Chad Brown’s first instinct was to check the date.
No, it wasn’t April Fool’s Day.
“I had no idea whatsoever,” Brown said. “I hadn’t heard of anyone who heard it was happening. Everybody from my era was just as caught off guard as I was.”
Five days before Deion Sanders’ third spring game as Colorado’s head coach, the school announced it would be retiring Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter’s No. 12 jersey and quarterback Shedeur Sanders’ No. 2.
Hunter’s and Sanders’ two-year careers in Boulder came to an end on Dec. 28, less than four months ago. And last Saturday, their names and numbers were memorialized in Folsom Field during the spring scrimmage.
Brown is a member of Colorado’s 1990 national title team under Bill McCartney and became a two-time All-Big Eight linebacker and a second-round pick who played more than a decade in the NFL. He said he’s not the only one taken aback by the decision.
“Not a lot of numbers have been retired over the years,” Brown said. “For this to be the exact opposite of our experience is one of the reasons why it was so different to see this.”
Just four other Colorado players have had their numbers retired. The last had come in 2017 when Rashaan Salaam, who won the 1994 Heisman Trophy, was honored a year after his death.
Said another member of Colorado’s 1990 national title team, granted anonymity to speak candidly on the issue: “We’re celebrating mediocrity. Where are the wins? Where are the top-10 finishes? Go Buffs for life, but you have to just hold your nose and deal with it.”
Colorado handed Deion Sanders the keys to the kingdom when it hired him in December 2022, set him on the throne and handed him a crown. Athletic director Rick George was all in on the Coach Prime Experience coming to Boulder — and it’s George who led the charge to retire Shedeur’s and Hunter’s jerseys, according to a person briefed on the decision. George has defended CU retiring the jerseys in a statement.
Sanders runs the program his way, with a level of control that made the university so attractive to him. Initially, there was a heavy reliance on transfers that required lowering the university’s admissions standards and received plenty of outside criticism. He’s filled his staff with his friends from when he was still coaching youth football and leaned into bringing in Pro Football Hall of Famers with major resumes as players and little to no experience coaching.
It’s worked. He has a new $10 million a year contract to show for it after a 9-4 season in 2024.
Most of the criticism about the jersey retirements has come from people who claimed the black and gold long before Sanders joined the Buffs. Colorado fans and the legions of Deion Sanders fans have forged an uneasy alliance since Sanders’ arrival from Jackson State. Sanders’ star turn as a player, along with his foray into college coaching and YouTube stardom, built a resurgent fan base of all ages.
Will this controversy be the first to stick to Sanders and affect his tenure at Colorado? The reality in college football is much is tolerated when a program is winning. And right now, Sanders is a winning coach who has revitalized the program.
The saga has been hotly debated in public and in private, with former player and assistant coach Darrin Chiaverini and other Buffs expressing their displeasure on social media.
“The excitement and the notoriety that Shedeur and Travis have brought to the University of Colorado is unquestioned, but retiring these numbers before recognizing previous great players in CU history needs to be addressed,” Chiaverini wrote, adding a long list of former Buffs he would like to see honored.
Darian Hagan, a former quarterback widely considered one of the best Buffaloes in program history and former longtime staffer, reposted Chiaverini’s note.
Tyler Polumbus, a two-year starter who was on the roster from 2003-07 and later won a Super Bowl with the Denver Broncos, posted a stream to his X account, calling it a mistake.
“This is the first decision that Deion Sanders has made that has really enraged the alumni, including myself,” Polumbus said, later clarifying he was mostly referring to bestowing the honor upon Shedeur Sanders.
Rick Neuheisel, who was the Buffaloes’ offensive coordinator in 1994 and head coach from 1995-98, said that the honor came too soon and at the cost of passing up former players. But with Sanders’ approval rating soaring, some past players don’t want to speak out.
“(Deion) has built a castle, so to speak, and it’s very hard to get through the moat,” said Neuheisel, an analyst for CBS and XM radio host.
Five former players from the McCartney era (1982-1994) declined to speak with The Athletic about the jersey retirement.
“If you b— and complain, you look jealous and envious, and you’re just a hater,” said the anonymous member of the 1990 team.
A day after the announcement, Sanders addressed what he called “the elephant in the room.”
“We‘re talking about Shedeur. We ain’t talking about nobody else. If his last name wasn’t Sanders, we wouldn’t have this discussion. Only reason we’re having this discussion is his last name is Sanders. That’s it,” Deion said.
Brown said that Sanders’ insistence on the criticism coming because of who he is speaks to his disconnect with the program’s proud past.
