The Colorado Buffaloes were already a polarizing program heading into their Week 5 game against the UCF Knights thanks to their head coach Deion Sanders and the controversy that constantly follows him around. But on Friday, the program may have gained even more critics thanks to an incredibly poorly timed social media post while Hurricane Helene continues to ravage the Southeastern United States.
Luckily, Saturday’s matchup is still set to take place. The city of Orlando, which is the site of Saturday’s matchup and where UCF plays their home games, was not hit directly by the hurricane. In fact, both Disney World and Universal Studios Orlando returned to normal operations on Friday.
However, the impact of Hurricane Helene has had serious consequences for numerous states across the Gulf Coast and beyond, including Florida. At the time of writing, 42 people have tragically died as a result of the storm, and 4.5 million people (and counting) have been left without power.
Despite this, Colorado Football’s social media team decided to use a picture of running back Dallan Hayden standing underwater in what appears to be depicted as Florida to get fans interested in Saturday’s game.
Instead of making fans want to tune into Saturday’s game, the vast majority of fans felt this was incredibly distasteful with all that is going on in the state at the moment, which led to them deleting the post.
Colorado deleted its UCF game promo showing Florida flooded.
The state and region have been getting hammered by Hurricane Helene.
The image was shared long after the destruction was underway. pic.twitter.com/hKpOXdIDtf
— OutKick (@Outkick) September 27, 2024
Nothing in the picture used in the post exactly signifies that Colorado was specifically trying to reference the ongoing hurricane. UCF even posted a very similar picture earlier this week that showed the Fox Noon Kickoff crew photoshopped into a beach background.
First time in Florida 🌴
Welcome to Orlando, @BNKonFOX pic.twitter.com/ZiVW9xcAC0
— UCF Football (@UCF_Football) September 22, 2024
Perhaps even worse is that shortly after deleting the original post that received criticism, the Colorado social media team posted another picture showing the coaching staff and players enjoying the weather with the caption “Sunshine State”.
Sunshine State 🌴 pic.twitter.com/cG8gtgktju
— Colorado Buffaloes Football (@CUBuffsFootball) September 27, 2024
Despite the state being coined the Sunshine State, Florida has been anything but in recent days.
Both posts come off as more tone-deaf rather than being intentionally malicious. But obviously, Colorado’s social team is having a pretty hard time reading the room…
About Reice Shipley
Reice Shipley is a staff writer for Comeback Media that graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Sports Media. He previously worked at Barrett Sports Media and is a fan of all things Syracuse sports.