The last time Colorado faced Nebraska in 2023, Colorado coach Deion Sanders preached to his team beforehand about just how ‘personal” that game was going to be ― a nationally televised game between two longtime football rivals with little side grudges stacked up along the way.
The motivational strategy worked. Colorado won at home, 36-14. But here they are one year later, getting ready to play at Nebraska on Saturday in a 7:30 p.m. ET game on NBC.
And now Sanders is singing a slightly different pregame tune, at least as it relates to Matt Rhule, the Nebraska head coach who was hired there in late 2022.
“I have a ton of respect for Matt Rhule,” Sanders said at his news conference Tuesday in Boulder. “He’s in − I call it our class of coaches. We all took on a tremendous task that year along with (Arizona State) coach (Kenny) Dillingham and several others. So I feel like we’re a fraternity. So I root for that class of head coaches that came in that year.”
This is the same Matt Rhule whom Sanders’ son Shedeur took issue with before the game last year when he stood on Colorado’s midfield logo.
It’s also the same Matt Rhule who vaguely seemed to criticize the way Sanders was building his roster with transfer players instead of coaching up high school recruits (even though Rhule never mentioned him by name).
So is it no longer personal?
It always will be for some, even if the coaches for both teams aren’t saying so this week. Both are in their second seasons on the job after getting hired in late 2022. Both also are 1-0 after winning their season openers last week.
“My wife and I went skiing this year in Beaver Creek (Colo.),” Rhule said Monday. “We took the kids up and met some friends. We were sitting down and hanging out, and this young lady walked up to me and said, ‘Are you Coach Rhule from the Huskers?’ I thought it was a Husker fan and I said, ‘Yeah.’ She said something to me that I can’t repeat out loud. Her boyfriend was like, ‘Ah sorry, coach.’ I was like. `No, hey this is what’s great about college football right?’ We love rivalries.”
Deion Sanders is preparing for it to be loud
His team is practicing with loud noise bellowing from speakers this week because it will be the 398th consecutive sellout at Memorial Stadium, where about 90,000 are expected on a warm late summer evening in Lincoln.
“I feel like every week is personal, especially this one, “ Colorado offensive lineman Justin Mayers said Tuesday at a news conference. “It’s a bigger game, because it’s rivalry week, but we want to attack every game like it’s rivalry week. Nebraska I hear is going to be sold out and all these things, but that still doesn’t faze us.”
Another big crowd also will be watching on television. Colorado drew an average of 4.8 million viewers on ESPN for its season-opening 31-26 win Aug. 29 against North Dakota State. It was ESPN’s best Thursday opener in seven years.
‘Whether you like it or not, you want to see it,’ Sanders said of his program.
Just watch what you wear this week, according to Colorado long snapper Camden Dempsey, who is known as the Buffaloes’ ‘governor’ and sometimes acts as their player spokesman. He declared it to be `No Red Week’ in Colorado, referring to Nebraska’s signature color.
‘The team is calling upon all Buffs to unite in solidarity by banishing the color red from our wardrobes, homes, businesses and public spaces,’ Dempsey wrote on social media.
Last game in the Colorado-Nebraska contract
The game resumes a rivalry from the old Big Eight Conference but is the final game of a four-game contract between the schools that was signed in 2012. Colorado is 3-0 in the other three games dating to 2018. It’s not clear when the schools will play each other again after this since there is not a contract for any game beyond Saturday, when Nebraska will welcome back members from the 1994 team that won the national championship with a 13-0 record.
Maybe the timing isn’t personal, but that 1994 Nebraska team is the only team that beat Colorado that year, when the Buffaloes finished No. 3 at 11-1.
“It was a great rivalry that I grew up on,” Rhule said Monday. “A lot of those rivalries are dead now. So it’s great to play it.”
Nebraska leads the all-time series, 49-21-2.
The Shedeur and Travis show
The Buffs (1-0) won their season-opening game on Aug. 29, beating North Dakota State with explosive performances from quarterback Shedeur Sanders and two-way star Travis Hunter. Hunter caught three touchdown passes from Shedeur and only came off the field for two plays on offense and defense, according to Pro Football Focus.
The question is how sustainable that is for the Buffs, which looked sloppy at times with their defense, blocking and game management – three of their big deficiencies from 2023, when they finished 4-8 in Deion Sanders’ first season as coach.
“They’re at each other all the time, those two,” Deion Sanders said of Shedeur and Travis Hunter. “They have this silent chemistry.”
‘My dad said he never lost to them’
Nebraska is starting a freshman at quarterback: Dylan Raiola, who completed 19 of 27 passes for 238 yards and two touchdowns in a 40-7 win last week at home against Texas-El Paso. He is the son of former Nebraska center Dominic Raiola, who played for the Cornhuskers in the late 1990s.
‘My dad said he never lost to them,’ Dylan Raiola said of Colorado. ‘This week he told me, `Just so you know, I never lost to them.’ I know the rivalry runs deep. You have to stay focused on the task at hand. You can’t get caught up in everything else.’
The win improved Rhule’s records at Nebraska to 6-7, including 5-7 last year. He previously coached at Baylor and in the NFL with the Carolina Panthers.
“He was a professional, did a phenomenal job, maybe not the job he aspired to do, but he has a ton of experience, and I love what he’s accomplished in his college coaching career,” Deion Sanders said. “So I look for them to be physically tough, imposing and try to run the football. They have a freshman quarterback that had a pretty good day last week. But we gotta do what we do. We gotta go in there and do what we’re capable of doing.”
Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com