MORGANTOWN — To hear Pitt Panthers coach Pat Narduzzi tell it, what Deion Sanders is doing at Colorado this offseason could ruin college football. However, Narduzzi’s Backyard Brawl counterpart, WVU’s Neal Brown, doesn’t see “Coach Prime’s” roster rebuild as anything quite so apocalyptic.
“I think that’s a totally unique situation,” Brown said during an interview with the Dominion Post on Wednesday. “I would say he’s the first superstar (head coach)…He was one of the first (athletes) who really grew a brand and he’s done a great job of social media. He’s got this star quality and it’s the first time that’s ever really went into coaching. I think his deal is a little bit different.”
Sanders, who was hired as Colorado’s head coach in December, has torn the Buffaloes program down to the studs as over 70 players have entered the transfer portal, either of their own volition or at Sanders’s behest, in less than six months. To replenish the roster, Sanders has signed 19 high schoolers and a whopping 50 transfers, including former WVU defensive lineman Taijh Alston.
“That’s not the way it’s meant to be,” Narduzzi said at ACC’s spring meetings last month. “That’s not what the rule intended to be. It was not to overhaul your roster. We’ll see how it works out but that, to me, looks bad on college football coaches across the country.”
Whether Sanders’s approach will succeed is both yet to be seen and hard to predict. Even if the Buffaloes end up being good this season, Brown doesn’t see this scorched Earth approaching to roster construction as something that other coaches will be able to emulate.
“I think his deal is a little bit different because he’s getting recruits and some of it had to do with his past life. That’s not a knock on him, I respect it,” Brown said. “But I don’t think you can look at him and say other traditional coaches can do it that way.”
Former Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley received similar criticism of portal use last year when he moved to USC and took in 20 transfers to Southern California. That worked out great for the Trojans, who improved from 4-8 in 2021 to 11-3 in 2022 with appearances in the Pac-12 title game and the Cotton Bowl.
“With Lincoln at USC, it’s been a mix (of transfers and recruits),” Brown said. “He had a large amount of turnover, I think some of those were the players’ choices, maybe some of those were Lincoln but it wasn’t as much (as Sanders). But he has benefitted from the portal.”
Like with Sanders, however, Brown thinks the circumstances of Riley, one of college football’s top coaches, moving to USC, one of college football’s biggest brands, created a scenario that can’t be replicated.
“Being in LA and being a destination, I think he’s done a good job of taking advantage of that,” Brown said. “I don’t think that just because that’s the way that he was able to compete for a Pac-12 championship right away or that was why he was able to spin the program, I don’t know if that’s the right answer if you’re in different locations. That’s Hollywood.”
Sanders’s actions have kept alive the years-long debate over the transfer portal and its place in college football and stand in stark contrast to traditional coaches like Brown and Narduzzi.
As Sanders goes back and forth to the portal like a buffet, Narduzzi and Brown have lost more than they’ve gained since its inception in 2018.
The Panthers lost 2021 Biletnikoff winner Jordan Addison to Riley at USC last offseason and the Mountaineers lost all-American safety Tykee Smith early in Brown’s tenure and high-rated recruits Akheem Mesidor and Kaden Prather more recently.
Whether coaches like Narduzzi and Brown will be able to continue the cycle of recruiting and developing high school talent or if some schools and conferences are destined to become de facto feeder programs for college football’s top dogs is yet to be seen.
“I think we’re all growing in (using the transfer portal),” Brown said. “The long answer is, I don’t know, I think it’s to be determined. I don’t know if anybody knows because we’ve only been doing this for a couple of years.”
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