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For years, failure bedeviled the Colorado Buffaloes and Twitter. Then both organizations changed their leadership. But whereas Deion Sanders has resuscitated Boulder’s moribund football program, Elon Musk has struggled with Twitter and lost advertisers. Read more to learn about what Sanders’s success, and Musk’s lack of it, says about both men’s versions of leadership.

If you can overlook the stark difference in mascots—a brawny buffalo and a blue bird—you might come to the conclusion that the Colorado Buffaloes are the Twitter of college football, and that Twitter is the Colorado Buffaloes of social media. In 2022, both organizations were foundering, grossly mismanaged, and worse—largely irrelevant. Last fall, the University of Colorado went 1 and 11, a bruising record that seemed to hammer home the program’s obsolescence. The team wasn’t good, its playing was uninspired, and the fans were dejected. There was a miasma of failure about Folsom Field, where week after week the Buffaloes played and the Buffaloes lost. The University of Colorado hadn’t enjoyed a really good football team since H.W.’s administration, when the Buffaloes, as incredible as it may seem, won the national championship in 1990.

Twitter, like the Colorado Buffaloes, was also synonymous with regression, and like Colorado, its moment appeared to have passed. Founded in 2006 as a new kind of SMS social media platform, Twitter inspired excitement and curiosity at the 2007 South by Southwest festival, where it won the interactive web award, and where, with the aid of two judiciously placed plasma TVs that streamed the live tweets of festival attendees, it saw its number of users leap from 20,000 to 60,000. Three years later, in June of 2010, Elon Musk signed up for Twitter and posted his first tweet.

2013, the year Twitter went public, marked a possible high point in the social media platform’s history. In 2013, Twitter was new and its novelty suggested greatness, suggested, in ambiguous and ill-defined terms, a new kind of social media, one which might bring people together and enrich the public discourse. Twitter was also credited with helping to foment the Arab Spring, and so it was whispered that Twitter, and social media platforms like it, had the power to topple dictatorships. People, including future presidents, were taken with the little blue bird and tweeted their thoughts, either impulsively or after much deliberation. A decade later, with the novelty gone, and the ability to tweet one’s thoughts now seen not so much as fun and amusing but as dangerous and potentially career-ruining, Twitter has struggled. Twitter has struggled so much that it’s managed to stoke the ire of both the right and the left—the right, for suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story and shutting down Trump’s personal account, and the left, for failing to curtail Russian disinformation and failing to shut down Trump’s account sooner.

Twitter’s struggled so much that, far from being profitable, the company has actually been losing money. Over the past twelve years, Twitter has managed to obtain profits only in 2018 and 2019. Colorado, in a similar manner, had mustered only four winning seasons in its past twenty seasons of college football. Attention for both organizations had waned. Not interested in watching middling western football, football fans diverted their attention to the SEC, where bigger and better teams like Alabama, like Auburn, like Georgia played bigger and better football games. And Twitter, whose number of active users in 2022 was 368 million, was forgotten in favor of larger social networks, networks like Facebook, which has 2.9 billion active users and networks like Instagram, which has 2.35 billion active users.

The Colorado Buffaloes seemed destined to follow the fate of the real buffaloes that once thundered across the plains—extinction. And Twitter, far from enriching public discourse, had poisoned it and had failed to live up to the wonder and excitement it had inspired at the 2007 SSW festival. Both the buffalo and the bird stood on the precipice of oblivion. Then there were shakeups at both organizations. The leadership of the organizations changed, and because the circumstances surrounding Twitter and the Colorado Buffaloes were similar—circumstances of abject failure—we can learn something from Sanders’s ability and Musk’s inability to revamp their organizations. Both men offer profiles in leadership that are similar in some ways, and critically different in others. And it’s the ways in which the men’s leadership style is different that has enabled Sanders to succeed and caused Musk to err.

Deion Sanders, ubiquitously known as Coach Prime, was announced as the new head coach of Colorado’s football team in December 2022. Having successfully overhauled Jackson State’s unimpressive football program and led the team to two consecutive Southwestern Athletic Conference Championships, Sanders was looking to prove his coaching ability on the larger Power 5 stage. After much courting, and the inking of a contract worth millions of dollars, Sanders accepted Colorado’s offer and became the head coach.

While Sanders was settling in Boulder, Elon Musk, enfant terrible of the tech world, was trying to figure out how to run Twitter. After dominating the automobile sector and privatizing rocket launches, Musk, frustrated with Twitter’s censorship, had purchased Twitter in late October and was now having a hard time fixing it.

