Urban Meyer believes Deion Sanders lost the Colorado locker room

The Colorado Buffaloes suffered the worst year under Deion Sanders at 3-9 in 2025. With one win in Big 12 play, there had to be changes across the board. With 2026 now upon us, Coach Prime's comeback can't be delayed. But given his latest announcement of player fines, there are concerns that things are getting out of hand in the locker room.

Sanders introduced a new fine structure for the Buffaloes’ players, which goes from a few hundred to a couple thousand dollars per offense. The highest amount will be given for poor conduct in public or on social media. As you can imagine, not everyone was thrilled to have Coach Prime and his staff cutting into players' pockets. Especially given the fact there's no real structure on where the money is going. 

Urban Meyer and Mark Ingram weighed in on Sanders' latest move, and agreed this speaks to a tarnished culture more than anything. On the latest episode of The Triple Option podcast, the two questioned if Sanders lost the locker room in Boulder and this was an attempt to get it back. 

“That shows you that it is the new NFL,” Ingram said. “But I think the biggest storyline here is that Prime has an issue within the locker room, within the culture, that he has to address this.”

Meyer pointed out that there must be “a serious issue” if Sanders has to make radical change inside the program. It's not like this was on the books last year for Colorado. “If you’re fining people a lot, you’ve got bigger problems than collecting a couple thousand bucks,” Meyer explained. “You’ve got a serious issue.”

For now, we know Sanders isn't on a hot seat, but he's not doing himself any favors either. This is just the latest in a series of new adjustments for his players, who are mostly incoming transfers. Unfortunately, there isn’t much to suggest that Colorado will be making significant progress this year. 

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Despite Coach Prime's best efforts, the Buffs are facing a difficult stretch ahead with two road non-conference games against Georgia Tech and Northwestern. This comes as they've lost over 40 players, including numerous top starters to other Power Four programs. 

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If there's one thing that's extremely clear, Sanders' will need more than three wins to keep the fans' support. Can he make it happen or find his way on the outside looking in? 

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