On March 18, 2024, the Touchdown Tribune Facebook page posted a meme claiming sports commentator Skip Bayless said of the future of the University of Colorado Buffaloes football team under head coach Deion Sanders' leadership, "We are looking at the next Alabama dynasty." The meme showed a picture of Sanders talking during a game to his son, Colorado safety Shilo Sanders.
The reference to the Alabama Crimson Tide was about former head coach Nick Saban's seven national championships. Saban retired from the sport on Jan. 10, 2024. Six of the titles he and his teams won during his career occurred during his time at Alabama. His first came when he was the head coach at LSU in 2003.
Above the Facebook post was the text caption, "Skip Bayless says the College Football Playoffs will run thru Boulder Colorado for the forceable future." The link in the pinned comment below the Facebook post led to an article on drinkfood.info – not exactly the most credible-sounding news source.
According to a domain-registration search, drinkfood.info may have been created by a user residing in Vietnam. The story on the website appeared to have been written by artificial intelligence, according to the AI content detector tool on copyleaks.com.
Here's the truth: Bayless never said Colorado would be "the next Alabama dynasty." The meme originated days earlier on a parody and satire Facebook page named Elite Gridiron. The page's description reads, "Elite daily dosage of college parodies, satire, updates, news and much more."
Even so, the satirical meme was shared as fact by multiple users on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X.
While Bayless did not say the words in the meme, he did previously speak quite highly of the outlook of the Colorado team in Sanders' first season, in the latter half of September 2023. At the time, the Buffaloes had started off the year's first three games with three victories. However, the team ended the season with just four wins and eight losses, surely a disappointment for the many fans who had hope after the first three games.