BOULDER, Colo. – Colorado football coach Deion Sanders responded Thursday to a recent controversy involving the university’s decision to retire the jersey numbers of his quarterback son Shedeur and two-way star Travis Hunter.
Sanders called it a “sore subject” and said the blowback from it was because his son’s jersey number is being retired.
“Let’s get the elephant out the room,” Sanders said. “I don’t want to talk about this too long. I’m just gonna talk briefly and let it go. We ‘re talking about Shedeur. We ain’t talking about nobody else. If his last name wasn’t Sanders, we wouldn’t have this discussion. Only reason we’re having this discussion is his last name is Sanders. That’s it.”
After the jersey number retirements were announced Monday, some former Colorado players questioned whether it was too soon and brought up all the other great CU players from the past whose jersey numbers have not been retired by CU, including quarterbacks Darian Hagan and Kordell Stewart.
CU previously only retired four jersey numbers in its 135-year football history, including running back Rashaan Salaam’s No. 19, which was retired in 2017, 23 years after he won the Heisman Trophy and less than a year after he died in 2016.
What did the former Colorado players say about it?
It’s been less than four months since Shedeur Sanders (No. 2) and Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter (No. 12) played their final game in the Alamo Bowl, marking the soonest CU ever has retired a jersey number of a player.
“Legacy matters,” former CU linebacker Chad Brown wrote on social media site X this week. “The past matters. Never want to take away from anything #2 or #12 have done. Amazing players. But to act as if CU FB was invented 3 years ago ignores the greatness in the past & the players that produced that…
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Publish date : 2025-04-17 19:11:00
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