Before he transferred to Colorado, Shedeur Sanders was tearing up the competition at Jackson State, an HBCU in Jackson, Mississippi. People who never played competitive sports love to hate on Shedeur Sanders’s father, NFL Hall of Famer Deion Sanders. Unfortunately, the hate seems to transfer to Shedeur. The young quarterback lives a bodacious life on and off the field, but the kid can spin the football.
Before Colorado, Shedeur Sanders started his career in Mississippi with Jackson State. He initially committed to play football at Florida Atlantic University for head coach Willie Taggart. Once it became official that his father got the head coaching job at Jackson State, Sanders flipped his commitment to go play for his dad. Even if it wasn’t a Power Five school, Sanders knew playing for his dad could be special.
The current favorite for the Heisman Trophy, Travis Hunter also saw how special it could be to play for a legend like Deion Sanders. He flipped his commitment from Florida State to Jackson State, throwing a curveball at the college football landscape. Everyone bashed them, but it’s now safe to say that the duo’s risky decision worked out.
In Sanders’s two seasons at Jackson State, he set fire to the Southwestern Athletic Conference. He threw for 6,963 yards and 70 passing touchdowns to just 14 interceptions. Jackson State went 23-3 in his time under center. The father-son duo paired with Travis Hunter led the Tigers to two SWAC Championships and appeared in two Celebration Bowls, a game that is widely regarded as the HBCU National Championship game.
Despite all that success at the college level, the haters remained adamant that Shedeur Sanders couldn’t compete at the Power Five level and wasn’t an NFL talent. They didn’t think his game could translate to the next level let alone in a big conference. Fast forward to two years later and Sanders has shut all of that talk down.
After two successful seasons at Jackson State, Deion Sanders accepted the head coaching job at Colorado and it was apparent that Shedeur and Travis Hunter would follow. Finally, the world would get to see them play against what they consider real competition. The trio headed to the Pac-12 for its final year of being a big conference before moving to the Big 12 in 2024.
In 2023, Sanders and the Buffaloes started hot before coming back down to earth in the second half of the season. They started 3-0 and finished 4-8. Shedeur Sanders passed for 3,230 yards, 27 touchdowns, three interceptions, and 293.6 passing yards per game. Shedeur finished the season at ninth in the NCAA in pass completions, fifth in the Pac-12 in passing yards, and fourth in Passing touchdowns. The haters spent the offseason getting their jokes off.
Shedeur and Travis Hunter came back with vengeance in 2024. Hunter solidified himself as the Heisman favorite down the stretch with the help of Shedeur. The senior quarterback passed for 3,926 yards, 35 touchdowns, eight interceptions, and 327.2 passing yards per game. He also set the NCAA record for career completion percentage, completing 71.8% of his passes with the Buffaloes.
He led Colorado to a 9-3 record and a 7-2 record in Big 12 games. It was the Buffaloes’ best season since 2016 when they went 10-4 and 8-1 in Pac-12 play. Shedeur led the Big 12 in completions, completion percentage, passing yards, passing touchdowns, and total yards. Colorado finished the season ranked 20th in the nation and would’ve been playing for a Big 12 championship if they hadn’t lost to Kansas at the end of the season.
The doubters didn’t think that Shedeur Sanders could do it and he did it. All of it. He went to a Power Five school, competed at the top of his class, and is now trending toward being the first quarterback selected in the 2025 NFL Draft. His college career has been in perfect unison with Travis Hunter’s, making it fitting that Sanders’s last completion at Folson Field in Colorado was a 23-yard touchdown to Hunter, the two-way superstar.
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