Colorado football is trending online right now as head coach Deion Sanders and star quarterback Shedeur Sanders exchange blows on X with a former Colorado defensive back. It sounds ridiculous, but that’s often the case surrounding a Sanders-led program.
There is no true Wisconsin connection to this situation or to the Buffaloes in 2024. But Colorado is sure to be circled on every team’s schedule after the offseason headlines and online trash talk. One problem: Sanders’ team doesn’t have the talent to compete with the sport’s top teams. The other problem: the Badgers don’t play them this year, so we’ll never know how the teams would compare.
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The closest thing we can do here is begin to handicap what a potential matchup would look like. Thanks to ESPN’s Bill Connelly’s SP+ rankings, we have a general system to project what the possible Las Vegas point spread would be.
Wisconsin: 11.0 rating (No. 25 overall), 24.8 offense (No. 78), 13.8 defense (No. 7)
Colorado: -2.6 rating (No. 66 overall), 31.3 offense (No. 39), 33.9 defense (No. 107)
The projected point spread on a neutral field between these two teams in 2024 would be Wisconsin -13.5. That’s a two-touchdown difference, even with Wisconsin far from it’s normal dominance.
There isn’t much of a message here, aside from pointing out how Colorado projects entering a season. The headlines are all made in April, May and June. But when the season begins, it will likely be another year of struggles for Sanders’ team.
It finished 4-8 (1-8 Pac 12) last season after the 3-0 start. Things don’t get easier in 2024 with games against a resurgent Nebraska, Kansas State, Arizona, Kansas, Utah and Oklahoma State.
For more 2024 season preview work, we’ve already ranked all 18 programs in the Big Ten, ranked the 18 starting quarterbacks, ranked all 18 head coaches, predicted each Big Ten team’s 2024 record, looked at the early College Football Playoff tiers, made bold predictions for the season and checked in on the Las Vegas win totals for each team in the conference.
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