Colorado Football, Deion Sanders will be tested early in 2023

Colorado football won’t be eased into the Deion Sanders era this fall. Schedules are out and the Buffs got a tough draw out of the gate.

All honeymoons must come to an end sooner or later. For Colorado football and Deion Sanders, the inklings of the end of their mile-high ride came on Wednesday with the release of the 2023 Pac-12 schedule. Sanders and Co. were always going to have to back up their bravado with winning, but the difficulty of that task became much clearer this week.

Despite Sanders’ efforts to adjust the schedule, a potential Week 0 matchup with Arizona State  — who went 3-9 last season — was scrapped. Instead, the Buffs open their season on the road on Sep. 2 against TCU, a team that played in the national championship which Sanders tried to slip the Week 0 news.

Colorado follows up that game with home games against Nebraska (Sep. 9) and Colorado State (Sep. 16) before a road trip to Oregon (Sep. 23). Next, they return home to host USC (Sep. 30).

Coach Prime and his squad will likely be underdogs in at least three of those matchups and new leadership in Lincoln should make that Week 3 contest much more challenging than it might have seemed a few weeks ago. Simply put, Colorado is going to have to show a vast improvement very quickly if the current emotional high is going to be prolonged into the fall.

For the time being, though, Colorado football will continue to build up all the goodwill it can before the games arrive. Sanders has already taken advantage of the Transfer Portal and likely isn’t done doing so. Adding more talent to the roster as rapidly as possible is a must, especially with the daunting schedule that looms ahead for the Buffs.