​Safety Ben Finneseth contends that the Colorado Buffaloes’ leadership breakdown in 2025 began with him. At Big 12 Media Day, the veteran defensive back stood up and named the locker room’s most glaring issue: players stopped listening to those in charge. Colorado finished 3-9, including five straight losses to end the year, but Finneseth argued the real fracture occurred well before the final scoreboard.
“Speak up,” Finneseth said during Big 12 Media Day when Buffs insider Brian Howell asked him what the biggest lesson from last season was. “Too many problems came up, and I’m not sure if people didn’t have the confidence or didn’t feel they had earned the right to speak up. But I wish I would have. When there were things that needed to be said, I wish I had said them. I wish I had called people out on things that were happening and shouldn’t have been happening.”
“Holding people accountable. That was the biggest thing I needed to do, and I didn’t do it. It showed,” the veteran safety added.
Despite numerous on-field missteps, including a defense yielding 30.5 points per game in losses and conceding 425 yards per game, and some coaching calls that drew heavy criticism, Finneseth believes the root cause of the Buffs’ 1-8 mark in Big 12 play was a lack of accountability. In his view, the mistakes on the field were the product of a regime where no one in charge was willing to press the issue early and harshly.
Finneseth explained that players who know they’re making mistakes actually want leaders to call them out. When no one says anything, respect erodes, and the locker room’s cohesion begins to fracture. He didn’t sugarcoat his self-criticism either. “I didn’t do that, and that’s my fault… I was just a poor leader last year.”
Since the departures of Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter to the NFL, Colorado has lacked a single, unifying voice in the room. Finneseth said he didn’t grasp how much those two mattered until they were gone and no one else stepped up. Other key defenders like Cam’Ron Silmon-Craig also left, but the leadership vacuum was most acute after Sanders and Hunter’s exits.
Finneseth also opened up about his interactions with Shedeur when he spent time with him at Coach Prime’s house. The hardest part, he said, is recognizing how much he missed by not watching Shedeur more closely. He recalled seeing the quarterback remain composed after tough losses and rough weeks, but admitted he was too focused on his own role to study how Shedeur kept the room steady.
“I just wish I had paid more attention and learned how they handled things when things went sideways,” Finneseth said.
For Finneseth, last year’s leadership lapse was painful, but it also served as a hard-earned lesson for him and the other returners. He believes that going through that adversity and fumbling the response served as a wake-up call for himself and the returning players. With Sanders now in his fourth season at Colorado after his NFL path, Finneseth’s reflections underscore a broader reckoning about what it takes to lead a program through tough seasons and rebuild trust in the locker room.