There is a possible difference in intention between Musk and Sanders, in that Sanders intended to take over Colorado’s football program, while Musk’s intention is a bit more equivocal. Through his tweets, he had expressed interest in acquiring the company, and through his tweets, he had railed against twitter’s incompetent ownership and censorship. And Musk—there’s little debate here—falls into the category of impulsive tweeters, reflexively tweeting every thought that pops up in his brain, sending it up into the digital ether where it remains to be scrutinized by everyone—SEC regulators, investors, posterity.

Musk had begun purchasing shares of Twitter in January 2022, and by April 2022, Musk had become the largest shareholder with a 9.2% stake worth approximately $2.64 billion. Soon after, Musk approached Twitter with an unsolicited bid to buy the company at $54.20 a share and take it private. Twitter’s board, after some deliberation, unanimously agreed. When Musk tried to renege—alleging that Twitter had not been transparent in disclosing the number of bot accounts—the little blue bird filed suit in the Delaware Court of Chancery. Musk claimed that the 5% bot proportion of Twitter users, as well as the supporting claims of a Twitter whistleblower, absolved him of any obligation to purchase Twitter. But Musk about-faced in early October, probably with the understanding that he would lose the legal battle, and offered to purchase Twitter at the agreed-upon price of $44 billion. It's unclear whether Musk ever really intended to take over Twitter, or if his bravado had merely gotten the better of him.

Despite a possible difference in intention, both Musk and Sanders made similar entrances at their organizations. They made their presences felt at once. They ruffled feathers and upset the status quo. Musk jettisoned Twitter’s CEO, Parag Agrawal, its CFO, Ned Segal, and other top executives. He laid off 80% of the Twitter workforce and issued an ultimatum to employees that stated, in effect, that things were going to change, that employees were going to be worked harder and longer, and if they weren’t equal to the task, the door was over there. The work, he said, was going to be “extremely hardcore,” and it would involve “long hours at high intensity.” Hundreds of employees quit.

Sanders employed a similar tack. He purged Colorado’s coaching staff, replacing some of the staff with members of his Jackson State team. And immediately after Sanders was announced head coach, he spoke before the team. He told all the players to “jump in that transfer portal.” He didn’t mince his words. “Those of you that we don’t run off, we’re going to try to make you quit,” he said. Sanders was building a new team with new players and a new coaching staff, and he wanted this new team to be untainted by the failure of the previous seasons. Around 52 scholarship players transferred. When pressed on 60 minutes if this was too harsh, Sanders replied that “if you were able to let words run you off, you ain’t for us.”

Musk and Sanders also both availed themselves of the resources at their disposal, which for Musk meant bringing in 50 Tesla engineers to review Twitter’s code. For Sanders, this meant bringing along his son Shedeur, Jackson State’s dynamic quarterback; his son Shilo, an able safety; and Travis Hunter, Jackson State’s two-way star.

There the parallels between Musk and Sanders end, and from there the leadership styles and actions of Musk and Sanders diverge, and how they diverge reveals key insights into what makes a good leader. And one of the first insights that becomes apparent is that vision is indispensable. A leader needs to have a clear, vivid idea of what they hope to achieve, otherwise their actions will be haphazard and inconsistent.

Musk is traditionally hailed for his vision. But the changes he’s made at Twitter don’t so much reflect the long-term thinking for which he’s revered as they reflect the caprices of an increasingly erratic man. To jot, Musk made Twitter verification—the blue checks previously reserved for high-profile Twitter users and company brands—available to anyone who wished to purchase the verification through its new service, Twitter Blue. A rash of problems followed, with people purchasing the verification and then impersonating high-profile figures and companies.

Musk has also done morally dubious things like removing the labels that identify certain Twitter accounts as state media or state-funded media. As a consequence of this action, twitter accounts associated with the Kremlin and the Iranian government saw a spike in followers.

Sanders, instead, has been more measured and deliberate in the changes he’s made. He knew what he wanted to do in Colorado—he wanted to do exactly what he had done in Jackson State, which was to build a successful football program. About his plans for Twitter, Musk said he wanted to liberate free speech, and he wanted the platform to become a kind of “digital town square.” This is a vague vision, vaguer than the mission that drives Tesla—to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy—and significantly vaguer than the mission that drives SpaceX—to colonize Mars. It’s hard to imagine that he would have made the same rash and impulsive changes at Twitter if he had had a clear and vivid vision guiding him.

