Colorado football’s challenging schedule is revealed

Jan 19, 2023 - 5:11 PM

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After what seemed like an endless wait (made worse by the lack of a bowl game), the Colorado Buffaloes now know the date of every one of the Buffs’ games next year under new coach Deion Sanders. We’ve known the opponents for awhile, but after some very public flirting with late schedule changes, Coach Prime has hist first 12 games set. The list is below:

We’ve known the opponents, but this order is BRUTAL. CU has a very interesting first five games - they travel to Dallas to play national runner-up TCU, then come home for Coach Prime’s first home against the largest historical rival Nebraska, who’s ALSO breaking in a new coach, then end the non-conference slate with a home contest against local rival Colorado State. After that gauntlet, it gets harder, with back to back games AT Oregon, who returns Bo Nix and a million other dudes, and hosting USC, who happens to have the incumbent Heisman winner. After that, the “soft” underbelly of the schedule finally reveals itself. A road shot at Arizona State may be CU’s best shot at a win away from Folsom Field and the home contest against Stanford should have the Buffs favored, a rarity in the 2020’s. After a bye week, CU then travels to the Rose Bowl against a new-look UCLA, hosts surprise giant Oregon State and plucky upstart Arizona in back to back weeks, before ending on a brutal Friday contest against Washington State and a road spot against Pac-12 champion Utah.

That’s a lot, and very few of those games may have CU as on-paper favorites. The Pac-12 is very deep this year, and will have the best quarterbacks in the country (including Shadeur Sanders, hopefully). We’ll continue to break this down over the LONG offseason, but we also still don’t know what CU’s roster will look like in full.

Get your tickets now, Buff fans, because each of these home games are expected to sell out. Once again, the Buffs were 1-11 last year. We comin.