Sports Illustrated surprises with Deion Sanders announcement

Thursday's announcement comes two days after it was reported that Sports Illustrated used artificial intelligence (AI) to produce some of its articles, even going so far as to have AI-generated profiles of writers who don't exist in real life. The long-running magazine was vehemently called out for the alleged act afterward.

For "Coach Prime's" honor, Sports Illustrated senior writer Pat Forde explained that the 56-year-old's selection has merit.

"There are numbers that define the Prime Effect upon the University of Colorado in Boulder, a place that hasn’t always had a chummy relationship with football," Forde wrote. "First-year applications are up 26.4% year over year; Black or African American applications are up 80.6%; nonresident applications are up 29.8%; and international applications are up 38.4% from 97 countries, including 16 that didn’t have any applications last year. While those numbers cannot be definitively linked to Sanders, others can be: September sales at the school’s online team store were up 2,544% over the same month in 2022. Every home game in 50,183-seat Folsom Field was sold out for the first time in school history."

More directly related to college football, Sanders and the Buffaloes had the most-watched game of the season, according to Forde, racking up 10.03 million viewers during their Sept. 23 loss to Oregon. Colorado also had five of the 13 most-watched games of the campaign, showing the impact of Pro Football Hall of Famer.

However, as many commenters pointed out, the Buffaloes had a brutal end to the season.

Following a 3-0 start where they ranked as high as 18th in the country, Sanders and company dropped eight of their final nine games. Colorado also had one of the worst defenses in the nation, ranking 122nd out of 133 teams in opponents points per game (34.8).