Everything you need to know ahead of Coach Prime and Colorado's season opener tonight!

with Rachel vill taking a daily look at the biggest stories in Denver Sports and interacting live with you the coffee break fam so sit back relax grab a cup of Joe and enjoy your coffee break here's your host Rachel vill what's up guys I am not Rachel vill clearly uh Dante Gomez filling in today as she is off in Aruba um I am joined by our very own Jake Shapiro how we doing Jake I'm good I'm excited Dante we've got uh T-minus 6 hours till my beautiful beautiful Buffalo Ralphie runs out on folson field one of the best traditions in sports cannot wait to be down there and and see uh Ralphie run that's uh it's special it's the leaves are changing it is fall I know it's hot as heck today still in Colorado but uh I think we're all happy football's here and football pretty much starts today in the state of Colorado oh yeah couldn't agree more I am absolutely floating Today college football is back football's back um actually on my drive in today I lived near a school drove by there was a teacher out at uh like PE or recess and he had a shadur Sanders jersey on so Vibe is palpable around the city also drove by a car that had a bunch of North Dakota State stickers on the back of their car so we're getting it from both sides and uh I feel like the city's buzzing from it um all right well let's dive into it Jake um let's break down everything uh going on in Boulder today and then everyone stick around because later we're GNA play everyone's favorite game Buffalo's versus bison I know Jake's real excited for that one um but yeah let's dive into it first I want to get your take on opening it up on a Thursday night uh she'd have a lot of eyeballs prime time TV um what do you think the feeling in the stadium is going to be what do you think the you know feeling around the country is going to be in terms of how many viewers do you think we're gonna get tonight yeah this is kind of interesting Dante because last year obviously the excitement with prime was just off the charts every game was sold out there wasn't a question of it as of 48 hours ago there were still 2,000 seats available for this game so I don't know whether that's the four wins from last year which probably isn't true of this fan base it's a Hardy fan base that's one thing you can't say about the Colorado Buffalo fan Bas is that they're not loyal I mean they won one game the year before and they all showed out for Prime right like so they're definitely loyal uh I think there's some aspects of this being somewhat of an unsexy game just because of its it's against an FCS school and you look what follows it it's their Rivals the Colorado Buffalo's rivals at Nebraska at Colorado State and it's out a Thursday night at six o'clock I mean anyone in Colorado knows how hard it is to get around Denver at 5 to six o'clock on an afternoon you know in you know on a Thursday let alone Boulder I mean the the basketball team has games at six o'clock on Thursday nights all the time and I know season ticket holders who W don't even try to make it up there in time so this is just not the easiest time to go to a game but ultimately I do think that this is going to be a pretty wild atmosphere uh North Dakota state is a good football program this is not going to be an easy cake walk of and win especially for an FCS school this is going to be a game for quite a bit I believe and I I think that you know the things that surround this program with Ralphie running with the celebrities that are likely to be on the sideline the new uniforms and all the hype that comes with prime it'll more than make up for the fact that maybe this isn't the best atmosphere for a Prime game game and it's going to set up for what I believe to be a far more watched football game next week against Nebraska with Dylan Rola their starting quarterback making his debut yeah very excited for next week in Nebraska that should be a great game especially Following last year's game which you know had a lot of story lines going into it and uh kind of went down to that fourth quarter so next week for Nebraska should be great um I will say going on that I feel like those big time football programs usually don't have the best crowds um early on in the season because they are against usually lesser opponents and you kind of got to build into the hype and kind of earn your fans a little bit in terms of starting off you know a strong non-conference schedule there um so we were talking about this a little before the show so uh actual you know into the game here started off as eight and a half Point favorites uh the line has moved up to 10 went back to nine and a half and now uh just looked right before the show 10 and a half do you expect this game to be a double digit uh win for the Buffs you know I got a lot of Raz yesterday on TV in North Dakota because I said I I think the Buffs are going to win by two touchdowns at least if not three three scores somewhere in the ballpark of 14 to 19 points somewhere around there I think the Buffs are going to walk away from this pretty easily Dante the thing about this Colorado Buffalo's football team that fundamentally is misunderstood this year while everyone wants to just talk about Prime and you know journalists being banned from asking questions and blah blah blah the actual football that's going to be taking place on the field this is a really really talented Colorado Buffalo's football team definitely the most talented roster they've had since 2016 when they went won 10 games in and went bowling so uh that should not be a question if they should beat an FCS school I know in the past this program has had those questions in fact losing twice to FCS schools in Boulder even though this is a far better one than those ones that they faced you know they still got two picks that are going to go in the top 10 of the NFL draft probably next spring