Brennan Marion is heading into Colorado’s season opener the same way he’s spent much of his rise as a playcaller: by digging into every detail he can find.
Marion said Thursday that he’s returning to an “old school approach” as the Buffs prepare for Georgia Tech on Thursday, Sept. 3 in Atlanta. That means a heavy dose of film study, a deep dive into tendencies and a deliberate effort to know the Yellow Jackets inside and out before kickoff.
“I think last year was the first year that my approach to the first game was not right and obviously we didn’t come out successful,” Brennan Marion said Thursday. “Every other year prior, we stalked our opponent and made sure we knew every nuance and every single detail about them.
“Last year, I was just so much focused on trying to get our guys right and making sure that they play the way we wanted to play.”
That admission comes with a little perspective. Marion’s first Division I offensive coordinator job at Howard helped produce what he called the biggest upset in college football history, when the Bison beat UNLV as 45.5-point underdogs in the 2017 season opener. From there, his career took him to Pitt, Texas, UNLV and other stops before he became the head coach at Sac State in 2025.
His first game there didn’t go the way his previous opener prep usually did. The Hornets scored only three points against South Dakota State to start the 2025 season, a sharp contrast to the numbers his offenses had posted in other openers when he was calling plays. Across six season openers as an OC/playcaller, Marion’s offenses have averaged 29.8 points per game, with two outings of 40-plus points and two more above 30.
Now he’s trying to make sure Colorado doesn’t get caught flat-footed in Week 1.
Marion said he knows a lot of the coaches on Georgia Tech’s staff, and he likes the challenge that comes with opening against a quality opponent because “to be a real guy, you have to play a real guy.”
He also spent a lot of time studying Southern Miss, where new Georgia Tech defensive coordinator Jason Semore coached last season. That kind of background work fits the plan Marion says he’s leaning on now: scout the opponent thoroughly, then make sure the Buffs are ready to execute the way they want.
“This year, I just went back to my old school approach of what got us the biggest upset in college football history,” Brennan Marion said. “When I first got into it at Howard, it was to stalk your opponent, to know every single thing about him, know every call he ever made and give the kids the best chance to win versus the looks that guy’s presented in the past because we all have things that we’ve done before as coaches.
“So our approach going into game one would just be to make sure that we play to the standard that we want to play and then also have great scheme as well.”
The challenge for Georgia Tech is obvious enough. Semore will have to get ready for Colorado and Marion’s Go-Go offense, and while there will be some carry over from what Sac State ran last year, the Buffs’ talent level gives Marion room to get even more creative.
That creativity is a big part of what makes the offense so difficult to defend. Colorado defensive coordinator Chris Marve has already seen it up close.
“You don’t know what you’re going to get; good luck figuring it out,” Marve said of what makes Brennan Marion a good playcaller. “Guys better have their eyes in the right place but you just don’t know. He’s hyper-creative and innovative.”
Colorado enters the 2026 season as a 6.5-point underdog to Georgia Tech.
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