11 NCAA Violations Colorado Football Self-Reported Including Deion Sanders’ Instagram Infraction from Coach Prime’s Debut Year

Coming to Colorado as the Buffs HC in December 2022, Coach Prime Deion Sanders had a lot to learn along the way. And one of those things includes familiarizing himself with the NCAA rules and regulations. From the transfer portal to social media violations, the Buffs committed at least 16 minor NCAA violations that Colorado self-reported, none of which held serious consequences.

Out of the 16 violations, 11 of them are in football where Coach Prime’s social media handling is one of the prime contributors. After all, he loves to show off his Buffs to the world! His live sessions on Instagram led to a temporary recruiting ban on all his coaches. And that’s not the only IG violation he committed in his debut year. 

Coach Prime’s Instagram breaches of the NCAA rule

Amidst other violations, Deion Sanders’ drive towards social media is one of his demons when it comes to maintaining a clean NCAA record. In his first year on May 16, 2023, Coach Ptime committed an IG violation when a Buffs recruiting prospect, Aaron Butler, who later signed with Texas, appeared in the HC’s IG Live session for about a couple of minutes. This is a violation of the NCAA rule 13.10.1.2, which is a bylaw that bans prospective recruits from engaging in a program’s HC social media activities. The violation led to the removal of all Colorado football coaches from recruiting duties on the road. Recruiting was also banned for two weeks. 

Another IG violation occurred in January 2023 when Coach Prime reposted a video of his team engaged in voluntary activities on IG. As harmless as it seemed, it’s a violation of the NCAA rule 17.02.19 which regulates voluntary workouts and bans recording players during such workouts. According to the statement by the school, “The activity would have been permitted had the video not been posted to social media.”

Colorado self-reports minor NCAA violations

As per USA TODAY Sports, out of the 452 NCAA rulebook pages, Deion Sanders and his Buffs self-reported 11 violations in football in his first year. These violations include transfer portal violation, Coach Prime’s IG violation, security breakdown violation, team’s social media violation, forbidden game-day simulation, recruitment violation, yoga coach violation, and more.

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Colorado issued a statement following the NCAA rule violations. The statement read, “The University of Colorado Boulder Athletic Department is committed to complying with NCAA regulations and will continue to educate our coaches, student-athletes, and staff to ensure that we remain in compliance. We take all infractions seriously, regardless of the severity, and in these specific cases, these minor infractions were all self-reported to the NCAA.”

It’s not uncommon for any college football program, or any sports team in that case, to overlook the rules leading to minor violations. Colorado isn’t the only college football program to receive nominal punishments for such violations because even Alabama and Ohio State aren’t without breaking the NCAA rules. To err is human but having the integrity to self-report their misdeeds is nothing short of admirable. 

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