How CU Buffs football coach Deion Sanders is changing Boulder, one menu at a time: “The guy is unapologetically himself.”

BOULDER — For five decades, the Village Coffee Shop has been the place where CU hangovers go to die.
Time doesn’t just stop at the corner of Folsom and Grove. It slides into a tiny booth, kicks up its feet, sops up runny eggs with soft, moist triangles of toast and watches the world pass by.
“We bleed black and gold over here,” explained Shanna Henkel, a Buffs alum who’s co-owned the diner, a Boulder staple since 1972, with husband, Ryan, for more than 25 years. “My children learned the CU fight song before they knew their ABCs.”
Undergrads bring their kids, who bring their kids, who bring their kids — a link of breakfast sausages that binds generations. The menu is simple and ageless; that it so rarely changes is part of the charm.
But if you want a perfect example of the little, yet meaningful, ways over the last seven months in which Deion Sanders, a venerated Black man from the South, is changing Boulder, a predominantly white, affluent westerncollege town, it’s there in one word at the bottom of the Village’s menu, listed under the breakfast sides: Grits.
“We were definitely the first (Boulder eatery he reviewed),” said Henkel, whose greasy spoon was one of several BoCo establishments Coach Prime visited and graded via Instagram videos after getting hired by CU last December.
“When he gave us an A-minus — he said the service was impeccable but the only problem was that we didn’t have any grits, and he’s a Southern boy — I came home to my husband, who has a culinary degree, and I said, ‘Hey, we need grits on the menu.’”
So they got rid of the old ones and re-printed the lot, adding “PRIME grits” — “PRIME” in all caps — to their traditional fare.
“I had someone recently ask me, ‘What are these PRIME grits about?’ I said, ‘Those are in honor of Coach Prime. … We have grits because Coach Prime asked for them.’”
“Kind of his own hemisphere”
For a so-called fish out of water, the 55-year-old Sanders has swiftly become a force of nature that changes streams, never mind menus.
“The guy is unapologetically himself,” said former Buffs quarterback Joel Klatt, a Denverite who’s now a football analyst with Fox Sports. “And to be quite honest with you, that should fit anywhere. I think it’s a rarity in today’s culture. It’s a breath of fresh air for me, certainly.”
A native Floridian, Sanders has called Texas home for much of the last two decades. The Pro Football Hall of Famer admitted to having never visited Boulder until he was wooed by athletic director Rick George to take over the Buffs football program last fall, after CU staggered to its 15th losing campaign over the last 16 non-pandemic seasons with a 1-11 record.
“There are people that blend into their surroundings,” Klatt said, “and there are people that force their surroundings to blend to them … Deion is certainly kind of his own hemisphere.”
Meanwhile, many CU undergrads were thrilled to add Sanders, a media magnet and social media juggernaut, right from the get-go.
“Everybody was having a good time (at the spring game) and I have a lot of hopes for the next coming season,” said Chris Yan, a CU student from Longmont. “I also thought that everybody played great. It was good to see all the new recruits we have just perform super well. So, yeah, looking ahead, I think we’re going to do well.”
Prices for Buffs student sports passes, a program that allows students to claim tickets to football games and home men’s basketball games, increased from $150 for the 2022-23 athletic calendar to $185 for the 2023-24 slate. CU’s initial allotment of passes, 75% of the inventory, were made available July 11 and quickly sold out. The remaining 25% are expected to go on sale starting Aug. 15.
“As an alum, the excitement that Coach Sanders’ hire has brought back to the football program is great. I love it,” said Dr. Hillary Potter, a Denver native who is an associate professor of women and gender studies at CU. “I’m guessing that faculty aren’t going to get those emails we got in the past that said, ‘Hey, we’ve got a game coming up, get a seat for 10 bucks.’ ”
Still, Sanders’ arrival raised eyebrows among some members of the Buffs faculty because it coincided with the announcement last December that CU was revising its academic policy on transfer credits. In simplest terms, CU will now accept all non-remedial academic credits from accredited four-year schools as long as the student has maintained at least a C-minus grade in the classes pertaining to those credits. Before the change was announced, some of those credits didn’t transfer over. From an eligibility standpoint, that would require the gap in credits to be made up for a student-athlete to be eligible to play.
When transfers were required to sit out a year before seeing the field, the issue was often moot as the classes could be made up during the waiting period of ineligibility. But when the NCAA removed the one-year sit-out penalty in 2021 following the COVID-19 pandemic, the transfer portal exploded, making Boulder a more challenging destination for prospects who wished to play right away.