so the thing that's going to hold this team back and this isn't just going to be tonight but this is going to be the entire season is this coaching staff I don't I'm not saying that they're bad I'm not saying that they're a problem I'm just saying it's a question mark because last year we saw them change offensive coordinators in the middle of the Season we saw their defensive coordinator Charles Kelly basically blow that game against Stanford because of penalty calls and they couldn't set their defense okay well how does Deion Sanders react with new coordinators how do they communicate on the sideline what does Pat shermer's offense look like does Dion get a little bit better at in-game management I think that's a huge question mark going forward into year two of Coach Prime and and you know he's done a great job a great job of of basically everything including getting the talent here on campus for year two now it's about the execution on the field and last year they struggled with that particularly in the second half of the season so that's one of my biggest question marks going forward and I would love to see them play a clean football game today whether that's you know a minuscule amount of penalties minuscule amount of mistakes because I think that's ultimately going to be the telling point of how good the Colorado Buffalo can be and if they can reach this the ceiling that their talent may allow them to get to yeah no definitely big question marks around the coaching staff brought in you know a handful of new coordinators and assistants so very excited to see that um so you kind of touched on a little bit how do you see this game going in terms of like they say you know Styles make fights do you think will be a air it out kind of game for shadur Sanders you think they're going to try to keep time possession run the ball I know coach Prime has mentioned trying to run the ball stop the run is you know putting a bigger emphasis on that this season um do you think they'll actually you know follow what they were saying there or do you think it's they're gonna rever back to just hey sh Sanders go win us this football game yeah to me the recipe for success for this Colorado buffos team this year is going to be how good of a passing game they have like on offense and also on Def defense how well they defend the pass because they got a really good transfer BJ green I know you know him Dante he's a heck of a football player and that's that's the guy that's going to be leading their edge attack on defense and they've got a couple different Edge rushers that should be good at getting after the quarterback and you couple that with the fact that Travis hunters in their secondary Shiloh Sanders is a very capable college football player and he's probably going to go late in the NFL draft and then on top of that you got a transfer in Preston Hodge who's one of the quarterback transf in the country best quarterback transfers in the country so you've got a couple really good guys who can defend the pass in fact you even have Trevor Woods who's a longtime safety at Colorado convert to linebacker so your defense is built around defending against the pass and your offense is built around passing with shadur with the multitude of wide receivers and weapons on the outside they have hopefully the pass protection will be a lot better than it was last year that's what people in Boulder are you know got their fingers crossed for right now at far as the running backs room I I have some question marks I think Hayden's going to be a really talented player I'm not sure that he's going to fit in particularly well you know there's been a lot of talk about uh walk- on Charlie offer doll which kind of concerns me as to what Hayden is actually up to so I think what you will see in the attack with Pat shurmer is a lot of what I call lateral running plays you know bubble screens RPO Jet Sweep type actions where it's within the three yards of the line of scrimmage and they're you know moving laterally so I think for Colorado they've got to utilize and capitalize on the fact they're probably going to be faster than just about everyone in the country uh when it comes to a game against a a team from a lower division like FCS North Dakota State I think Colorado can maybe not tip all those cards today maybe they're going to be running the football a little bit more than they will be later on this season against the Kansas state or something like that so I do think it will be important to establish the run tonight but I do think that ultimately this season col may end up in a spot where they're more or less abandoning the traditional run gotcha and then to does it matter how the game looks tonight if they are you know fighting for their lives in the fourth quarter if they are having shadur pass for 300 yards if they are you know however many different scenarios it can go does it matter to you how it looks on the field or is a win a win at that point no I I think that's one of the things today Dante is it's not just a win it's about the style points and how you do it because you're expected to win and if they don't win this game there are some Five Alarm Bells up and Boulder this is a huge problem if they don't win this game so when we talk about next week in Nebraska I do not care how they win that game they just got to scrap their way and they got to find a way to win that one today it's about what does that first drive look like after all you know post preseason getting that scripted and and what's the concepts going to look like I'm sure they're going to look great like Florida State looked like the best team in the country for one drive last week right and then what's that second drive going to look like in terms of adjustment and then when we come back at half time what are those halftime adjustments because that's the coaching staff really struggled with that last year so these are some of