Deion Sanders reveals dream for Buffs, bringing D1 baseball back

Way back in the day Fred Folsom coached led the Colorado Silver and Gold football and baseball teams, coaching each and winning some conference titles on the gridiron. Folsom, whom the now 100-year-old stadium where the Buffs now play is named after, is one of many who weren’t limited to one sport in that different era.

Nearly 50 years after Folsom’s death, Deion Sanders was staring in Super Bowls and World Series games. The incredible star multi-sport athlete known as Prime Time could become the first true multi-sport coach at CU-Boulder in ages. That is of course, if the Colorado Buffaloes are able to re-add baseball as a D1 sport after it was cut in 1980 due to cuts stemming from Title IX.

“That’s my dream, I want to be so dominant… we’re gonna command so much revenue to this program that we’re gonna add a baseball team,” Sanders said on the CU Coaches Show this week. “That’s the dream, that’s the goal.”

Luckily for Sanders his boss, Colorado athletic director Rick George, is also a multi-sport guy with an interest in both football and baseball. George was not an Atlanta Brave,—or get 500 big league hits—but George worked in the front office of the Texas Rangers before coming back to CU, where he worked fresh out of college. Unfortunately for Coach Prime, George has talked a big game at times about adding sports and in particular baseball and if anything the school has regressed not made progress in that hope.

Colorado leaving the Pac-12, where they were the only school lacking a baseball program, to goto the Big 12 where they wouldn’t be alone in that isn’t a good sign for Sanders dream. Though, that sign is not a crushing blow.

The Buffaloes have been boasting about the coffers for quite a bit now and behind Prime do not have the same issue that led to the sport being cut half a century ago. The school does have some room on campus for addition athletic facilities, though a baseball field of D1 quality currently does not exist in Boulder. The Buffaloes would need to start by adding more women’s sports to comply with Title IX and perhaps softball would be a good sibling.

Currently the Buffaloes only field 15 D1 programs, six of which are mens.

Baseball is a great chance for the school to add given the talent coming out of Colorado currently, as prep hardball has taken off in the Centennial State over the past decade or so. The pipeline would be right here at home and the state’s two D1 programs—Air Force and Northern Colorado—have many challenges the Buffaloes would not.

Boulder itself has a deep history of baseball that is not limited to the school’s successes like Jay Howell and John Stearns. Recently the North Boulder Little League squad has made it to several Little League World Series. In the past, the summer wood bat Boulder Collegians, who were reborn a decade ago, fielded players like Tony Gywnn, Joe Carter, Joe Maddon, Jim Deshaies, Keith Moreland, Burt Hooton, Howell and plenty more major leaguers.

Colorado does have a club baseball team and I’ve spent years on this specific topic. It may take years for the team to actually take the field after the plans come together but there is a scenario in which the Buffaloes have one of the better baseball programs in the land—who could’ve foreseen it taking Sanders to spark this?

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