How Colorado football’s Deion Sanders became friends with KU coach Lance Leipold
Kansas Jayhawks football coach Lance Leipold and Deion Sanders, his counterpart with the Colorado Buffaloes, are a contrast in styles.
The reserved Leipold has a sense of dry humor. And “Coach Prime”? Well, he’s pretty much the opposite.
Yet somehow the pair has formed an unlikely bond. And now, the two Big 12 head coaches will square off Saturday at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium. KU faces Colorado at 2:30 p.m.
The Buffs are 2.5-point favorites.
“I love him to life,” Sanders said of Leipold. “He’s a friend. He’s reached out to me and I reach out to him probably every few weeks.”
Sanders said he appreciates the support from peers like the Jayhawks’ head coach.
“I didn’t know any of these coaches .... and for these guys to, on their own account, reach out to me, to show me love and respect, is tremendous,” Sanders said. “But he’s been consistent since media day. I have the utmost respect in regards for him and his team.”
On the surface their personalities might seem to clash a bit, but they share at least one significant similarity: they’ve each proven adept at building out a college football program.
The Buffaloes (8-2, 6-1 Big 12) are tied top the league (with BYU) in Sanders’ second season in Boulder. He led CU to a 4-8 record last season; the season before Sanders’ arrival, in 2023, the Buffs went an abysmal 1-11.
Their steady improvement echoes what Leipold has done at Kansas. Before his 2021 hire, the Jayhawks were 0-9 in 2020. They’ve since improved to 2-10 in 2021, 6-7 in 2022 and 9-4 in 2023.
The commonalities between Leipold and Sanders don’t stop there. Both worked their way up the game’s coaching ranks: Leipold started his coaching career in Division III, while Sanders coached an HBCU, Jackson State, from 2020-22.
Leipold was head coach at University of Wisconsin–Whitewater from 2007-14 and Buffalo from 2015-20. He led Wisconsin-Whitewater to six Division III national championships.
“I have a lot of respect for Coach Sanders, Coach Prime, and how he’s gone about it,” Leipold said. “I told him that one of the first times I met him, because the thing that we do have in common is we’ve come up through ranks that aren’t necessarily conventional to get a Power Four football job. He coached high school football.
“He coached at an HBCU university that doesn’t have many resources, and he found a way to be successful, and he found a way to build this program (Colorado) and his own philosophy. And I told him when I met him in Arizona how much respect I had for him because of that.”
The Jayhawks’ season hasn’t exactly gone as planned. With four wins to date and just two games left, they need to beat Colorado in order to stay in bowl contention.
It certainly won’t be easy: Sanders’ Buffaloes have won four straight.
“They’re a very talented team. They’re playing with a lot of confidence, again, in all three phases,” Leipold said. “They’ve been highly productive. And he’s got himself a really good football team with a chance to play a lot of football yet.”
