The defending national runners-up open their season at home against a foe coming off a 1-11 season, and it's hard to say who's attracting most of the attention.
Fox's Big Noon Saturday will be in Fort Worth on Sept. 2 (and ESPN's College GameDay too, most likely) for Colorado at TCU in what shapes up to be the biggest game of the season's opening Saturday. And while most of the hype is centered around the sizzle of Coach Prime's first FBS game instead of what will take place between the white lines -- TCU opened as a 13.5-point favorite -- TCU head coach Sonny Dykes did on one unique challenge of preparing for the Buffaloes.
Namely: Who exactly are they?
"They're going to have a bunch of good players," Dykes said on ESPNU's set on Wednesday. "One thing (Deion's) done a tremendous job of is attracting players -- a lot of really high-quality transfers. They're going to be hard to evaluate. You're going to be watching like 60 different teams, trying to figure out who these guys are and what they do."
247Sports lists CU has with 71 newcomers, 21 high-school signees (led by 5-star corner Cormani McClain and 4-star running back Dylan Edwards) and 50 transfers. Those 50 transfers came from 29 different schools: 10 from Jackson State, five from Florida State, and 13 from eight different SEC schools.
Pressed by ESPN's Kris Budden on how he and his staff will prepare for such a diverse group, Dykes first fell to a coaching truism before zeroing in.
"You go back and you look at Shedeur (Sanders), his son, who's a really good quarterback. It starts there. How are we going to defend him and what we're going to do. You've got to do the best you can to look at their key players. Their depth chart's going to be evolving, so many different players from so many different programs."
Jackson State film is a given given that Deion, to the surprise of no one, proclaimed Shedeur as his starting quarterback at his introductory press conference back in December, and three offensive assistants also joined the Sanderses in the trek from Jackson to Boulder. (CU wide receivers coach Brett Bartolone was Jackson State's offensive coordinator in 2022.) The TCU defensive staff also figures to spend lots of time in Kent State film, with coordinator Sean Lewis and offensive line coach Bill O'Boyle joining from there.
The defensive staff structure is similar, with coordinator Charles Kelly and defensive tackles coach Sal Sunseri joining from Alabama, while two assistants plus director of defensive quality control Dennis Thurman joined Prime from Jackson State.
TCU's biggest advantage in this area is that, at least with their own offense, the Frogs are fighting fire with fire.
The Frogs lost coordinator Garrett Riley to Clemson and quarterback Max Duggan, running backs Kendre Miller and Emari Demarcado, receivers Quentin Johnston, Taye Barber and Derius Davis, and the interior of the offensive line to graduation and/or the NFL.
Arkansas hire Kendal Briles will coordinate the offensive, while Chandler Morris will resume his role as TCU's Day 1 QB1 after effectively being lost for the season 20 passes into the 2022 opener. Senior Emani Bailey (31 carries in 2022) is TCU's leading returning rusher, while Alabama transfer Trey Sanders figures to log significant carries after playing sparingly over four injury-riddled seasons in Tuscaloosa. At receiver, transfers Jack Bech (LSU), JoJo Earle (Alabama), Jaylon Robinson (Ole Miss) and John Paul Richardson (Oklahoma State) will battle for playing time with a slew of true and redshirt freshmen.
In short, both defenses will throw a series of educated guesses at the opposing offense and figure out what sticks in real time.
Short of hard information on the other team, Dykes said his team will stick to what it knows: itself.
"The biggest thing you've got to do is worry about yourself," he said. "Really."