CU coach Deion Sanders promises “sellout” for Buffs-BYU matchup in Alamo Bowl

Deion Sanders threw down the gauntlet Sunday afternoon, but not at his Alamo Bowl opponent and fellow Big 12 member BYU. Or at the College Football Playoff Selection Committee.

It was tossed toward CU Buffs fans. With love.

“I’m pretty sure we’re going to break that (Alamodome attendance record),” Coach Prime said Sunday during an Alamo Bowl selection event in San Antonio, site of the Dec. 28 matchup. “Because I know what (BYU) is going to bring to the table and I know how deep our (Buffs) fans come, so we’re going to sell this game out. Expediently.”

The attendance record for an Alamo Bowl was set in 2007 when 66,166 watched Penn State take on Texas A&M.

The last time the game topped the 65,000-seat attendance mark was the 2013 Alamo between Oregon and Texas. Since the bowl was launched in 1993, only games that featured Ohio State, Michigan, or an in-state university at the Alamodome have passed the 64,000-plus attendance threshold.

Sanders again reiterated that 9-3 CU’s biggest stars will play against the Cougars (10-2), with whom the Buffs tied for the best conference record this season at 7-2.

That includes Heisman Trophy front-runner Travis Hunter and CU starting quarterback Shedeur Sanders, both of whom are expected to be among the first five players selected in the 2025 NFL Draft.

“We have a plethora of seniors that are pro-bound, and guess what? Every last one of them are going to play,” Coach Prime said Sunday. “We don’t tap out. We don’t sit out.

“It’s a blessing to play this wonderful game. Our kids are going to play. We’ve got a kid that’s probably going to pick up … the Heisman Trophy this week and he’s gonna play. We’ve got another quarterback who picked up an award last weekend and he’s gonna play. We have receivers that I know are going pro, and guess what? They’re gonna play.”

The Buffs will play BYU, their Big 12 brethren, because of a carryover contract with the old Pac-12, which lost 10 members, including CU, after the 2023-24 fiscal year. The Alamo was obligated to match up a Pac-12 opponent against one from the Big 12. For former Pac-12 schools that didn’t reach the College Football Playoff, that meant their “old” postseason obligations went with them to their new leagues.

Fortunately for Alamo Bowl organizers, the size of the new Big 12 — 16 teams — meant that the Buffs and Cougars never met during the season, even though their fates have been intertwined from a distance since early October.

The Buffs, Cougars, Arizona State and Iowa State all posted 7-2 league marks, but because of tiebreakers that played out over Thanksgiving weekend, the Sun Devils and Cyclones got the nods to meet at the league championship game in Arlington, Texas on Saturday. ASU pummeled Iowa State, 45-19, to garner the league’s automatic berth to the CFP, as well as a first-round bye.

So one of the Alamo Bowl narratives, in pairing the Buffs and Cougars, will be an “alternate timeline” Big 12 championship game that never was.

The contest will kick off at 5:30 p.m. MT and will be broadcast by ABC.

It’s the first meeting between the Buffs and Cougars since Dec. 29, 1988 — and that tussle took place at a bowl game, too, as BYU knocked off CU in the Freedom Bowl, 20-17.

This meeting will feature two good QBs and a fascinating battle of strength vs. strength. CU ranked third in the Big 12 in scoring offense (34.5 points per game) and first in passing offense (327.2 yards per game) while the Cougars’ D gave up the fewest points in the Big 12 (20.1 per game), the fewest passing touchdowns allowed (11) and racked up the most interceptions in the circuit (20).

CU leads the all-time series between the programs, 8-3-1, although the Cougars have won the previous two meetings (1981 and ’88).

The Buffs, and CU fans, are more familiar with the setting and the stadium — while today’s bowl selection is just the third for CU in 16 years, all three have been berths in the Alamo Bowl.

Buffs fans will be hoping for a kinder outcome this time around, though, given that CU lost the ’20 Alamo to Texas, 55-23; and the ’16 Alamo to Oklahoma State, 38-8. The Buffs are 0-3 all-time in the game and the most-attended Alamo they’ve played in to date was eight years ago, when the Cowboys-CU game drew 59,815.

The cheapest get-in single ticket via the online secondary market for the game, according to VividSeats.com, was $68 before fees as of late Sunday afternoon.