Keeler: Prime is to Blame for Losing his Louis Luggage

Furthermore, tailback  Alton McCaskill IV, a former four-star transfer from Houston is a big back who thumps opponents and finds holes where they do not exist. McCaskill took to the portal as well. He is going, going, gone.

McCaskill missed most of 2023 with what many believe to be a phantom injury. Following his departure, the kid's father took to twitter and said he was healthy, he was just the victim of Prime playing favorites. Later, the younger McCaskill took to his own account to shoot down some of these rumors, but the damage was already done. 

Prime shakes the losses and the mass exodus off and believes that his program is put under a microscope because of his presence.

“I think this would be (the same with) every school. That’s not just here,” Sanders said when I asked about the quantity of departures. “That’s what every school (deals with). You (media) guys just are compensated to pay attention to us a little more than anybody else.”

Last season Prime was singing a different tune when he arrived in Boulder ahead of his inaugural campaign as head coach of the Buffaloes. He claimed that he was bringing in his own players, or luggage as he referred to them, and claimed they were Louis Vuitton luggage. 

There would be no bowl game and there would be no accolades. Prime simply hand-picked his players and they got their butts kicked. That is when the rumblings started as to who would be on the next plane out.

So far 27 of the 51 transfers that Prime brought in, are leaving the same way they came in, through the portal. These were Prime's guys. They were recruited and hand-picked by Prime. Now that they are leaving, they are afterthoughts.

The way Prime talks about the players that came and went, you would think that they were Louis Vuitton knock offs that you buy in Battery Park by the Statue of Liberty.

“A lot of people are fighting for backups,” Sanders said. “When a guy is a starter and he transfers, you’ve really gotta think about that. We have some coming in for visits pretty soon, we can attract those type of players, but I don’t think we’re losing those type of players. And if we do, we’re good.”

After what Keeler terms a "dumpster fire" of a team from 2022, Prime was destined to do great things when his transfers arrived on campus. After a 3-0 start, Prime and the Buffs lost eight of their next nine and finished the season at 4-8. 

McClain was not a transfer. He was a kid that was coming in straight from high school and was adjusting to college life and football. Prime kicked him when he was down and McClain never got back up, despite four starts in a Colorado uniform.

It's Prime's fault that he lost McClain, who has tremendous upside. He should have been coached up last summer to start opposite Travis Hunter and that could have been a deadly tandem. Prime did nothing to help McClain and let him flounder. 

What a waste of an asset. 

“I want the best for him. I really do,” Coach Prime said of McClain. “I want that kid to soar. I want him to man up. I want him to be the best possible athlete and human being he can be. I want him to fulfill all those dreams that his mother and he desire. I really, really do.”

Nowadays it's one thing to get a player, but its another thing to keep a player. With the advent of the transfer portal, if you do not coach a kid up the way you should, he will leave for a school that will pay attention to him and give him the time of day that he is seeking.

McClain will find that school and Prime will look back and see that this was his greatest coaching mistake, ever.