Colorado football coach Deion Sanders is unapologetically putting his stamp on the Buffaloes football program, even if other coaches don’t approve of the way he’s doing it.

Taking advantage of a new NCAA rule that allows first-year head coaches to remove players from their roster as long as they remain on scholarship, Sanders has completely rebuilt Colorado’s roster, with close to 70 players on last year’s team entering the transfer portal.

Sanders dismissed recent criticism from Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi by telling 247Sports in an interview this week, “I don’t know who he is; if he walked in here right now I wouldn’t know him.”

Sanders suggested Narduzzi’s comments stemmed more from losing star wide receiver Jordan Addison to USC head coach Lincoln Riley last season under the same NCAA rule than anything Sanders had done.

“He is mad at the situation in football now that allowed his best player to leave a year ago,” Sanders said. “He’s not mad at me, he’s using me to shoot bullets at another coach who he has an issue with.”

Narduzzi told 247Sports last month he disagrees with the rule and hinted that Sanders was taking advantage of it to a greater degree than anyone else.

“That’s not what the rule intended to be. It was not to overhaul your roster. We’ll see how it works out but that, to me, looks bad on college football coaches across the country,” Narduzzi said. “I don’t know how many of those 70 that left really wanted to leave or they were kicked in the butt to get out.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Deion Sanders fires back at criticism of roster overhaul at Colorado