox to moralize about what college sports is supposed to represent as part of the university’s overall mission, allow me to stop you right there. Having a big-time football and/or basketball program only help the overall university.

If CU football takes off, watch what it does for enrollment. Trust me, impressionable teenagers deciding on where to go to school are drawn to colleges that have big-time, winning, fun, cool football and basketball teams. Even super-smart future doctors, engineers and nuclear physicists like the idea of having fun in college going to big time football and basketball games.

It’s why I’ve called it the sausage factory for years. End of the day? If you’re a CU fan, you don’t care how the sausage is made. You just to throw it on the grill and enjoy it.

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