the things I'll be looking for but if you mentioned Dante that the game's going to be close late in the fourth quarter and shadur Sanders has the ball in his hands I I have no worries about Colorado winning that game you know one thing you can't say about shadur Sanders is he isn't clutch you know he was unbelievable in clutch situations last year scored so many big touchdowns and and bald while he was hurt so I have no doubt about the ball being in shadur sers hands in a tough situation my doubts are still within the defense and are the timeouts going to come at the right time and please please please if it goes into overtime and you win the toss do not elect to have the ball first we learned that lesson we did we did uh I mean it ended up working out but yeah definitely not uh how you would done the first time didn't work out the second time that's true that is true so it did come back to bite them there um and then you mentioned shadur there a little bit uh I want to go on him and uh Travis here they've been kind of in some outside discussions as far as Heisman goes do you think tonight's game can propel them into the thick of those and maybe make them you know a little because I think right now they're like you know plus 6,000 or something in terms of Heisman odds you think tonight's game can propel them in uh to the thick of those conversations so I've got a lot on this one is why was bronny James projected to be in the draft by ESPN in their first mock draft for last spring right well he's a name it's going to get you click so putting shadur Sanders and Travis hunter in any sort of Heisman watch story is going to benefit the author I'm not saying they don't rightfully deserve to be there I'm just saying the media is incentivized in putting them in towards their preseason Heisman watch if you ask me Davis Hunter played more snaps than anyone in college football last year and he missed three and a half games if I had a Heisman vote this year and Travis played about the same level but just stayed on the field that's a slam DK Heisman he's going to be one of the best corners and best wide receivers in football and we're never going to see anything like that and we haven't seen anything like that for quite a while so that's why I I think Travis is in a unique spot where he might actually be able to compete with the quarterbacks for the Heisman Trophy award I really really like Travis coming into this season I like what I've read this offseason about him working with some sprinters um I think you know we talked about this yesterday on on on Stoke and do I heard them talking about it and they were like you know it's not time for for him to to focus on side of the ball because he's a lead at both of these things I think he'd be a first round pick at both DB or wide receiver whichever he chooses so um I'm really excited for Travis Hunter year and you know if football wasn't all about quarterbacks at least in the Awards voting Travis would be a slam dunk for the Heisman in terms of where shadur is let's just traditionally look at it what happens with Heisman voting well you probably have to win nine to 10 games right you got to be a quarterback and you have to throw for probably 3,700 yards have some rushing stuff as well can shadur do all of that yes kind of because the stuff within the record is out of his control so that's what concerns me with shadur I don't know if the team is going to be good enough around him for him to actually put together a legitimate Heisman campaign but when we look at it towards the end of the year and cam Ward and will Howard and Quinn yers and some of these best quarterbacks in college football and how do shadur stats rank up against them I wouldn't be surprised if shadur on par better than a lot of those guys because you look at what shadur has done so far in his college career it's better than what Mike Vic did early on in his college career it's better than what Tom Brady did early on in his college career so shadur is on the right path the question is can the team actually give him h a platform for his campaign and we'll find out really quick about three four weeks in the season whether or not shadur is gonna have a legit Heisman campaign if they start out 3- one 4-0 then yeah he'll have a legit Heisman campaign because he truly is that good of a quarterback and anyone saying that you know oh it's it's the hype or whatever they simply haven't watched shadur Sanders because this guy has traits of Joe burrow this guy looks like Gino Smith sometimes did at West Virginia where you know he's just in control of everything and he gets out of the pocket the right times and he throws these deep balls and he throws this accurate passes within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage so I I could not be higher on shadur I just again have some question marks of hey can that offensive line hold up I know that there were a lot of transfers they spent a lot of the offseason working on it can it hold up what does Pat shermer's offense look like after years of not really being an offensive coordinator in college football so there's definitely some question marks whereas if you look at cam Ward at the University of Miami far less question marks in that situation and and that's how I stack it up right now going into the year gotcha yeah no I actually heard um you know uh Buffalo alumni Joel clatt saying something similar about your Travis Hunter um take there that as far as non- quarterbacks go he should be you know up there with you know anybody else um as far like you know he plays more snaps than anybody else he could be the best DB and best wide receiver in the country so very excited to see go an interesting Travis Hunter stat so and I found this last year at the end of the year so he had like 700 yards last year and like let's say six touchdowns and you know 65 catches Deion Sanders entire NFL career when he was playing wide