"Glory Colorado" Meets Tupac as CU Marching Band Feels the Prime Effect

Hardly any part of Boulder has been left untouched by "Coach Prime" since Deion Sanders's arrival at the University of Colorado last year. From the football culture to the food — and even how people dress — his impact has changed things completely around Folsom Field.

But there's one "Prime Effect" that many folks might not know about: Sanders's influence on the Golden Buffalo Marching Band.

“In my ten years here, I've not seen as many people out and about at our [Pearl Street Stampedes],” says Matt Dockendorf, associate director of bands for CU and director of the Golden Buffalo Marching Band. “Playing for sold-out crowds for every single home game this year has been incredible."

The Golden Buffaloes typically open up the game-day festivities with a pre-game show and then keep the music going for as long as the clock runs, emphasizing high moments during the game and setting a tone for the crowd amid tense ones.

When Sanders came to the school last winter, Dockendorf and other bandleaders met with him early on. Dockendorf says they’ve done this for every coach in his ten years at the school, but Sanders was different.

For one, the NFL legend had some pretty specific ideas of what he wanted from the marching squad.

“We want to be relevant,” Dockendorf notes. “We want to play music that will hype up the football team, and if there are special things that they want to hear or they want to do, or ways that we can link up with other entities on campus, we want to do that.”

Megan Finnigan, a drum major and a senior engineering student at CU who has been in the band for four years, says bandmembers have worked to meld Sanders’s ideas — like adding more hip-hop to their repertoire — with regular traditions at the school.

For example, “Glory Colorado” always plays when CU's live mascot, Ralphie the Buffalo, runs out. This year, the band has played Sanders’s theme music, “Halftime (Stand Up and Get Crunk!),” by the Ying Yang Twins, immediately after “Glory Colorado” as the team takes the field.

“It's a really super-energetic, strong, powerful tune, and the setting is amazing, because we're standing right in front of the student section [and] we have 12,000 students yelling behind it for the team,” Dockendorf says. “It's a pretty awesome atmosphere, standing down on the field listening to the band play that as the team runs out.”

Finnigan tells Westword that one of the other noticeable changes this year is that the band moved one section over to make room for more student tickets to be sold, as the school anticipated a much higher level of interest following Sanders's arrival. Those who are in their fourth year with the Golden Buffaloes, like Finnigan, began their college careers in 2020 during the pandemic, when they couldn’t meet in person to practice — and there wasn’t even a football season.

After that, CU football had two straight losing seasons, managing just one win in 2022 and four in 2021.

“We always have a good time, and it's still a great community, but we were definitely playing to empty stadiums a lot,” Finnigan recalls. “This year, with Coach Prime being hired and really transforming the football program, there's been such a renewed energy and enthusiasm for the football team, but also toward the band.”
Both Finnigan and Dockendorf say there have been more eyes and visibility for the band thanks to the number of people who have tuned in to see Sanders’s antics. While more attention and excitement is always great, Finnigan says the band still loved the experience when the team on the field wasn’t as fun to root for.

"Sticking together through some tough seasons of football and then, finally, getting this reward at the end of getting to see the rest of our community join in all the action and excitement is really cool,” she says.

The Golden Buffalo Marching Band has nearly 250 members, who each work to help the fans feel involved in the action. They’re always striving to play the right song at the right moment, with drum majors selecting certain tunes based on the situation on the field; the band has different songs for offense and defense.

Offensive tunes are shorter and peppier to get people excited and ensure the band doesn’t accidentally slow down the on-field tempo. Defense gets louder and more intimidating songs, designed to encourage fans to yell and make the playing environment tougher for opposing offenses.

“It's a really cool interaction between what goes on on the field and how the band reacts or affects the atmosphere in the stadium, and it's really cool when it works out,” Dockendorf says. “When we play something that hits just right and everybody jumps up and down, where everybody reacts — that's the best feeling for us in the band.”

Finnigan recalls a few moments this year that have given her that perfect feeling. “Whenever we get an interception, that's really exciting, because Coach Prime asked us to play a song by Tupac,” she says. “That's happened a couple of times. … The whole band always has so much energy when we get to play at moments like that.”

It can takes hours of practice to reach those perfect moments. Before school even starts, there’s band camp, with a week of intense days filled with learning to march and planning the pre-game and first halftime shows.

Once classes begin, the band practices for two hours every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to prepare for each game. Then there are the countless hours at football events and pep rallies, or the numerous other places — like graduation, or volleyball and basketball games — that the band shows up to each year.
“Something that people don't always realize is the amount of effort that goes into producing what we make on game days,” Finnigan says. “Everyone's putting in all of this effort and practice because they care and because we all want to make something that's great.”

With multiple national television broadcasts coming to Boulder this year, the band got even busier after it was asked to be part of both FOX’s Big Noon Kickoff and ESPN’s College GameDay when the respective college football pre-game shows came during the first several weeks of the 2023 season. Dockendorf says they solicited volunteers to make the early-morning call times — often before 6 a.m. — and plenty of bandmembers were up for the task.

“The students love being a part of the university,” he says. “That's their connection point of being something bigger than just themselves on campus, and it's a way for them to plug in.”

Dockendorf tells Westword he’s received more interest than ever from students hoping to join the marching band next year, with it possibly increasing its number by as many as fifty students. As applications trickle in and freshmen get accepted, those numbers will get more solid, and Dockendorf hopes someone will eventually decide to invest in the Golden Buffaloes financially, too, the way they do with the CU football team and players.

“We haven't had somebody step up yet saying, like, ‘Hey, I love what y'all do. I want to write this massive check,’ but I think it's in the cards,” he says. “There might be some people out there that want to recognize the band for the extra time and the excitement that they bring to game day. I'm hopeful that they continue to get the recognition that the students deserve for dedicating so much of their collegiate time and experience to this organization.”

The University of Colorado Buffaloes take on the Arizona Wildcats at noon on Saturday, November 11, at Folsom Field, in the last home game of the season.