The Colorado Buffaloes have plenty of reason to celebrate following Saturday night’s 24-17 upset win over No. 22 Iowa State in Boulder.
It was arguably the biggest win of the Deion Sander era, right up there with CU’s 45-42 win over then No. 17-ranked TCU in his team debut back in 2023 (the only wins over AP ranked opponents in Sanders’ career), and the team got one of its best quarterback performances of the season from Kaidon Salter, who’s had an up-and-down year since transferring from Liberty.
The win also snapped the Buffaloes’ two-game losing streak, which is why Sanders was more than happy to watch his fans storm the field after the win.
“I love it. I love it,” Sanders said. “As long as we control our — we don’t want to do nothing stupid … I love it. I want to see the kids rush the field, I absolutely love it.”
But much to Sanders’ surprise, the university will likely be handed a hefty fine from the NCAA after the weekend because the team’s fans did rush the field.
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The impending $50,000 fine came as a shock to Sanders during his postgame press conference, where he joked about having a clever solution to pay down the penalty.
“Fifty thousand [dollars] for rushing the field?” Sanders stated. “Who made that a rule? Come on, man. That ain’t right. I mean, these kids…we have 50,000 [students enrolled] right? Let’s chip in. That’s how it was when I grew up — you were going somewhere and get in the car, for gas, you chip in. Wow, that’s…shoot.”
It’s not a question of if the school will be fined. The Big 12 has made it a priority to crack down on the number of field-storming instances from its schools.
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“The safety of student-athletes and all game participants is our foremost priority,” Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark said in a statement last year after fining Arizona State for its fans rushing the field. “We will continue to work with our institutions on event management policies at all Big 12 venues.”
If the Big 12’s fine system is a shock to Sanders, he would really hate coaching in the SEC, which fines its school’s $500,000 every time a member school’s fans rush the field.
The conference hit Mississippi State with a hefty half-million-dollar fine earlier this year after the Bulldogs upset Arizona State.
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