Deion Sanders Is SI’s 2023 Sportsperson of the Year

From Sports Illustrated by Pat Forde

November 30, 2023

“In less than a year, Coach Prime has not only transformed a moribund Colorado football program. He’s also breathed fresh life into the campus and transformed a community.

[…]

There are numbers that define the Prime Effect upon the University of Colorado in Boulder, a place that hasn’t always had a chummy relationship with football. First-year applications are up 26.4% year over year; Black or African American applications are up 80.6%; nonresident applications are up 29.8%; and international applications are up 38.4% from 97 countries, including 16 that didn’t have any applications last year. While those numbers cannot be definitively linked to Sanders, others can be: September sales at the school’s online team store were up 2,544% over the same month in 2022. Every home game in 50,183-seat Folsom Field was sold out for the first time in school history.”

[…]

At [The Sophomore], a newly opened, locally owned sports bar, an eclectic group of civic leaders gathered for lunch in mid-November and wound up heaping hosannas on Coach Prime. “There is a hum in this town I haven’t seen in my 23 years here,” said city council member Matt Benjamin, a Colorado graduate and season-ticket holder. “It’s just infectious. People who know nothing about college football are talking about Coach Prime, talking about the CU Buffs. He’s bringing people in who were peripheral before.”

- Pat Forde, Sports Illustrated

Read the full article by Pat Forde on Sports Illustrated about Deion Sander’s impact on The University of Colorado Boulder and the sporting community.