Colorado football’s recent loss to Arizona drew the lowest TV audience of the Deion Sanders era.
The team’s average viewership has declined from 6 million in 2023 to about 2 million this season.
Competition from Game 7 of the World Series contributed to the record-low viewership for the Arizona game.
Colorado football coach Deion Sanders has hit new lows on the field in recent weeks with back-to-back blowout losses, including his worst loss as a college head coach and another change in direction at quarterback. Now comes news of another new depth — his lowest recorded television audience in three seasons in charge of the Buffaloes.
His team’s 52-17 loss against Arizona on Nov. 1 drew an average of just 374,000 on FS1, Fox Sports confirmed to USA TODAY Sports. That is by far the smallest recorded audience under Sanders at Colorado, even lower than his previous low two years ago, a 56-14 loss at Washington State, which drew an average of 727,000 on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023.
One big reason for it was the Arizona-Colorado game competed against Game 7 of the baseball World Series on Fox on the same night. If the Toronto Blue Jays had won Game 6 against the Los Angeles Dodgers the night before on Oct. 31, Colorado would have played on the main Fox channel instead on Nov. 1 and got a much bigger audience.
But it still tracks with a downward trend this year for Sanders.
Is there a TV viewership ‘floor’ with Deion Sanders?
The Buffaloes are 3-6 this year and are averaging about 2 million viewers this season, down from roughly 4 million on average in 2024 and 6 million in 2023. That doesn’t include three games in 2023 that were on the now-defunct Pac-12 Conference Networks, which didn’t reveal audience numbers.
“There will always be a floor with Deion on TV; you may always get 2 million viewers,” said Adam Breneman, a college football analyst and former Penn State tight end. “But to get up to 4 to 6 million, you’ve got to win some games now because he’s not a TV novelty anymore on the sideline. He’s become a long-term brand experiment in college football.”
An average audience of 2 million this season is still strong and would be envied by many major college football teams. It’s just not what Colorado got in the previous two seasons under Sanders when he also had more star players on his team, including his quarterback son Shedeur and two-way star Travis Hunter. By contrast, the most-watched teams this year are averaging around 6 million to 8 million, such as Alabama, Georgia and Ohio State.
‘Current act seems to be running a little thin’
The Arizona game was the first for Colorado this season that wasn’t picked up by the Fox main channel or ESPN. Colorado’s game at West Virginia on Nov. 8 will be on TNT.
This underscores just how big of a draw Sanders is even with his team isn’t so good. It stems from his fame and accomplishments going back to the late 1980s.
“Everybody might be entitled to 15 minutes of fame; Deion Sanders is going on 40 years of it,” said Robert Thompson, longtime TV expert and professor at Syracuse. Thompson called Sanders a “master of the show business,” with credits including ‘Walker Texas Ranger’, ‘Saturday Night Live’ and his pro sports career in baseball and football.
“He’s been as compelling to watch when he wasn’t playing as when he was, and it’s been an extraordinary run,” Thompson told USA TODAY Sports. “But his current act seems to be running a little thin. Yes, the viewership of his team’s games is still strong, but the downward trend is big… and fast. Deion Sanders will always be fun to watch, the Buffaloes maybe not.”
Colorado’s previous audiences were off-the-chart small
Before Sanders was hired at Colorado in late 2022, half of Colorado’s games were telecast on the Pac-12 Networks, which no longer exists and whose audiences weren’t measured by the media metrics company Nielsen. The Buffaloes finished that year with a 1-11 record.
Last year, when the Buffs finished 9-4, all their games were on ESPN, Fox, ABC, CBS or NBC. Only two of those games recorded average audience of under 3 million viewers, according to data reported by the networks and Sports Media Watch. This year, only one game has drawn an average audience of more than 3 million — the season opener against Georgia Tech on ESPN (3.94 million).
In the bigger picture, it’s been difficult for Sanders’ team to achieve the meteoric heights it reached to start Sanders’ first season at Colorado in 2023, when the Buffaloes finished sixth nationally in average viewership behind Alabama and Michigan, which each had more than 8.5 million average viewers, according to Colorado.
There’s a way out of this downward trend for Deion Sanders
The Buffs started 3-0 that year with three average audiences of more than 7.25 million. Then in their fourth game at Oregon on ABC, they drew more than 10 million, which remains the biggest audience for Colorado under Sanders. The Buffs lost that one, 42-6, and finished the season with a 4-8 record. After that game, Sanders said, “This is the worst we’re gonna be. You better get me right now.”
Unfortunately for him, it got worse in recent weeks. It’s not over, though. Sanders is giving freshman quarterback Julian “JuJu” Lewis his first college start at West Virginia. If he helps revive the season, that’s another compelling reason to watch.
“These media companies are just trying to get the best viewership and who gets them the eyeballs, and that’s clearly been Deion,” Breneman told USA TODAY Sports. “But at the end of the day, you’ve got to win.”
Follow Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com