receiver his stats were almost the exact same as Travis Hunter's stats from his uh his second season in college as a wide receiver with the Buffs and Dion has said over and over again Travis is better than what I was when I was his age so just putting that out there yeah no I uh and you know learning from the best I'm sure helps him out too I'm sure that's why you know a lot of people speculate that's why he did follow uh coach Prime over here to Colorado as well um all right well let's get your final predictions what do you um we're GNA go three predictions here final score how many viewers and yes or no do we get a contentious uh Dion postgame press conference um contentious Dion postgame press conference is like a rhetorical question yeah that's just that's the situation um and I'm here for it like he's got a lot of haters right now and a lot of doubters and a lot of people want to group me in trust me look what's over my shoulder I I I ain't one of them um you know so but I'm I'm here to see how that plays out in the postgame reaction because we've really only heard him talk once or twice since a lot of this stuff has gone down and this will be by far the biggest stage with the most amount of people there uh since a lot of the the recent drama has taken place so that'll be interesting in terms of the score line um I think the Buffalo are going to win this game probably 42 to 28 somewhere in in that from ballpark hopefully for their defense it's you know more like 21 to 48 or something like that and you know one of th those is a late score that doesn't matter so I really like this Colorado offense you can't forget that last year they literally could not be stopped against TCU week one shadur Sanders and openers in his college career has been fantastic so I think everything's going to look really good from the offensive uh point of view uh and they're going to be humming pretty early which will be cool to see and then what was the third question oh viewers yeah how many viewers are we gonna get uh I'll go 4.4 okay I like that number I think yeah I mean last year they're definitely top 10 team in terms of viewership and they had multiple games within the top 10 of viewership so I definitely think that Nebraska game will do a a lot of numbers um so that should be that'll be one of those games I'm looking out two days after the game to see how many uh how many viewers they end up got or end up getting um I'm with you as far as score I think they went by two touchdowns I'm guessing like 34-20 kind of game um that feels right maybe a little more points as well this offense is rolling in as far as coach Prime trying to get his guy into the Heisman conversation I can see him trying to run up that score a little bit towards the end there too so exactly today's the day this is their only home non-conference game if shadur or Travis are really going to seriously mount a Heisman campaign they've got to tack on some yardage and some touchdown today like they really got to run it up yeah no so I'm definitely looking forward to that and um all right let's finish up with uh everybody's favorite game here we got Buffalo's versus bison Jake all right so got four questions here and it's multiple choice just either Buffalo's or bison and we'll SC number one uh this animal is known to have a thick beard while the other is beardless um a bison has a thick beard and a buffalo is beardless correct I don't know what your knowledge of uh buffalo and bison were going into this also just for um some uh uh clarification on the game we're playing buffalo versus bison because the CU is obviously the buffalos and North Dakota State their opponent today are the Bison so just want to give a quick background on that um all right so one for one number two this animal is known to have large horns some have re over six feet uh that would be the water buffalo correct Buffalo okay well you're making a mockery of my game here um this animal has a large hump on the shoulders to allow animals or the animals head to function as a plow oh that's bison they be they be hitting each other on the Prairie all right three for three and let's see if we can go uh perfect SE perfect four for four uh this animal is indigenous to South Asia while the other is found in North America and parts of Europe Buffalo Water Buffalo so this you know why this is so easy for me Dante one because cu's got the best mascot in sports so I want to know everything I can possibly know about Buffalo's and bison so that that's number one number oh by the way I almost stepped in ralphy's uh excrement last year that was funny go ask anyone at the station who was there I almost fell into it during one of the games pretty funny uh it was funny because I didn't it would have been not funny if I had um but I I know all this because my students up at seab Boulder in the class that I teach are working on a story at this game about the difference between Buffalo's and bison so I had the easiest little tip off I actually had one of them talk to an A A A zoology expert yesterday um so we're golden Dante we need we know everything we need to know as far as your Sun Devils I know that there's the sun I know that they represent something that none of us want to mess with yeah no that's a good point I mean actually we got rid to Sparky because of that reason um that's why it's now just the pitchforks the main logo is the Sun Devils um well I guess the game was too easy for you I should have maybe done some Digger uh or some deeper digging into some more research but uh Jake appreciate you joining me uh you can catch Jake on the afternoon drive today later as he'll join Zach and Phil um that'll get going here in a couple hours should make a couple appearances there so looking forward to that as well if you want to get some more CU and Jake Shapiro coverage but uh everyone thank you for hanging out with us and uh we will be back tomorrow at soon