Although Musk certainly has a more difficult role than Sanders—Musk needs to squeeze a profit out of a company that was consistently losing money—Sanders has done a better job implementing changes. There were parts of Twitter that were broken, to be sure, but there were also parts that worked, parts that people identified with and liked. Musk, in his haste to fix Twitter, has messed with some of Twitter’s good features, and he’s consequently violated that most American axiom—if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Sanders did fire Colorado’s coaching staff. He did replace the team wholesale. He did shock sleepy Boulder with his loud personality and brash attitude. But despite comments to the contrary—“now culture, culture. What the heck does that mean… I don't care about culture”—Sanders has revealed himself to be an astute observer of the Colorado football program’s culture. And he’s embraced key elements of that culture. Upon arrival in Boulder, Sanders paid a visit to Peggy Coppom’s house. A ninety-eight-year-old Buffaloes fan who’s been attending the football games since 1939, Peggy has become a central fixture of the Buffaloes’ program, her ninety-eight years perhaps suggestive of that time, during Bush Sr.’s administration, when the Buffaloes had a great football team. Sanders made it a priority to visit with Peggy, chat with her, eat pecans and drink Pespi with her. Sanders then invited Peggy to the Buffaloes’ first spring game. It was a snowy April day and Peggy, holding on to Sanders’s arm for support, tottered down the field and kicked the game’s opening kick-off. The team cheered her on and took photos with her. Later, when the Buffaloes managed a double-digit victory over Nebraska, Sanders brought Peggy into the locker room, where she celebrated and danced with the team.

Sanders not only accepted the Colorado brand, he espoused it. And his actions reveal an invaluable lesson to leaders hoping to shake up an organization—make changes where changes need to be made, but celebrate the traditions or features that people love. And this was where Musk stumbled. People might dislike Twitter, there might be elements of Twitter that are broken and inefficient, but people are used to Twitter as Twitter. “To tweet” has entered our common lexicon. And the blue bird, in an example of brand synecdoche, needs only be shown and people immediately think of Twitter as a whole. Musk has killed the blue bird. He’s changed Twitter’s name to X, which has dismayed users and created widespread confusion. Is it Twitter or is it X? Right now, it’s both. People often refer to the social media as “X, formerly known as Twitter.”

Good leaders can’t be sensitive to criticism. They have to be at home with scrutiny. They have to be above the quibbles and carps of others. Sanders is one such leader. Before taking on the Buffaloes, Oregon coach Dan Lanning, speaking before his restless players, said “they’re fighting for clicks. We’re fighting for wins.” Oregon went on to crush Colorado. After the game, Sanders was asked to respond to Lanning’s words. Sanders said, “God bless him... He’s a great coach. He did a great job. [They can] take their shots, they won. I don’t shoot. I don’t do that.” While he spoke, Sanders didn’t appear the least bit piqued. He was focused on his team’s loss and how his team would recover. Over at Twitter, Musk has proven to be extremely self-conscious about any criticism, allegedly going so far as to fire an employee who reproached him, banning an account, called ElonJet, that tracked his private jet usage, and suspending the accounts of journalists who covered the ElonJet story. These details cast Musk in a murky light. His actions are hard to square with his so-called free-speech absolutism.

A good leader elevates those around them. As Sanders said, “[You] got to lift them up, not just shoot them down.” And perhaps there’s been too much shooting down over at Twitter or X or whatever it’s called. Perhaps the culture of “extremely hardcore” work is really just a culture of fear. Employees, far from being lifted up, feel tired and overworked, and are wary of upsetting their temperamental boss. The logic of survival, the belief that if you just keep your head down and stay out of the way becomes the only way to navigate such a culture, and this prevents employees from growing, and it discourages creativity and experimentation.

When asked about his players, Sanders said, “my kids play for me, they didn’t choose a university, they chose me.” In other words, the kids believe in Sanders’s leadership. They believe in his desire and willingness to lift them up. It is a belief that is absent from the Twitter offices.

Colorado’s shocking opening-day win against TCU, ranked 17th and the runner-up in last year’s national championship, was evidence that the Buffaloes were a new program—no longer a 1-11 team—and that Coach Prime could coach at a higher level. The Buffaloes went on to beat Nebraska and Colorado State before losing to Oregon in a devastating 42-6 loss. In the post-game press conference, a more subdued Coach Prime told reporters that the loss was the worst it was going to get but even if that isn’t true—it’s hard to tell with the vicissitudes of college football—and the Buffaloes go on to lose every game for the rest of the season, Coach Prime and his effect would have been an improvement on the program. With three wins, they have already surpassed last year’s team. And what’s more, Coach Prime has made people in Boulder crazy about football again. Merchandise sales are up 819% and the football team is in the full glare of the national spotlight. Over that same period of time, Musk has watched advertiser after advertiser pull out from Twitter. Under his ownership, there has been a surge in hate speech. The results of both men speak volumes and show that if “an institution is the lengthened shadow of one [person],” as Emerson says, it’s important to have a good and stable person casting that shadow.