The Colorado Buffaloes announced this weekend they will be putting a statue of former football coach Bill McCartney outside Folsom Field at the end of the 2025 season. McCartney coached the Buffaloes from 1982-1994, amassing a 93-55-5 record and leading Colorado to its lone football national championship in 1990.
The news of his statue being unveiled this season came three months after McCartney died in January. When asked about honoring McCartney after Colorado’s spring game, current coach Deion Sanders noted he plans on adopting some of McCartney’s “swag” this year and then hemmed and hawed for a moment over whether to let his real feelings on the situation be known.
With a preamble of “I’m gonna try not to get in trouble with what I’m about to say,” Sanders then launched into an impassioned speech about giving people their flowers while their still here and questioning why Colorado hasn’t honored its legends while they are still around to be part of the celebration.
“Why we waiting, man? Why we wait? Wouldn’t we have wanted him to see? To be involved in it. To feel it. To feel the love, the respect, the appreciation,” Sanders said. “Why we wait? See that’s the kind of junk that you gotta run with. Say something about that. He can’t enjoy that right now.”
While it was pointed out that the statue for McCartney was two years in the making, that didn’t satisfy his question as McCartney still would’ve been in his 80s (and in declining condition) when the decision was finally made to create a statue for him — while using Rashaan Salaam as another example of a former Buffalo legend that didn’t get honored until after his death.
“Making? How we in the making? This is the new generation. Everything y’all want, you want it right now. And you go get it right now,” Sanders continued. “You don’t wait for nothing no more, do we? We wanna go, we call Uber. We wanna eat, who we call? UberEats? Everything we get is right now. We want something, we order it off Amazon, right now. We ain’t in no waiting generation no more. That’s over. That’s a wrap on that. Everybody in here is impatient. You’re downloading stuff right now and putting it out, as I speak. This ain’t that no more. Let’s stop. And I’m saying it because I want him to see that. He can’t see that. Same thing with Rashaan Salaam, right? How long did we wait? How many years after his death? So we gotta die to get recognized?
“Give people the flowers while they can enjoy ’em and they can smell ’em,” Sanders implored. “That’s how I get down. You guys are doing a good job, I always say you guys are doing a good job right now. I don’t wait. I’m not built like that.”
Colorado to retire jersey numbers of Travis Hunter, Shedeur Sanders as Deion Sanders, Buffs host spring game
Zachary Pereles
Sanders is certainly practicing what he preaches in that regard, as Colorado is set to retire the numbers of Travis Hunter and Shedeur Sanders this fall, less than one year after leaving school. While that decision (particularly retiring Shedeur’s number) caused backlash, Sanders’ feelings on the McCartney situation certainly offers a strong rebuttal to critics who felt it was too soon to retire their numbers.
Now, we’ll have to see if Sanders pushes for other Colorado greats from before his time to be honored as well. One of the biggest criticisms of retiring Shedeur’s number has been that Kordell Stewart’s No. 10 is not immortalized at Folsom Field, and if Sanders wants the Buffaloes to give their legends their flowers while they are still able to smell them, Slash has to be near the top of the list.
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