Takeaways from The Washington Post’s story on Colorado becoming a ‘social media powerhouse’
Ahead of Colorado football’s penultimate regular season game on Friday, The Washington Post published a deep dive into how the Buffaloes have become a “social media powerhouse” under head coach Deion Sanders.
The article, titled “Colorado’s football team is winning online, despite losing on the field,” primarily highlighted the work of both Deion Sanders Jr. and CU’s in-house creative services team. As the title suggests, author Taylor Lorenz explained that while Colorado hasn’t won many games lately, the Buffs remain one of the most talked about teams in sports.
Here are four takeaways from The Washington Post’s Friday feature on Colorado:
Deion Sanders Jr.'s work
Early in the article, we heard from Coach Prime’s son, Deion Sanders Jr. The younger Sanders shared how he leads a team of videographers with the focus of turning players into social media stars.
“We record content, set up their YouTube channels and keep it rolling so they don’t have to do outside work,” Sanders Jr. told The Washington Post. “They don’t have to film stuff themselves, all they have to do is show up for workouts, prepare for the game and win, and we’ll handle everything else.”
Sanders also said that he works closely with Colorado’s in-house social media team.
Social media followers boom
Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter have both seen their Instagram accounts nearly double in followers since the start of the season. Sanders now has over 2 million followers while Hunter is at about 1.1 million, per The Washington Post. Additionally, the total number of followers on Colorado football’s social channels has increased from 267,000 to over 2.3 million in the past year.
The power of NIL
NIL (name, image and likeness) has become a major component of college athletics in the past couple of years. College football commentator Rodger Sherman said that Colorado’s online success has turned its players into “household names,” which has helped Coach Prime bring star players to Boulder.
The power of Colorado's in-house creatives team
John Snelson, CU’s director of creative services, was also interviewed in the article. He praised his 11 student employees and spoke on the abundance of content coming from the football program.
“There’s definitely no one that has the amount of content that we have,” Snelson said.
Further reading
READ: Cam’Ron Silmon-Craig praises Colorado fans following final home game
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