Several coaching changes on the Colorado Buffaloes’ staff have led to the university having a Black head coach, a Black defensive coordinator, and a Black offensive coordinator — a total of three Black coaches for the first time in the school’s football program.
According to USA Today, as head coach Deion Sanders prepares for his fourth football season, he is losing last season’s defensive coordinator, Robert Livingston, to the NFL, where the Denver Broncos have hired him as an assistant coach. Replacing Livingston with new linebackers coach Chris Marve created a trio of Black coaches on staff to achieve this feat.
Brennan Marion, the team’s offensive coordinator, is one of the three Black coaches.
There are 13 Black head coaches in NCAA college football this year, but none of them have offensive or defensive coordinators who are also Black, according to research from USA Today Sports. Stanford had a Black head
coach, David Shaw, a Black offensive coordinator, Pep Hamilton, and a Black defensive coordinator, Derek Mason, in 2012. In 2024, Syracuse had two Black coordinators under its Black head coach, Fran Brown.However, Colorado is the only major college school to have hired at least four non-interim Black head coaches, yet this is the first time it has had Black offensive and defensive coordinators at the same time.
Now that Livingston is leaving the school, based on the terms of his contract, he owes Colorado $160,000 to break his contract and take an assistant coaching job in the NFL.
Pro Football Hall of Famer Warren Sapp resigned this week as an assistant coach on Sanders’s coaching staff.
Last year, just two years into his contract, Colorado rewarded Sanders by giving him a five-year, $54 million contract after he transformed the football program from a struggling team into a playoff contender. As Sanders earns a
little more than $10 million a year, he is among the top 10 highest-paid coaches in the nation. He initially coached at Jackson State University before Colorado hired him to be the school’s head football coach.RELATED CONTENT: Coach Prime Reunites With Childhood Protégé As Braylon Edwards Commits To Colorado