🏈 Coach Prime and Another Lesson Why Culture Always Matters

By: Peter Frerichs 

We all know a company’s culture matters. Study after study reports that strong cultures:

• Improve decision-making
• Foster innovation
• Help in attracting and retaining top talent

Poor cultures lead to:

• Disengagement
• Lower productivity
• High turnover

The great Milton Friedman was fond of remarking that there is “no such thing as a free lunch.” Nothing in this world is obtained for nothing - someone always pays, and fostering a strong culture is no different.

You cannot simply hire a group of folks, plop them in a department, and expect them to align around the company’s product, service, or cause. In Friedman’s world, this is a free lunch, attempting to build culture without any prior investment. Because nobody is footing the bill, the endeavor will more than likely fall flat.

My Favorite Football Team

My favorite football team is the University of Colorado (CU) Buffaloes. I attended the university as an undergraduate, and during my time, CU football united the campus. Successful college sports teams, just like successful companies, all have one thing in common - strong cultures.

There is no mystery here. It’s always been this way. When CU football began to lose, and lose badly, you could point to the culture. The team lacked focus, didn’t respond to leadership, and as such, lost on the field.

After a decade or so of mediocre to downright terrible teams, CU rolled the dice in late 2022 with a new coach.

Also known as Deion “Prime-Time” Sanders, Coach Prime is arguably one of the best football players ever, and was tasked with reviving the culture of a once proud football tradition.

Coach Prime had no connection to Colorado or the surrounding states. He arrived at CU with his son as quarterback and an incredible athlete, Travis Hunter, as a defensive and offensive weapon.

Louis Luggage

Coach Prime made headlines when he arrived on campus, announcing that he had brought “his luggage” with him, and it was Louis (Louis Vuitton luggage) - aka - the best.

The Coach Prime Effect

Sanders’ hiring helped lead the university to record revenue during 2024. Donations poured in, and advertising, clothing, and apparel returns skyrocketed.

The team started well in 2023, Prime’s first season, but ultimately ended the season with a losing record - 4 wins and 8 losses. This was light-years better than the abysmal seasons preceding Coach Prime, and while his “Louis luggage” performed well, it wasn’t enough in his first year to post a winning season.

In Prime’s second year, the team improved dramatically - 9 wins and 4 losses. One of the two pieces of luggage - Travis Hunter - won the country’s best player award, and the program looked to be on a roll.

This last year, 2025, however, was a disappointment. The team ultimately finished with just 3 wins and 9 losses. Granted, Coach Prime had lost his Louis luggage to the NFL (pro football league), and the two were difficult pieces to replace.

Louis Luggage Isn’t Culture

It took me a bit of time to come to the realization, embarrassingly enough, that Louis luggage isn’t culture. Louis luggage is exciting, Louis luggage is eye-catching, and Louis luggage can even win you some games. But unless that Louis luggage is pouring through Boulder, Colorado, on an annual basis, good luck sustaining a winning record.

The problem for Coach Prime is that while he was able to inject some Louis into the program and notch early wins, there was no comparable luggage waiting on the conveyor belt.

Successful football teams, like companies, build culture over time. In the case of CU, the Louis luggage were mercenaries - capable of great things but never inculcated into the culture of the team.

🚨 My alarm bells went off recently when I learned that the team does not know the school’s fight song. This might sound insignificant to some, but a school’s fight song is akin to a founding document. A fight song bleeds culture, and it’s one of the first things that all student-athletes learn upon entering a program.

CU does not have the brand or the cache to continue attracting Louis luggage. What Coach Prime could have done is use his name and stature to nab some high-priced luggage while smoothing out the process via traditional, tried-and-true, relationship-building recruiting. In today’s game, this is a mix of bringing in true freshmen and navigating the transfer portal carefully.

Similar to any company - private or nonprofit - you recruit individuals for different positions on your team, create the spaces to form a shared culture, and advance projects as one unit.

Yes, there will always be egos. And yes, certain members will always be more valuable than others. But cohesive teams don’t fragment when they feel part of something bigger.

We can all learn a lot from CU’s disastrous 2025 season. I hope to write another post at this time in 2026 about how Coach Prime turned the program around by leaning into the school’s rich tradition. We know what works because it's worked for hundreds of years. There are no free lunches, and mercenaries can’t build culture. Remind yourself of that next time that Louis comes knocking …