For this to work, Fernando Lovo better be the best import from New Mexico since Hatch chiles.
CU hired him as its new athletic director on Monday. Given the changing financial landscape of college sports, the school needed a leader who was ambitious, young, successful and affordable.
The Board of Regents checked every box, bringing aboard the 37-year-old Lovo, who sprinkled pixie dust at the University of New Mexico over the past 13 months.
The school’s press release makes a case for why the well-traveled Lovo is qualified. He hired football coach Jason Eck, who led the Lobos to their first nine-win season since 2016. He landed dynamic hoops boss Eric Olen. And he produced record revenue for the athletic department, improving by 17.6 % year over year.
Now comes the hard part.
Lovo’s first task when he starts Thursday must be to hold football coach Deion Sanders accountable.
Sanders was given the keys to the athletic department when he received a massive contract extension last March. Lovo must take them back And change the locks.
Sanders delivered for CU in his first two seasons. He brought eyeballs to TVs, a spike in student applications, a star quarterback in his son Shedeur and a Heisman Trophy winner in Travis Hunter.
Then last season the wheels fell off and the transmission dropped. Sanders deserves nothing but respect for beating cancer and working through health issues related to having a reconstructed bladder. There are those who want to give him a mulligan for the 3-9 record. Sanders is not among them. He has taken responsibility and insists he will fix it.
Words are not enough. They cannot be enough. He has to answer through actions for this mess.
How long can Lovo expect the scant well-off Buffs boosters to reach into their pockets and endure such failed expectations? And how patient can he be while overseeing a CU athletic department that is staring at a $27 million budget deficit in the fiscal year that ends in June 2026, primarily because of Prime and his players?
When donors see themselves as only funding expenses without a return on their investment — Sanders has a 16-21 record in Boulder — fatigue and frustration will follow.
The current way Sanders is running his program is not sustainable.
Former AD Rick George risked his career three years ago by hiring Sanders with no idea how to pay him. He pulled it off.
Now, Lovo walks into a more difficult spot since Sanders’ salary nearly doubled with his five-year, $54.5 million contract extension that runs through 2029.
CU was terrified at the prospect of losing Sanders, knowing what empty seats and lifeless games looked like under Karl Dorrell.
Left unsaid was that Sanders has to win for the dollars to make sense for CU.
There are no rebuilding seasons when the coach is getting paid in the top 20 of his profession.
And let’s be real, the Buffs did not just lose a lot last season, they were blown out in three of their final five games, leading to fans clearing out by the fourth quarter of the final two at Folsom Field.
“Everybody deserves much better than this,” Sanders said after CU fell to Kansas State in the finale.
Still waiting.
Since the season ended, things have gotten worse.
Several of CU’s best players and prospects — receivers Omarion Miller and Dre’lon Miller, safety Tawfiq Byard and defensive lineman Alexander McPherson — entered the transfer portal.
All schools work the hack now that Sanders used to overhaul CU’s roster in 2023, and they do it better because they have more money to offer.
Which brings us back to Lovo. A man-to-man conversation with Sanders is necessary to help him embrace and understand how his job has evolved as the state’s highest-paid employee. Barring the rescue by a sugar daddy or private equity firm, the program needs a new direction, transparency, and a pivot in how it recruits and operates.
The days of Sanders not making off-campus visits must end. Recruits in and out of state need to see him. High school coaches need to know him.
Sanders’ best asset is his personality, and yet CU landed one top recruit in the state. He can no longer be so dependent on the portal. If he had a strong local relationships, perhaps he could have swooped in and signed Cherry Creek running back Jayden Fox, a UCLA commit, who profiles perfectly for offensive coordinator Brennan Marion’s system.
At the risk of sounding callous, if Sanders can make trips to support Shedeur playing for the Browns, why can’t he get on a plane to find players to uplift his program? Everyone from Indiana’s Curt Cignetti to North Carolina’s Bill Belichick leave campus in search of players. Sanders has to follow suit, health willing.
History shows CU’s staff needs to do more homework and build stronger relationships with recruits, especially with those in the portal. They whiffed on multiple transfers last offseason, most notably quarterback Kaidon Salter.
Blame the kid if you want. But why did Sanders think he would fit with Pat Shurmur given his lack of creativity? And don’t get us started on all the misses on offensive and defensive linemen.
Here’s the thing about history: it shows what it shows. And it will repeat itself if left unchecked. Sanders enters his fourth season on his third offensive coordinator and second defensive coordinator.
His staff features former pros, but lacks grinders, even though records obtained by USA Today as of October 2025 showed 57 coaches and support staff, including a bodyguard. It is unclear where the number sits now, but only huge success can justify this type of excess.
Lovo is 21 years younger than Sanders. He has worked in big-time college programs at Florida, Ohio State and Texas, where he served as football’s chief of staff from 2016 to 2021.
He knows how the sausage is made. Sanders needs to be his greatest asset. But it has become painfully clear, Lovo must have the courage to direct the coach to follow a new blueprint.
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