CU football beats out multiple SEC schools for talented cornerback recruit

Whenever Coach Prime and CU football need to go out and find a talented player to fill a hole on the roster, they go out and get the job done, and this week has been no different. After a massive recruiting weekend up in Boulder, the final one before the summer recruiting dead period, Prime made some moves and got a hard commitment from one of the best young cornerbacks in the class of 2026.

BREAKING: Four-Star CB Preston Ashley has Committed to Colorado, he tells me for @on3recruits

The 6’0 185 CB from Brandon, MS chose the Buffaloes over Florida & Florida State

“If u wanna be da best you gotta get coach by the best. We coming!”https://t.co/ngW9WUzD99 pic.twitter.com/ctd4TFNWWq

— Hayes Fawcett (@Hayesfawcett3) June 24, 2025

Preston Ashley, a 5-foot-10, 180-pound corner out of Mississippi, opted to head West to Boulder instead of going to schools closer to home such as Ole Miss, Florida, Auburn and Florida State. According to On3’s recruiting profile, Ashley had a 91.3% chance to land with his home state Rebels and just a 2.9% chance to head out to Boulder, over 1,000 miles away from his home.

He was rated as a four-star prospect by On3.

Ashley also said that part of his decision had to do with the positions that defensive coordinator Robert Livingston put Travis Hunter in to make plays a season ago en route to winning the Heisman Trophy. While Hunter has some intangibles and a football IQ that is unteachable, Livingston’s defensive scheme is what turned Colorado into the Big 12’s sixth-best defense a season ago compared to when the program was the second-worst team in the Pac 12 in Prime’s first season.

Compared to the rest of the 2026 class, Ashley is rated as the 249th overall prospect, the 23rd-best cornerback and the 11th-best player out of Mississippi. In his junior year of high school, he had 68 total tackles, one sack, one interception and one forced fumble. His school was the runner-up in the Class 7A playoffs and finished the season with a 12-2 record.

This is a huge get for CU, as they will need to replace the talents of D.J. McKinney when he heads to the NFL Draft in 2026 assuming everything goes as planned, as he is currently seen as one of the top corners in the class.

CU football is just over two months away, with the season set to kick off from Folsom Field’s new turf on Aug. 29 against Georgia Tech. Find the full schedule, with all announced TV times, here.

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