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When Deion Sanders arrived at the University of Colorado in 2023, he quickly became one of the most-popular head coaches in the sport.
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While Colorado failed to produce elite teams on the field, they generated elite attention. College football fans loved to tune into Colorado’s games on ABC, ESPN, FOX, etc. TV ratings for Colorado football’s games in 2023 and ’24 were big.
However, in 2025, interest in Deion Sanders’ Colorado football program started to drop. Can that interest go back up in 2026? It’ll be a fascinating topic to cover moving forward into the fall.
Front Office Sports notes that TV ratings for Colorado have been dropping.
“Take the program’s recent history on ESPN. During the 2023 season, the five Colorado games televised by ESPN averaged 6.1 million viewers, say sources. The next year, ESPN averaged 3.4 million over four games. During last season’s disaster, it fell to 2 million viewers over seven games. That’s a 67% drop over a three-season span,” Front Office Sports noted.
“On Fox’s broadcast channel, Colorado games averaged 4.7 million viewers over the past three seasons, sources say. Across Fox broadcast and its sister cable channel, FS1, combined, they averaged 3.8 million viewers.”
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Can Colorado bounce back in 2026?
If interest in Colorado football is going to increase, they’re going to need to win a lot of games, to put it simply.
The novelty effect of Deion Sanders coaching college football sparked a lot of interest early on in his tenure at Colorado. However, that novelty has since worn off.
For interest to bounce back, Colorado will need to play like a premier team. It’s unclear at this point if the Buffaloes can do that.
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This story was originally published August 18, 2026 at 7:33 AM.