Title: "I Believe": How Deion Sanders Turned Colorado into College Football's Main Event

Right now: Colorado is the biggest story in college football

Widely considered the greatest cornerback in NFL history, Deion Sanders's swagger has transformed the Buffs overnight.Photo by(The author)

Boulder, Colorado — When Mike Tyson was asked why he appeared so menacing during his iconic boxing career, he smiled.

"An opponent with confidence is always dangerous," Tyson explained. "So in the art of war — the first law is to take away your opponent's self-belief."

Perhaps the above explains why plastered all around the Buffs' recently renovated practice facility is the two-word mantra "I Believe."

Over the weekend the Buffs revealed their new custom-brand suits, courtesy of Coach Primes' hall-of-fame pal, Michael Strahan. Noticeably stitched inside the suits is, as you guessed, the mantra — "I Believe."

“If you don’t believe in yourself how will somebody else believe in you?” Coach Prime routinely asks his team.

To believe in something is to trust in it. And after having won multiple Super Bowls, Coach Prime's figured out this: rarely does a difference in talent level make a difference in the final score.

After all,

The environment that most influences a team's chances of winning is the one between the players' ears.

The Buffs won a grand total of one game last year. After one game this season, they've already matched that total.

"We had to get some darn guys in here that believed," Coach Prime says. Indeed, with only 10 scholarship players remaining from the 2022 roster, the team's 86 new players set a college football record.

Coach Prime, a football historian, is well-versed in Vince Lombardi's famed coaching philosophy.

"Winning is a habit," Coach Lombardi said. "Unfortunately, so is losing."

Indeed, because humans are creatures of habit, habitual winners expect to win and habitual losers expect to lose.

In short, the key to the Buffs' stunning turnaround, which now sees them being featured on college football's biggest stage, can best be summed up with two words:

I Believe.