Colorado's Deion Sanders Questions CSU Players Saying They Got $600K Transfer Offers

More than three weeks after Colorado earned a 28-9 win over Colorado State in the latest round of the Rocky Mountain Showdown, Buffaloes head coach Deion Sanders is still talking about his team's in-state rival.

Sanders used some of his press conference on Tuesday to question the veracity of claims by Colorado State quarterback Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi and wide receiver Tory Horton that they each turned down $600,000 NIL offers to remain with the Rams.

As part of a bigger story by Kevin Lytle of the Fort Collins Coloradoan about Colorado State working to keep its top players from leaving in the transfer portal for lucrative NIL offers from other programs, head coach Jay Norvell said Fowler-Nicolosi turned down a $600,000 offer to stay.

Norvell also said in the story that Horton turned down six-figure offers because he was deciding between either staying with the Rams or entering the NFL draft. He announced a short time later that he would be returning to school for his fifth year of eligibility.

During Mountain West media days in July, Norvell said "a guy" from Kansas State made the offer to Fowler-Nicolosi.

One thing that is becoming clear in the NIL era is that the nature of these offers does have to be put under close scrutiny. UNLV quarterback Matthew Sluka announced on Sept. 25 he was going to utilize a redshirt season effective immediately because of unfulfilled NIL promises made that weren't kept.

Sluka's agent, Marcus Cromartie, told Eric Olson of the Associated Press his client was promised $100,000 by an assistant coach after he agreed to transfer to UNLV, but there was no written agreement in place and attempts to set up payment plan were unsuccessful.

There's no indication the situation involving the two Colorado State players would have resulted in a similar scenario if they had transferred, but it does raise a lot of questions about the validity of some of these offers.

Why all of this bothered Sanders to the point he needed to bring it up now is unclear. There is bad blood between the two programs after last year's dramatic 43-35 overtime win by Colorado, but they have already played this year in what was an easy victory for Coach Prime's squad.

Colorado is playing No. 18 Kansas State on Saturday, so perhaps the Wildcats' interest in Fowler-Nicolosi got Sanders fired up to take another dig at Colorado State.