It’s been nearly 365 days since the University of Colorado brought Deion Sanders to Boulder on a five-year, $29.5 million deal to be the head coach of its football program. Since then, he’s made waves through college football. He led the Buffaloes—who won just one game in 2022—to a 3–0 start, and made Boulder the center of the college football universe. He brought millions of eyes (and dollars) to the school and swagger and celebrities to the sidelines, making Colorado football the hottest ticket in sports. This week, Sanders was named Sports Illustrated’s Sportsperson of the Year.
However, the buffalo-sized elephant in the room is that the team floundered down the stretch, losing eight of its last nine games and finishing 4–8. Sanders admitted, “We just simply, truly, don’t know how to win yet.”
Sanders—and Schwartz-Morini—have built “Coach Prime” into a groundbreaking personal brand for Sanders, using his influence and connections. Schwartz-Morini, a polymath serial creative and innovator, has played a crucial role in the rebranding of Sanders. Together, Sanders and Schwartz-Morini have turned “Coach Prime” into a powerful personal brand and the primary beneficiary has been Colorado football. Let’s take a look at what they have built, how they’ve built it, and what we can learn from their wins, losses, and overall brand-building playbook.
If you come across Constance Schwartz-Morini on a game day, you might meet a very different person. She’s been called “the consigliere,” “the Boss,” and “the visionary,” or, according to Sanders, “the pit bull in pumps.” Like Sanders, Schwartz-Morini is a polymath—a serial creative and an innovator who exudes a confidence and an undeniably magnetic I mean business-ness. Her partnership with Sanders began in 2011 after working in television programming and marketing at the NFL. Together, they’ve established Coach Prime as a personal brand powerhouse in sports.
Schwartz-Morini immediately went to work on her vision for Coach Prime, helping him transition from an NFL Network analyst to a successful brand in his third act. Sanders then took the job at Jackson State University, where he turned the program around and established the Coach Prime brand further. Schwartz-Morini helped bring in multiple new sponsors for the Coach Prime brand, continuing to build his personal brand.
