BOULDER — One question, Mickey Andrews. Just one. Is this thing gonna work?
"He told me when they started their offseason program," Andrews, one of Deion Sanders' oldest and most beloved mentors, recalled by phone when I asked about the 2023 Buffs. "He told me, 'Coach, there's just not many guys out here that show they want to win bad enough.'
"You can't fake winning. It's just like toughness. Can't fake toughness. Either you've got it or you don't."
Andrews thinks CU gets there under Coach Prime. Eventually.
"I'm anxious to see how that bunch does," the former Florida State defensive coordinator, 81 years young, continued.
"You know (Sanders) is working his heinie off to make sure those guys represent Colorado in the right kind of way. And it hasn't been that way lately."
The honeymoon either crashes to a halt Saturday or goes straight into orbit. The Coach Prime Era starts as a 20-point road dog at No. 17 TCU. This story could go in about 14 different directions, and anybody who tells you for certain they know what's happening next is lying through their teeth.
Even Sanders, privately, has been hedging his bets. A few weeks back, as CU's preseason camp cranked into fifth gear, he texted his old coordinator in Tallahassee with a carefully worded vow.
"Coach," Prime wrote, "I promise you, we will get to the ball."
"He was talking about great pursuit," recalled Andrews, whose venerated 25-year tenure with the Seminoles ended in February 2010. "And I almost texted him back to to say, 'Yes, but if you don't get them on the ground before they cross the goal line, it doesn't matter.'"
Coach Prime wears sunglasses at night and his heart on his sleeve. For all the flash and dash, a little piece of Andrews — a no-nonsense disciplinarian as a coordinator, the "bad cop" to FSU icon Bobby Bowden's more genial "good cop" — burns deep inside Sanders to this day.
Andrews didn't teach Coach Prime everything he knows. Just the mean stuff. Well, most of the mean stuff. When Sanders shocked him by taking the CU job over an offer from South Florida last December, the wise old owl reached out to his former pupil with 11 words of advice.
"You just get yourself a big coat," Andrews told Sanders, "and put it on."
Yeah, but is this gonna work?
"He (told me), 'Coach, I'm going to change a lot of things out there. No. 1 is expectations and what it takes to be successful,'" Andrews stressed. "He said, 'I'm not going to cut any corners with this.' He's going to coach hard. He's going to be hard on them. He's going to be demanding. It's just the way he is."
Sanders likes to set the bar high and keep his circle of trust tight. But while CU athletic director Rick George was wooing Coach Prime away from Jackson State last October and November, Sanders had his old coach in the loop.
"He didn't really indicate where he was leaning," Andrews recalled. "The only advice I gave him (during the search) was to spend a little bit of time on your knees and make sure the Lord is giving you the thing you need to make some tough decisions. And then once you set your course, don't look back."
He hasn't. As he's said many times before, Deion needs to be needed. The Buffs? The Buffs needed everything. Talent, especially.
"He said (to me), 'You know what? When I looked at it, I felt like the best chance of winning was out there (at CU),'" Andrews recounted of his discussions with Sanders. "'I don't want to take a job somewhere where you're not considered one of the top four or five (programs) in the state of Florida.' When you talk about a big-time team, maybe he couldn't do that at South Florida as quickly as he could in Colorado.'
"And nobody will work harder and try harder (than Sanders) to become a good football program. Because his expectations, I guarantee you, there's nobody on that campus who's got any that are bigger than Deion's. He can't find any reason why you can't work at it and, together, manage to accomplish things that are impossible in other people's eyes.
"But you know the thing about it is, you can put talent out there, but that don't make a team."
That part's a mystery, still. Of the Buffs who suited up last November for the season finale against Utah, only 10 are still here.
In other words, is this gonna work?
"I don't know," Andrews laughed.
"I used to drive my wife crazy — she'd ask me, 'Are we gonna win?' I'd say, 'Yes, if we get the most points.' But what I was really telling her is if we keep the other team from getting the most points. If they don't score, you don't lose.'"
Andrews is 1-0 in Boulder, by the way. His only trip was brief, back with the 'Noles staff in 2007. The coordinator happened to be recovering from a bout of pneumonia at the time and didn't do much prep with the team until about Thursday of game week. FSU sacked Cody Hawkins twice and held on for a 16-6 victory at Folsom Field.
"It's a beautiful area up there," Andrews said. "I know that."
But as for that swanky new "Prime 21" swag that's all over the Front Range, Coach Mickey's still waiting by the phone for Sanders to hook him up.
"Oh, no, no," Andrews chuckled. "I guess he wants me to come up there to get it."
Dang straight. Bring a big coat.
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