CU administrators denied that the shift in transfer policy came about to appease Sanders, although athletic director Rick George said it was a concern of Coach Prime’s during the interview process. Since Sanders’ arrival, roughly half of the Buffs’ football roster is new to the program, which has seen a historic influx and exodus of student-athletes.
And while Coach Prime has reached out to CU professors, Potter said, “there are always going to be those faculty who are like, ‘We don’t need these sports here,’ and, ‘Academics are first.’
“When it was announced that Deion Sanders was coming in, (some said), ‘Are we going to go back to when it was just the worst?’ And, ‘What are we going to sacrifice to have a great football team?’ So whether it’s finances or whether it’s lowering standards, those are questions that are put out there.”
“I fully support the coach’s faith”
Sanders’ acclimation to campus culture has run into the occasional hiccup.
One recruit he inherited from the previous regime, Anthony “Deuce” Roberson of Palmer Ridge, was the subject of an online petition in late January calling for his expulsion. The petition, launched by a former prep classmate, Jenna Baker, who now also attends CU, cited several sexual assault allegations and a prior investigation into Roberson by the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office. Roberson was no longer a member of the team as of this past April but reportedly still maintained a university email account as of July 20.
Baker declined comment when reached by The Post.
An avowed Christian, Sanders’ use of prayer in a team setting was commonplace at Jackson State, his previous coaching stop. When he followed a similar pattern in his initial meetings with Buffs players, though, it drew a letter of rebuke from The Freedom From Religion Foundation in late January, accusing CU of allowing Sanders to violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. CU’s chief operating officer, Patrick O’Rourke, replied that the university’s Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance had met with Sanders to reiterate school policy on religious expression.
“As a state institution, we respect both an individual’s right to hold religious beliefs and our own obligations to not endorse any religious viewpoint,” CU chancellor Phil DiStefano told The Post recently when asked about the exchange. “And our office of Institutional Equity and Compliance personally met with (Sanders) to provide the guidance on the non-discrimination policies.
“And we certainly, I certainly, fully support the coach’s faith as it fits within the parameters that we have at the university. So it just took a short meeting, and everything turned out well, in my mind.”
DiStefano said he knew of no formal complaints regarding Sanders’ expression of religion since.
According to the July 2022 U.S. census, 89.5% of Boulder residents identified as completely or partially white, compared to 1.3% of respondents who identified as Black or partially Black. CU’s fall 2022 demographics report showed a student body that was 65.7% white and 2.6% Black.
Sanders is the third Black football coach hired to lead the program since 2018, following predecessors Mel Tucker, who led CU for one season before taking the same position at Michigan State, and Karl Dorrell, who was fired last October during his third campaign.
Annett James, president of the NAACP of Boulder County, said the organization has already met with members of Sanders’ staff and plans to keep those lines of communication open. Whether it’s grits or faith, Coach Prime is a southerner who’s become the most popular and transformative figure in a western, historically liberal and secular community. The feeling-out process — in terms of Sanders to Boulder and Boulder to Sanders — is about the diversity of culture as much as it is the diversity of race.
“There is an impact, I would argue, that is already being felt (with Sanders’ arrival),” James told The Post. “Conversations are happening within different entities throughout the community on how best to welcome the diversity — probably more diversity than Boulder is accustomed to. … We believe that people are open to ideas to ensure that the community takes advantage of it and wants it, because it’s bringing a whole different level of vibrancy that we haven’t had for a while. Sports has a way of doing that.
“It’s good for Boulder. Just because your community looks homogenous, its mindset does not have to be that way. It’s an important opportunity for Boulder to prove that their intellectual theories can be put into action.”
PRIME grits alongside an egg and a cup of coffee at Village Coffee Shop in Boulder on Wednesday, July 19, 2023. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
“I love the amount of attention”
Can a grits guy make it big in a breakfast burrito town? One of Henkel’s proudest moments as a restaurateur came just before Christmas, when Sanders returned to the Village Coffee Shop one morning with his son Deion Jr. and gave the cozy diner another go.
“I pulled out the (new) menu, I opened it up and said, ‘Here you go — PRIME grits.’
“They put that on their Instagram, and we had (tons) of likes within four hours. His social media reach is wild to me. I’ve personally never seen anything like it before.”
Curious patrons, and new patrons, of all ages — and all races — now come to the Village to ask for the dish Deion built. A warm little bowl of ground corn, salt, butter and cheese. And change.
“Most of those people coming in and ordering grits know that we have them because of Coach Prime,” Henkel said. “And that’s what we want.
“It’s been super fun. Super exciting. I love the amount of attention he is bringing to our university and our football program. It’s been great.”