Valor Christian got the big-name football coach it’s been looking for.
The Eagles have hired Mike Sanford as their next head coach, the school announced Friday afternoon. Sanford, CU’s interim head coach in 2022, replaces Bret McGatlin who resigned in January.
Sanford served as CU’s offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach in ’22 before taking over the program as interim head coach when Karl Dorrell was fired midseason. Sanford is currently a host for Altitude Sports Radio and is also a football analyst for various other media outlets. Altitude program director Kevin Shockey said Sanford will continue to work at the radio station.
“After nearly two decades of coaching college football, this opportunity to be the head coach at Valor Christian is as fired up as I’ve been in a long time because of the alignment with Valor,” Sanford said in a statement given to The Denver Post.
“The opportunity to be engaged daily on campus ministry while competing at the highest levels of Colorado high school football is exactly what I want to be doing in this stage of my life and career. The state of Colorado has become my family’s home and we look forward to continuing to grow the Valor program. The work begins immediately.”
The son of a college coach of the same name, Sanford started his career as a graduate assistant at UNLV in 2005 under his dad after playing quarterback at Boise State. A native of Seal Beach, Calif., Sanford was also an assistant at Stanford, Yale, Western Kentucky, Boise State, Notre Dame, Utah State and Minnesota, the latter two of those stops as offensive coordinator before coming to Boulder.
In Sanford, Valor Christian landed a coach with college experience that the school desired. A total of 59 people applied for the job, according to an email sent by athletic director Keith Wahl to the school community. An online posting for the opening listed the salary for the full-time position between $90,000 and $110,000.
The Eagles believe the position is one of the best football jobs in the country, and look to Sanford to bring them back to the top of Colorado big-school football. Sanford said he’s ready to meet those high expectations.
“Eighteen years of being a head coach, offensive coordinator and recruiting coordinator at the highest levels of college football have prepared me for the incredible expectations at Valor Christian,” he said. “No one will have higher expectations for this program than I will. The program is in great shape with a tremendous returning group of players and I cannot wait to get to work maximizing their abilities.”
In three seasons under McGatlin, Valor Christian made the Class 5A title game in 2022 and the semifinals in ’24. Sanford will be Valor Christian’s fifth head coach in nine seasons. The school that produced NFL star Christian McCaffrey has won eight state titles in football, including five at the Class 5A level, but none since 2018.
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