BOULDER – Coach Prime can build a brand impossible for the sports world to ignore. Now we get to see if Deion Sanders can build a championship football program.

He moves the needle the way Elon Musk launches rockets. The fireworks not only make the peeps look but drop everything to gawk. And that’s why Sanders is worth every penny of his new five-year, $54 million contract extension.

Those riches certainly were bestowed for reasons far beyond the 13-12 record he has fashioned since taking the CU job in December 2022.

He has put Colorado back on the college football map.

But how much has Sanders grown as a coach?

“How have I grown as a college coach? I think I’ve grown tremendously,” he said Friday.

Sanders explained his maturation as a coach that’s now more certain who he is and what he’s about, while sharpening his mission statement and how he wants to get there.

“I’m a better man now … than I was two years ago,” he said, “because of the things God has allowed me to go through, things that I’ve seen, things that I know and things that I’ve eliminated out of my life. So, I’m a better man, which makes me a better coach.”

In a supreme test of his mettle and faith, Sanders has already beaten bladder cancer in 2025.

“I’m healthy. I’m vibrant. I’m my old self,” Sanders said.

Now, in Year 3 of the Prime experience, do the Buffs have a coach who has grown enough from the practice field to the sideline to win a Big 12 Conference title?

“We’re going to win differently, but we’re going to win,” Sanders said.

“I don’t know if it’s going to be the Hail Marys at the end of the game, but it’s going to be hell during the game. Because we want to be visible. We want to run the heck out of the football. So, it’s going to be a little different, but it’s going to be fun.”

That vow to pound the rock suggests the competition to be the team’s new starting quarterback for the season opener against Georgia Tech leans heavily in favor of Kaidon Salter, a transfer who passed for 5,886 yards and rushed for 2,006 in 35 starts for Liberty.

After rescuing the Buffs from the abyss of irrelevancy, we know Prime can make magic. A year ago, his Buffs won nine games, a feat not achieved by a long-downtrodden program since 2016.

Although always entertaining, there were times during the past two seasons when the pass-heavy CU offense seemed to be staged as an NFL showcase for quarterback Shedeur Sanders, the celebrity son of a celebrity coach.

For the first time over the course of four seasons at Jackson State and CU, Coach Prime won’t be able to enjoy the comfort of his son playing QB.

“It’s gonna be strange for both of us,” admitted Prime, contemplating how weird it would feel for his son to take snaps Friday as the starting quarterback for the Cleveland Browns in an NFL exhibition game more than 1,500 miles away in Charlotte, N.C.

I asked Sanders how to detail how he has grown as a coach since arriving in Boulder with no victories against a Top 25 team on his resume.

“Great question, my man,” he replied, grateful for the opportunity to reflect.

This is how Sanders thinks his coaching has evolved:

He has learned to trust his gut in the heat of a game.

“I had to learn to go with my instincts,” Sanders said. “In Year 1, I would be on the sideline, and I would feel something, and I didn’t go with my instincts.”

He no longer requires the crutch of a timeout to lean on while deciding to go for it on fourth down.

And Sanders has committed to running a college program more like an NFL team, because it fits his win-now approach.

“Trust me, I love the college game,” Sanders said.

But he couldn’t deny his attraction to the pro mindset that demands winning is always written in all caps on the bottom line. That’s why his CU coaching staff is heavily populated with former pro players, including Hall of Famers Marshall Faulk and Warren Sapp.

In the shadow of the Flatirons, the T-shirts that once bodaciously proclaimed “We Coming” now matter-of-factly state: “We Here.”

Wherever Coach Prime goes, he brings that 100-megawatt smile, those trademark sunglasses and the hype machine with him.

A championship banner for the CU football team would complete his winning look.