Colorado strikes gold with Deion Sanders, as coach's debut season rakes in whopping $127M for the Buffaloes

Deion Sanders was a massive success financially for the Colorado Buffaloes. Colorado hired Sanders to be their coach, and he made the school the talk of college football for the first couple of weeks.

The Buffaloes started the season with an upset win over TCU, who had gone to the national championship the year before. Colorado started the year 3-0, which saw College GameDay and Big Noon Kickoff have their shows on campus.

Now, the University of Colorado Boulder has filed its annual financial report to the NCAA for fiscal year 2023, which brought in tons of money. Colorado’s total operating revenue for all sports amounted to $127,028,292, a massive increase of $32.2 million from 2022. It's also the first time Colorado Athletics brought in over $100 million in revenue.

Meanwhile, the school didn't spend much more money than usual. The total operating revenue for the football team was $50.1 million in 2023, which was just less than a million more than what they had spent in 2022.

As for ticket sales, the school generated $15.7 million, of which 83% was from the football program, which also generated $1.5 million in revenue from concessions, programs, parking and other miscellaneous items.

Despite getting over $100 million in revenue, Colorado Athletics did not turn a profit in 2023, but the football program turned a profit of $15.1 million. The only other program that turned a profit for Colorado was its basketball team, which made a $1.3 million profit in 2023.

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Deion Sanders is focused on 2024

After starting out strong, Colorado ended 2023 with a 4-8 record, losing six straight games.

Heading into 2024, Colorado will join the Big 12, and Deion Sanders has confidence in his team. Deion Sanders spent most of the off-season fixing his offensive and defensive line issues, which he expects to be the difference.

“Every other game was within six, seven, eight points, maybe. So we were in a multitude of games. We were in 10 games. We got our butts kicked twice. So filling those needs is gonna be a wonderful thing.

"We know what we want. We know how we want it. We know who we want it. We have already identified it and we’re gonna go get it. I promise you we’re gonna go get it," Sanders said, via Gridiron Heroics."

Colorado will open its 2024 season at home against North Dakota State on Aug. 31.