The University of Colorado is a remarkable place. It sits at the foot of the Flatirons, draws students from around the world, and shapes the state's scientific, cultural and economic life more than almost any other institution. I have spent a lifetime connected to this university, and I say this as someone who cares deeply about its success: CU probably will never be a "sustained" national football powerhouse. And that's not an insult. It's an honest acknowledgment of the landscape we now live in and, if anything, a plea that we stop chasing a mirage that drains time, money and energy from what CU actually does best.
Let me be clear: CU can have great seasons. It can produce electrifying moments, top-10 rankings, thrilling Saturdays at Folsom Field (hopefully not at 8:00 p.m.) and the kind of storylines that make the country look west for a couple of weeks. But a powerhouse, the kind that reloads every year, bulldozes competition, outspends everyone and expects to contend for national titles as a matter of routine, is a different category altogether. And Colorado simply doesn't have the structural ingredients to be competitive at a very high level every year.
Start with geography. The equation is simple: football powerhouses sit atop enormous recruiting bases. Texas, Georgia, Florida and Ohio each produce dozens of blue-chip recruits every year. Alabama has no major in-state competition and can pull from the entire Southeast. Colorado produces a handful of elite prospects, usually fewer than five. You can't build a perennial top 10 program when your home state gives you a roster the size of a pickup basketball team. You have to fly everywhere, fight everyone and overpay for out-of-state talent just to stay competitive.
Then consider stadium economics. Folsom is one of the most beautiful venues in America, but beauty doesn't pay the bills. At just over 50,000 seats, it isn't even in the top 50 nationally. Meanwhile, the schools we're comparing ourselves against have 85,000 to 105,000-seat cathedrals humming with revenue: premium clubs, suites, donor boxes, end-zone complexes. That difference alone produces tens of millions of dollars in additional annual operating revenue. CU will never be able to replicate that scale in Boulder, nor should it try.
Which brings us to finances. Even before the current deficit, CU's athletic budget has hovered around $140 million, going up recently toward $160 million. That sounds large until you look around. Ohio State is over $290 million. Texas is not far behind. Georgia and Alabama are in the same orbit. LSU just hired a coach for $91 million in a multi-year deal -- at a public institution. This is not a market CU can play in. It's not even in the same country.
And now we've entered the branding (NIL) era, a world where the top programs spend $20-40 million annually not on coaching, not on facilities, but on the players themselves. Colorado's donor base, corporate landscape, and statewide culture simply do not support that kind of annual fundraising. We have generous donors, but not South East Conference (SEC) style or Big-Ten boosters who treat Saturdays as a religion. NIL branding is not a temporary trend; it is the defining financial mechanism of modern college football. And CU is on the wrong side of the arms race. Maybe one area of hope with raising the needed money to be competitive is in a third-party private equity agreement. The University of Utah's athletic department is about to create a new partnership with a private equity firm that could generate an estimated $500 million in revenue.
Culture matters too. Boulder is a place people choose for lifestyle, for mountains, for climate, for academics, for entrepreneurship. This isn't Tuscaloosa, Columbus or Baton Rouge, where football saturates daily life and where a losing season is treated as a civic crisis. CU students disperse to ski slopes, hiking trails and concerts. Faculty are nationally recognized researchers who did not come to Boulder to live inside the roar of a football machine. That's not a criticism, it's precisely what makes Boulder special. But it's also why Colorado may never be, and should never try to be, an Alabama or Ohio State of the Rockies.
And even in the years when CU succeeds, its success carries its own penalty. Bigger programs simply poach CU's coaches, coordinators, strength trainers, analysts and recruiters. They can double or triple salaries with little effort. Sustained powerhouses rely on stability and pipelines of talent behind the talent. CU is a destination when things go well, not a home you stay at for decades.
So where does that leave us?
It leaves me with a simple conclusion: CU should aim to be good, competitive, exciting, fiscally healthy and academically aligned, not an imitator chasing a model that doesn't fit our mission or our reality. The pursuit of "powerhouse" status isn't just unrealistic; it distorts priorities and pressures the institution to behave in ways that undermine its purpose.
Colorado is at its best when it embraces what it truly is: a world-class research university with a vibrant campus, a beautiful stadium and a football program that can surprise the country every now and then. That is more than enough. It is something to be proud of. And it is infinitely more sustainable than pretending Boulder sits on the same tectonic plates as Austin, Columbus, Tuscaloosa or Athens.
We can love CU football passionately, without insisting it become something it cannot be. That is not cynicism but is realism, spoken with love, for the place that has shaped so much of my life.
Go Buffs!