Colorado won by 31 points, and Deion Sanders still was not impressed. The Buffs beat Weber State 52-21 on Saturday, but the score did little to hide the problems he saw underneath it. Penalties, special teams mistakes, and players failing to handle the work expected away from the field were enough to keep Sanders from celebrating. For him, a comfortable win does not excuse sloppy habits.
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On BuffsTV, Deion Sanders told Mark Johnson that Colorado players were allowed to decide how much film they should watch each week, and they settled on three hours. Sanders agreed to the number, but attached a clear consequence: “You don’t watch three hours of film, you’re not playing. You don’t dress. I don’t want to see you until that following probably Tuesday.”
Colorado was not taking players at their word, either. Sanders said the program tracks exactly how much film each player watches, then used their own phone habits against them. He had some of the team’s best players pull up their weekly screen time during a morning meeting. One was at five and a half hours, another at seven, while several others were hovering around four or five.
“It was all well over four to five hours that you’re spending on your cell phone just scrolling on apps,” he said. “And you can’t watch three and we paying you. I got a problem with that.”
And Sanders is not bluffing about the punishment. Players who fail to complete their film work can be held out of practice, and when he was asked whether preparation shows up in their performance, his answer was immediate.
“Oftentimes, yeah, and the ones that didn’t watch any, they didn’t get to practice today,” he said.
That frustration made more sense once Sanders broke down the Weber State win. Colorado may have put up 52 points, but 13 penalties for 107 yards told a different story. The Buffs were also flagged three times for delay of game, along with a false start, adding to the kind of sloppy mistakes that kept Sanders from treating a 31-point win like a clean performance.
What bothered Sanders most was the lack of awareness. He pointed to a late field-goal situation where players were sitting on the sideline talking instead of getting onto the field. That is why film matters to him: a 31-point win can hide missed assignments, penalties, and mental mistakes on the scoreboard, but the tape exposes all of it.
“I know it seemed like a lopsided win, but when you really look at the film and understand what was supposed to happen on this play or that play,” he said. “You can’t tolerate that. No, you can’t allow that to continue. You got to put your foot in and on it right now.”
That standard will be tested quickly. Colorado heads to Northwestern this weekend with a chance to move to 3-0, but Sanders has already made it clear that the Weber State scoreline will not make him overlook the mistakes that came with it.
“We can do better,” he told Romi Bean this week. “I’m not ungrateful for the victory, but we could’ve performed better in a multitude of ways, offensively, defensively as well as special teams.”
And this is hardly a new side of Sanders.
Long before the three-hour film rule became an issue at Colorado, he had built his programs around strict accountability and attention to detail. In 2023, five-star cornerback Cormani McClain was kept off the field because Sanders did not believe his practice habits were good enough, and when asked what was holding him back, Sanders simply said, “He is.” Even his own son was not exempt.
At Jackson State, Sanders benched Shilo Sanders for the SWAC championship game against Southern after he arrived late to the first team meeting following Thanksgiving break. For Sanders, talent, recruiting status, and even family ties have never been enough to override preparation and discipline.
For Deion Sanders, winning is only part of the job. The preparation has to match it. And if a player cannot give three hours to film, he has already shown what comes next.