“The idea we wouldn’t be having this conversation or we’re only having it because it’s Deion’s son, well it would also be fair to say he wouldn’t be getting this consideration if he wasn’t Deion’s son. It goes both ways,” Brown said. “If we’re going to ignore the legacy of the greatest era ever of Colorado football and act like it was invented three years ago, it’s dismissing, disrespecting and in some ways trying to erase the greatness of past players.”
Sanders has welcomed former quarterback Kordell Stewart and former receiver Michael Westbrook as frequent guests at games and practices. In 2023, he campaigned to have Westbrook’s Paul Warfield Trophy, honoring the best wide receiver in college football, displayed in the team facility.
Former Colorado quarterback turned Fox Sports analyst Joel Klatt has forged a relationship with the new staff of outsiders as well. But on Fox Sports 1, he called the decision “not a good look.”
“With Shedeur, it’s way too easy to say, ‘Would this happen if he had a different name on his back?’ And that becomes a disservice to Shedeur.”
Klatt said he reached out to George to voice his disapproval.
“Recognizing the accomplishments of a Heisman Trophy winner and record-setting quarterback who ushered in this new era of CU football now does not detract from accomplishments of the past,” George said in his statement. “Rather, it adds to the rich legacy of CU football that has been passed down over the years by everyone who has worn a CU uniform.”
Brown said he hasn’t spoken to George about the jersey retirement, but they have a relationship dating to 1988, when George was working in the program’s recruiting and football operations.
“The leapfrogging has already been done,” Brown said. “Does Rick George go back and start this process? Who do you start it with? What guys of our eras? Who picks this? Who chooses this? Who chose this one?
“It seems like it would be a committee kind of thing of folks who understand the legacy and the history of CU football, and maybe some newer folks. … But as far as I know, nothing like that was done.”
There’s no standard for how many or when schools retire jerseys across the sport. Most schools have retired only a handful. Some do it immediately. Others wait decades. Some have clear baseline criteria like being named an All-American or winning a major award or championship. Some do not. At USC, in particular, it’s simple: Heisman Trophy winners have jerseys retired immediately. There are no other guidelines. Other schools will make it a focus under a coach or athletic director and honor a cluster of players from the past they deem worthy.
Neuheisel said from his conversations with past players, the alumni wanted to know why other past greats weren’t granted the same honor if the new standard for retiring jerseys is less exclusive.
“You’ve got all these former Buffaloes that really laid it out there for the Buffs and were decorated All-Americans like Alfred Williams or Matt Russell or Chris Hudson. I’m thinking like, golly, you should’ve retired all these guys, not just these two who’ve been there for two seasons,” Neuheisel said. “ I’ve always said let’s just retire their jerseys, not their numbers.”
After the spring game and ceremony on Saturday, Colorado announced a planned statue of McCartney, who died in January, that had been in the works for more than a year.
“I’m sad because I wanted him to see that,” Sanders said of McCartney. “He can’t see that. Same thing with Rashaan Salaam. How long did we wait? I say we because I’m a part of CU now. How long did we wait?” Sanders said. “So we gotta die to get recognized?”
The program’s second Heisman Trophy winner, Hunter, won two other major awards and was a unanimous All-American. The decision to honor him has garnered a fraction of the criticism of Shedeur Sanders, who won the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award and went 13-12 as a starting quarterback. Sanders wasn’t named to any All-America teams but won Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year and set the single-season school record for touchdown passes. Both players are expected to be first-round picks in the NFL Draft on Thursday.
The criticism, Brown says, isn’t about denigrating the recent players.
Brown pointed to Deon Figures, who won the Thorpe Award while also wearing No. 2 and was later inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. He nabbed a game-sealing interception to beat Notre Dame and bring Colorado its national title.
Shedeur Sanders’ name in Folsom Field sits next to Joe Romig, a two-time All-American who went on to be a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. Hunter’s name is two spots to the left of Byron “Whizzer” White, who was an All-American in 1937 and the runner-up for the Heisman Trophy. He later served on the Supreme Court for 31 years after being appointed by John F. Kennedy.
“I’m not a hater. I’ve bled on the field. I’ve contributed off the field. I’ve coughed up money. It’s not me pushing back on the program or Coach Prime or Travis or Shedeur,” Brown said. “It’s fighting for recognition of players from my era who clearly deserve to be included in this conversation.”
— The Athletic’s Christopher Kamrani contributed reporting.
(Top photo: Dustin Bradford / Getty Images for ONIT)
