Deion Sanders' secret recruiting weapon with CU Buffs? Boulder Businesses

Lina Portman2 weeks ago

0 4 minutes read

Colorado head coach Deion Sanders thanks fans before the Black and Gold game at Folsom Field on Saturday, April 22, 2023. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)

Shanna Henkel can hold her own with the best of them. Very hot, with a side of wheat toast and two fresh country eggs.

“If it helps us find awesome talent, then I'll name a breakfast burrito after awesome talent,” Henkel told me Monday, a sly laugh forming under his breath. “I am not above.”

The Bryce Underwood cookie?

The Akili Smith Jr. omelette?

Husan Longstreet hash browns?

Where does it end?

Better question: When can we dig?

“I love seeing the community support behind great new talent that may be headed our way,” said Henkel, a CU alum who serves up Boulder breakfast favorites, with her husband Ryan, at Village Coffee Shop for almost three decades. “But no, I’ve never seen a restaurant in Boulder name a potential recruit before.”

Oh, The Sink, you naughty boys, you. See what you did? See what you started?

The Boulder staple on The Hill recently made national headlines when it launched “The Ju Ju Precision Passing Burger,” a double cheeseburger created in honor of — and ultimately served to — the quarterback. Georgia prep guard Julian Lewis, ESPN's No. 1 recruiting prospect for the class of 2025. Lewis, who his friends call him Ju Ju, visited Boulder last weekend. He was Coach Prime's most special guest during a particularly special recruiting weekend for CU.

Henkel knows the Buffs. Henkel knows Boulder. Henkel knows Boulder restaurants. She saw a plot of the BoCo/CU football synergy over the years.

But that?

That, she said, it was a first.

“I would call it unprecedented,” she said of the Ju Ju Burger. “I've never heard of this before. But I think it's great.

Full disclosure: Henkel is bleeding CU gold. The Village Coffee Shop, a cozy diner a half-mile from the Buffs' outdoor football practice fields, is full of clippings about Buffs and Ralphies icons of the past. It's a living, sultry, hot history museum, with a giant grill along one wall and CU posters on the rest.

You haven't lived until you've tasted some of their sausage gravy, thick enough for a spoon and flavorful enough to bring out the best in breads and meats. I called Henkel on Monday to see if they had been approached about renaming this delicious sauce after one of Coach Prime's latest recruiting goals. Hey, if The Sink names hamburgers for high school QBs, Shanna joked, she wants a piece of that pie too.

“Let’s continue to recruit great talent and have the support of the community behind that great talent,” Henkel responded. “I’d never heard of (the burger), but I’m totally behind it.”

Sanders is a foodie, and what he loves, he loves unequivocally. Henkel has already felt the power of Prime's palace. The Village Coffee Shop was the site of the first in-person vlog review Deion conducted during his first months as CU's coach, in the late fall and early winter of 2022 and 23. He did, however, have one request for Henkels: grits, a Southern standard.

Faster than you could whisper “NIL,” Henkel added “PRIME grits” to the menu. Slam. Do. When the Deion team returned later in the winter to find that their suggestion had become gospel, the Instagram post about the new dish, courtesy of Deion Sanders Jr., reached 12,000 views in about an hour, recalls Henkel.

“It was awesome,” Henkel said.

As Buff, she also thinks it's great to see Boulder businesses joining in the hard sell of a program-changing talent such as Lewis, a 5-star player who committed to USC last August but is…well, let's just say he's weighing his options. .

And sometimes the quickest way to a star's heart is through their stomach, right? When the owners of The Sink learned from the CU football office that Lewis was a big fan of double cheeseburgers, the story goes, they created one of their own.

“Juju’s Precision Pass” contains a blend of bacon, shredded lettuce, red onion and aioli.

“If you see Juju and his family around town, give them a warm welcome to Colorado, #WeWantJuJu #MakeHistory #SKOBUFFS,” The Sink wrote on his Instagram feed last Friday.

If Lewis signs with CU, he would become the highest-rated prep QB to land with the Buffs, according to the 247Sports.com database, since Fairview's Craig Ochs in 2000. He would also pour some cold water on the presumption that Coach Prime lasts two seasons in Boulder, a presumption since it became clear that stars such as Travis Hunter and his sons Shedeur Sanders and Shilo Sanders will likely end up as Buffs after 2024.

Monday night, Lewis was still a Trojan, still weighing his options. But the Buffs landed one of the other big fish among last weekend's visitors, landing a Monday commitment from Nashville four-star offensive lineman Chauncey Gooden. The 320-pound teenager, who could probably eat several “Juju” burgers in one sitting, had already received offers from (deep breath) Arkansas, Auburn, Clemson, Florida, State Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Michigan, Michigan State, Mississippi State, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Ole Miss, Oregon, Penn State, Pittsburgh, South Carolina, TCU, Tennessee, Texas, Texas A&M, USC and…Nebraska.

And speaking of the Big Red, Henkel admits she hasn't heard much from Team Deion since CU beat the Cornhuskers 36-14 last Sept. 9 — a game that feels like two coordinators ago five years and 60 transfers.

She saw Deion Sanders Jr. at the restaurant but hasn't spotted her father in a while. Truth be told, she blames her husband on that front. A little. Okay, a lot.

“The day of the Nebraska home football game (last September), the Coach Prime people called my restaurant and it was my husband, not me, who answered the phone,” Henkel recalled.

Second-hand, the rest of the story went like this, according to Shanna, via Ryan:

“Coach Prime wants to come over for breakfast, but he doesn’t want to wait in line,” a Sanders rep asked. “Could he come through the back door to get some food?”

Ryan scanned the traffic piling up ahead of him.

“No,” he replied. “We have a line.”

Silence.

“We had to have a little marital talk later,” Shanna recalls, pausing for dramatic, albeit affectionate, effect.

Then she laughed again.

“But I completely agree. Let's go. Whatever it takes in the community to bring top talent to our football team.

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