What the Eck are you waiting for, Fernando Lovo?
If the CU Buffs don’t make a run soon at Jason Eck, the poor man’s Curt Cignetti, some other Power 4 school looking to turn around its football program will snap him up.
Deion Sanders has three-and-a-half seasons left on a five-year, $54-million contract. If I’m Lovo, as my Buffs are getting ready to host No. 11 Utah late Saturday night, what have I seen from the past two years of The Coach Prime Era to convince me that Sanders is going to right this ship?
In the past 15 months, Coach Prime has featured three different offensive play-callers, used two different defensive coordinators, and won just five times while losing 12.
Lovo, the Buffs’ new athletic director, already knows Eck’s number. And the man. At his previous stop at New Mexico, he hired Eck to revive Lobos football, and all the latter’s done ever since is grow flowers at one of the most bone-dry coaching graveyards in college football.
Eck went 9-4 last year. He’s off to a 4-1 start with the Lobos this season — and that one defeat was a 14-6 setback at Oklahoma on Sept. 19.
Lovo knows the buyout, because he helped set it up — $4 million if it happens before New Year’s 2027. That’s a bargain to get the Buffs heading in the right direction again.
Eck, 49, looks like the actor Fred Flintstone walking around wearing one of Steve Spurrier’s old visors. But his Lobo teams run the ball like they’re Wisconsin, circa 1999. New Mexico heads into the weekend among the nation’s top 35 in rushing (189.3 yards per game), rushing attempts (42.8 carries per game), points per game (36.8), fewest points per game allowed (11.5), takeaways per game (3.3) and fewest penalty yards per game (45.0).
And, mercy, does Eck ever win. And win. And win. And win. His three teams at Idaho — IDAHO! — from 2022-24 put up a combined record of 26-13. The Vandals were 15-25 in the four seasons before Eck turned up and had produced two winning seasons over the previous 22 years.
New Mexico used to be CSU’s automatic win, even in The Addazio Era. Not anymore. Eck is 13-5 with the Lobos since the start of last season. New Mexico had gone 16-39 in the five years just before Eck took over.
Eck is the anti-Deion, a former Wisconsin Badgers offensive lineman who believes in steak over sizzle because, and this is admittedly pot-to-kettle talk, he’s downed more than a few in his life.
He walked onto Barry Alvarez’s Badgers a generation ago. He met his wife while working as a bouncer. He thinks from the offensive line outward, not the other way ’round. He took the scenic route over the last 26 years, a path through 13 schools (and Idaho twice) that includes a stop as a graduate assistant at CU from 2002-03. He drives around Albuquerque in a low rider. He’s a different cat.
Can he recruit? It’s a fair question, and maybe the biggest red flag in a Big 12 where speed and points rule. His 2026 recruiting class at New Mexico, per the 247Sports.com composite rankings, checked in at No. 88 nationally. Not sexy, granted. But keep in mind that the previous three Lobo recruiting classes ranked 133rd (2025), and 117th (2023). And with under, Mr. Flintstone’s yabba-dabba-dream job in Madison may not be opening up so soon after all.
Could CU afford him? And afford him now? That last one is where things get dicey. If money were no object, if CU were any SEC school but Vanderbilt, the Coach Prime Era would have officially been on its last legs two losses ago. Sanders’ record over his last 16 games against Power 4 competition is 3-13 — the same record as his predecessor, Karl Dorrell, just before the latter got fired.
CU is expecting a strong crowd for the Buffs’ late-night “Family Weekend” visit from the 5-0 Utes — but the game, on paper, shouldn’t be close. CU (2-3, 0-2 Big 12) likely won’t be favored the rest of the season. If the Buffs get run out of Folsom Field by Utah, early or late, it’ll get that much harder to drum up fannies-in-seats for that Oct. 31 visit from Kansas State (3-2); a Nov. 13 visit from No. 20 Houston (5-1); or even a Nov. 28 home finale against Scott Frost and UCF (3-3).
Trying to sell season tickets off back-to-back 3-9 campaigns, or Heaven forbid, a 3-9 followed by a 2-10, with a football coach who makes $10 million isn’t just bad optics. It’s terrible business.
Eck’s buyout is chicken scratch for Power 4 pocketbooks —
The Sanders side of any divorce, as we’ve known for years, is an accounting nightmare of The NFL legend, if dismissed by CU without cause, left on the life of the contract, prorated from the date of termination.
If Sanders were canned the first week of December, for example, that number is estimated to be around $26 million, if you include the final four weeks of 2026 salary left on the calendar. If it happened in the first week of December 2027, he would be owed roughly $18 million.
For a department reportedly operating at a $27-million-ish loss during the fiscal year that ended this past June, that’s a nasty chunk of change. And it would’ve been more if not for a reported $41.78 million in direct institutional support from the university itself during the ’24-25 fiscal year, according to data recently compiled by the office of U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.
In the meantime, though, these Buffs have become a painfully hard watch. Nine men on a field-goal block. Play scripts turning up at Broomfield hotels. CU football since 2023 has become the Dorian Gray of Big 12 football programs: The older the Prime Era gets, the younger and dumber its mistakes become.
“That happens, sometimes,” Sanders said Tuesday at his weekly presser when asked about Hotelgate. “I’ve seen that, heard of that on the pro level as well as the collegiate level. But I think we scored on the first drive, so I guess it didn’t work.”
Only you never scored a touchdown again after that. In fact, until the final 43 seconds, your offense managed to cross the Texas Tech 25-yard line just one other time.
The Sanders Era was an interesting experiment, a marketing masterstroke and one heck of a television show launch. But like “Lost” or “How I Met Your Mother,” it feels as if nobody knows how to end this story cleanly. When you’re asking fans and critics to remember every week what the score was during the third quarter, you’re also reminding people that your teams don’t close. And can’t finish.
In games within a plus-or-minus swing of eight points or fewer at the end of the third stanza, Sanders’ Buffs since 2025 were outscored 44-103 in the fourth quarter or OT. Given the same situation, Eck’s New Mexico teams have outscored the opposition 91-60. Coaches lie. The scoreboard doesn’t.
