FRISCO, Texas — Deion Sanders couldn’t help but reminisce about the state of his own health this time a year ago.

He couldn’t remember what color suit he had on — it was gray — but the Colorado coach vividly recalled wearing a pair of shorts and a sweatshirt underneath to disguise what became increasingly clear as he was absent from Boulder for much of last summer.

Coach Prime had a smile on his face at the 2025 Big 12 media days, but he was hurting from a recent battle with bladder cancer, something he revealed to the public a few weeks later. 

“Smiling, styling, profiling. I was trying to do the best I could to falsify how I was really feeling,” Sanders said Tuesday, recalling his previous trip to the Star in Frisco, the Dallas Cowboys’ headquarters.

Now, as he enters year four in charge of the Buffaloes, Sanders says he’s back to feeling like himself, despite a difficult 3-9 season that dropped his overall record at CU to 16-21.

“My younger self would be proud that I was here last year fighting a battle called cancer, and now I’m here with full strength, full energy,” Sanders said. “I got that thing back. I got that swagger back. I got that dog back. I got that charisma back.”

That’s evidenced by his presence in the Buffs’ facilities on a daily basis.

Senior safety and former walk-on Ben Finneseth said this is the most he’s seen Sanders in his time in Boulder.

“He’s probably sleeping in the facility if we’re being completely honest,” Finneseth said. “He’s in there longer than all of us, every single day. First one in, last one out.”

“He’s just as pissed off as we are. He’s got something to prove, too. Last year didn’t sit well with him. He’s not gonna put up with that.”

Everything that happened in 2025 had an effect on Sanders. That ranged from his health to a lack of player leadership that fueled a disappointing season that fell far short of Coach Prime’s expectations. 

Sanders was more deliberate in the recruiting process, scouring film on every one of the transfer portal additions, most of whom are proven players from the Group of Six or FCS levels rather than former top recruits that didn’t cut it in the SEC or other major programs.

“Football is football,” Coach Prime said. “These guys are ‘that,’ regardless of who they’ve faced. They can get down, and I’m happy that they chose us.”

The same goes for high school recruiting, with CU on track for its largest class in the Coach Prime era with 20 players committed in the 2027 cycle.

“It’s a conscious change,” Sanders said. “It’s not a ‘T’ that’s not crossed and an ‘I’ that’s not dotted. We’re on it and you can see by the recruiting, you can see by the team we’ve assembled (and) the coaching staff. I keep saying this is the best staff I’ve ever had in my life, and they are. That’s not to demean any of the previous coaches because they were good, also, but these guys are special. I’m excited about all the possibilities.”

So are the players inside the locker room.

The few holdovers from last year’s team have stepped in to fill a void that’s been missing since 2024 in terms of leadership and holding their peers accountable.

“Player-led teams win championships and that’s how it works,” Finneseth said. “The mentality that I’ve tried to get all of us to adopt is, ‘Who cares what the coaches call? We’re the ones playing.’ They might make a mistake, (but) we clean it up. It’s gonna come down to the players and how we decide to come together.”

So far, so good. Having their head coach present in a way he wants to be is a promising start.

“The way that he’s bought into our team this year, he’s taken it up another level,” Finneseth said.