DID DEION SANDERS JUST STUN COACHING? AMAZINGLY, HE DID THAT AND MORE

In a shocking Colorado opener, he wandered into TCU with only 10 players from last season and somehow upended the defending national runners-up, making us wonder if he knows all secrets to the craft

     A slaying? This was a blurring of a lifestyle, a knockdown of the word he won’t employ at Colorado. Deion Sanders won’t use “culture’’ because he doesn’t know what it means. “I’m not welcoming that word, culture. Culture, culture, culture, culture, culture. Now culture, culture,” he said. “What the heck does that mean?”

     Saturday, he showed precisely what it quantifies as college sports is reaching into something mega-greedy, ultra-geographical and utterly anti-cultural. As four conferences run off the Pac-12 and send Stanford and California to a league based in North Carolina — ACC has 17 with one as an independent, Big Ten has 18, SEC has 16, Big 12 has 16 — a maniacal fiend has stirred his way out of a Historically Black Colleges and Universities program, come out to Boulder and kept only 10 scholarship players from 2022.

     And in his first game, against a defending national runner-up, he beat TCU.

     So begins an outlandish response unlike any in the sport’s increasingly bizarre history. What hails now, after a 45-42 victory that instantly hailed his son Shedeur as a Heisman Trophy candidate, is an astonishing tale as unbelievable as Sanders himself. Here is the man who said he could play Hall of Fame cornerback in the NFL and play in baseball’s major leagues — and he did. Here’s the man who left Jackson State and immediately gained the disdain of other major coaches, all of whom dismissed his stumble as a career bumble that quickly would return him to the NFL Network — and he obviously will be staying, for a long time, until the next level calls.

     Always a calamity, he’s now a coaching icon who is making us ponder serious questions. Culture? Usual boy-to-man traits? Already, Sanders is proving he can leave the goofball TV game — where Tom Brady has gone — and head right into the pool of the biggest names in coaching, including Nick Saban, whose next Aflac commercial with Deion will be even better. At the moment, it doesn’t matter if Kirby Smart is the first back-to-back-to-back coach since the mid-1930s, or if Saban will give him a last championship run, or if Jim Harbaugh can win in his own dancing shoes at Michigan, where quarterback J.J. McCarthy wore a “FREE Harbaugh” shirt in a nod. Look, Deion Luwynn Sanders Sr. is not only the talk of sports, he’s the discussion of everything in functional America. What’s the peak value of coaching when he can take the field, in nine months, and pull apart the traditions with a too-active transfer portal and the Supreme Court-validated freedom of kids?

     “Thank you, Jesus,” he said on the field in Fort Worth, which could have been anywhere. “I’m so thankful. Thank you for my son, my loving son. I’m loving these kids and how they’ve recharged me and are giving me this opportunity. And Buff Nation, who supported us. And the people in the hood, who had my back? Thanks for everything. God, this is good.”

     But his son, who threw for 510 yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions — and suddenly drew pro scouts to wonder if he’s almost as good as Caleb Williams? Does that mean Deion follows his son onto an NFL sideline as a head coach? If Shedeur is as sharp as he looked, why wouldn’t a lackluster team try them as a tandem? We just saw the absurdity. Why not another?

     “What about the offense? How do they respond to that many snaps — we’re gonna put a hot tub on the plane to make sure he’s good,” Sanders said.

     And your team, Deion?

     “We’re coming. We’re coming,” he said. “You thought we were joking. And guess what? We keep receipts. God bless you, America. Oh, God is good.”

     He could have found easier times in his mid-50s then exciting those who’ve forgotten about winning, the Buffaloes folks who’ve just started complaining. Their athletic director, Rick George, had the stones to make this move last December. In his first month alone, Sanders sold 505 percent of merchandise over last season and was the most glossed-over coach nationally. They’ve been enthused but, really, who knew what to expect until the team flew to Texas. With rival Nebraska coming to the Front Range next week, what possibly could happen?

     “Today was just like practice. A lot of y'all ain't believe in us,” said Shedeur, who had four receivers reach 100 yards on his first afternoon. “It's crazy because you've just gotta understand our coach. Everywhere he went, he was always a winner. Everywhere he went, he took advantage. A lot of y'all just don't have the same knowledge and experience that he has. He has a gold jacket, he's played in Super Bowls. I feel like now, y'all understand what he's saying.”

     We do. “They let Power Five and names like that get in their heads,” said the son. “I can’t believe this happened.”

     Nor did his father. “For real? Shedeur Sanders? From an HBCU? The one that played at Jackson last year? The one that you asked me, ‘Why would I give him the starting job?’ ’’ Sanders asked mockingly. “I’ve got receipts. I know who they are. It's the same recipe, the same preparation, same things we're doing over and over. It's just magnified and y'all are able to see us, more cameras and stuff. The only difference is the media and everybody is driving the headlines.”

     Where are they headed next? As a country attempts to consider Washington and Oregon in the Big 10 and whether Stanford and Cal will play some sports in Dallas — there is no tradition, right? — we have a badass story to follow. Suddenly, imagine if victories over the Cornhuskers and Colorado State set up Deion for more wonderment: at Oregon on Sept. 23, then a road game against Williams and USC on Sept. 30. Wasn’t too long ago when Sanders said, “I’ve been in all three seats. I’ve been the parent, I’ve been the kid, and I’m the coach. So I know what each person is thinking, and that’s very advantageous.”

     What does he tell parents at this point? “Turn on the film,” Sanders said. “We're going to continuously be questioned because we do things that have never been done. We’re going to consistently do what we do, because I'm here and ain't going nowhere. Now Boulder believes.”

     Now he’s three-for-three in the circle. The poor TCU peeps must decide what’s worse: losing enormously to Georgia in the title game or to Deion in his debut. “Guess what, we're here and we're not going anywhere,” Sanders said. “These young men in there right now, they believe. Not all of them believed but they came up one by one, two by two, they believe ... I'm good with that, we've got room.”

     Room for the whole nation, it seems. That will be his culture, like it or not.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.