Danny Scudero, the former Archbishop Mitty High star who returned home to San Jose State this season and led the nation in receiving yards, is headed to Deion Sanders’ Colorado Buffaloes, according to multiple reports Sunday morning.
Scudero announced his plans to enter the transfer portal last month after a breakout debut season with the Spartans that saw him catch 88 passes for a nation-leading 1,291 yards. Ten of his catches went for touchdowns.
The departure is not a surprise to the Spartans, who added Scudero to their roster last year via the portal in hopes he could help offset the departure of Nick Nash, who led the nation in receiving yards in 2024. In his season-ending news conference, Spartans head coach Ken Niumatalolo noted how much demand there would be for Scudero, and that his program couldn’t compete with Power Four schools such as Colorado in a bidding war.
“When people throw out the numbers that they do, it’s staggering,” Niumatalolo said. “It won’t be comparable, but I hope we can put together a good enough package to at least make him think.”
Players could begin to officially use the portal starting Friday. ESPN.com was the first to report on the a Biletnikoff Award semifinalist’s commitment to join the Buffaloes. Sanders is looking to reload the Buffaloes following a disappointing 3-9 season, and the program is losing its top receiver — Omarion Miller — to the transfer portal.
Although the portal only opened two days ago, as of Sunday morning, Scudero was already the fifth transfer to join Colorado.
Sanders, the former two-sport star who won a Super Bowl with the 49ers, of course, is no stranger to the transfer portal. Before the 2024 season, his first in Boulder, Sanders had 86 new players, including a record 53 transfers. That team went 9–3 and was the Big 12 conference co-champion.
Scudero transferred to San Jose State before from Sacramento State before last season. The dynamic 5-foot-9, 174-pound wide receiver still has two seasons of eligibility with the Buffaloes.
He’ll join a Colorado offense that will be breaking in a new quarterback and offensive coordinator. Kaidon Salter, who started nine games at quarterback last season, announced last week he is leaving college. Julian “JuJu” Lewis, a former five-star recruit, started three games as a freshman and figures to be the leading candidate to run the offense this season. Sanders last month hired former Sacramento State head coach Brennan Marion to run his offense. Marion was an assistant at UNLV when Scudero played for the Hornets.
Scudero helped Mitty reach the 2022 Division I CCS championship game as a senior, catching 19 TD passes with more than 1,900 receiving yards. He began his college career at Sacramento State, where he had 52 receptions for 664 yards and five touchdowns as a freshman.
In the final seconds of the first half to tie the game 7-7 (after the extra point) against Serra in the Central Coast Section Division I championship football game, Friday, Nov. 25, 2022, at San Jose City College. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
Scudero returned to San Jose with a bang, catching nine passes for 189 yards and a touchdown in the opener against Central Michigan, then had 11 catches for 135 yards and two TDs in a 30-29 loss to Stanford a few weeks later. He caught four touchdowns against Wyoming — finishing the game with 10 catches for 180 yards — and caught a season-high 12 passes in the Spartans’ penultimate game against San Diego State.
“That was our sell last year to him at this time because we had Nick Nash. We told him ‘come here and that’s you,’” Niumatalolo told reporters at the season-ending news conference. “The one good thing this year is at least we can tell him we were true to our word.”