Six weeks of college football have come and gone and one thing is now abundantly clear, Colorado and Deion Sanders are in high demand.
Even after two losses — one a blowout to Oregon, the other a much closer setback to USC — the Buffaloes and Coach Prime remain must watch television for millions of people.
Per Sports Media Watch, Colorado has either had the most watched game or second-most watched game every week this season, save for this most recent one as Pac-12 Network isn’t Nielsen rated (Colorado played Arizona State), plus Week 0 when CU didn’t play.
Moreover, the Buffs have drawn 7 million-plus viewers every week, topping out at over 10 million during the game against the Ducks, which was televised on ABC.
Of the top 10 most watched games this season, Colorado has five of them, including the two of three most watched — Colorado at Oregon (10.03 million), Ohio State at Notre Dame (9.98 million) and Colorado vs. Colorado State (9.3 million).
Colorado’s loss to USC averaged 7.24 million viewers, the Buffs’ smallest audience of the season, but it is still the ninth-most watched game this season.
It hasn’t mattered much what channel the Buffaloes are on either, be it ABC, ESPN, Fox. Coach Prime and company have simply drawn record-breaking audiences again and again.
It isn’t just on TV where the Coach Prime effect has been seen, though.
Per On3 Sports, Colorado football now has more than 1 million followers on Instagram, putting the program on the same footing as LSU, Alabama and Ohio State as the only FBS programs to have 1 million-plus followers on the social media platform.
Incredibly, Colorado had only 58,000 followers on Instagram before Sanders was hired as head coach last December.
At 4-2 this season, the Buffaloes are projected to reach six games and go bowling for the first time since the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, with home games remaining against Stanford, Oregon State and Arizona and trips to UCLA, Washington State and Utah.