DON’T BE SHOCKED IF COACH PRIME, AN ‘ALL-TIME LEADER,’ CRASHES A PROGRAM

The NIL era emboldens players, such as Jayden Daniels and Bo Nix, but Deion Sanders has lost his transformative gasoline at Colorado, where he ridicules those he purged and might finish 2-10 this year

     Did he look out the window of his Lamborghini Urus, or his murderous Ford F-650, and notice the Colorado students protesting the war in Gaza? Did the rest of the world strike home this week with Deion Sanders? Did it occur to him that life at a university pressed against the Rocky Mountains might have little to do with him, such as the pro-Palestinian activists who don’t care about his fleeting mission?

     Or was he more interested in promoting himself, as usual?

     The book is called “Elevate and Dominate.” It features Sanders, in a jacket and a vest and a turtleneck from Italy, smiling with a football in his hand. The publisher calls him “one of the greatest motivators and inspirational leaders of all time,” referring to AD, which could mean After Deion. A list involves “21 ways to win on and off the field,” as acclaimed by the New York Times in a best-seller mode.

     One way to never, ever win is by insulting one of 53 players who left Colorado, thanks to his attack-mode purging. Safety Xavier Smith was run off and became a freshman All-American at Austin Peay last season, moving upward in the transfer portal to UTEP. “He never even tried to get to know me,” Smith told the Athletic, and “was destroying guys’ confidence and belief in themselves.” So be it, right? Such is the collegiate experience in the NIL era. The coaches should stay quiet amid departures, especially as schools in power conferences might receive up to $20 million a year to spend on athletes, an ESPN report that should feed his general bailiwick.

     Not so, said Sanders, who had more to add about his rash expelling of young men. After son Shedeur demeaned Smith on social media, not recalling him in the program, Coach Prime couldn’t carry on to oversee, um, elevation and domination. As a flurry of personal shots between his players and Smith’s defenders happened on X, Sanders insulted an Austin Peay player defending Smith. Turns out Jaheim Ward only made 36 tackles over three seasons. This shouldn’t matter in Deion Sanders’ world. It did.

     “Lawd Jesus,” he wrote.

     When someone took exception to Shedeur’s comments and mentioned the 4-8 record produced by the Buffaloes last season, Deion wrote, “He will be a top 5 pick. Where yo son going? Lololol I got time today. Lololol.”

     It doesn’t help his lot in life, wavering in the past several months, when Sanders is publicly ridiculing players trying to succeed in their late teens and early 20s. In his first three games last year, he helped generate an economic impact of $113.2 million at the dazey school in Boulder. Those days are gone, now that he has cashed out, lost eight of nine games and crushed hopes that he can turn Colorado into a national power. He has lost 30 more players, including 18 transfers from last year, and focus has turned to Sanders as a lunatic matador who got lucky and forgot how to win.

     Didn’t he simply capture the American media, at a lazy and uneducated time, and convince reporters he was a decisive figure in a sport’s transformation? All he did was beat TCU, Nebraska and Colorado State, which isn’t hard to do in a new era of constant change. From then on, Sanders seemed like a loser when the usual forces — Michigan, Alabama, Georgia, Washington and Texas — were controlling the championship action. Suddenly, it became important to see how he responded. Would he continue to recruit talented players based on his recurring role as Deion Sanders, the best of coaches after a career as the best of NFL cornerbacks? Instead, he swipes at Jaheim Ward, who was supporting Xavier Smith.

     Now he wants his sons to bring players to the Front Range. Sanders is selling books and demanding $64.80 to hear him speak on campus. At one point, he asked the crowd, “Who’s smoking up in here? Good Lord. … I’ve never been high, but I’ve been close here, being the coach at Colorado. I don’t know what y’all do, but between those 40s (the student yard lines at Folsom Field), it goes down. Jesus Christ. We got kids in here. It was so blatant one game, I thought they were doing it on the sideline. ‘Check the bench! Who’s got the fat one?’ ”

     He can feed his ego, but his sons are openly recruiting for him. “My dad said he ain’t hard to find. We aren’t hard to find either,” Shilo said. “I just want to make it easier for guys to come find a home at Colorado, really.” Hmmmm. Today is May 2. Practice starts in weeks. The first game is Aug. 29, and entering a first season in the Big 12, don’t be shocked if 4-8 smears to 2-10. Ohio State has led the NIL race in finding a quarterback, Will Howard, and a slew of Alabama transfers. The new conference, without Texas and Oklahoma, is loaded with Oklahoma State, Utah, Iowa State, Arizona and Kansas State. Colorado was all about one September, in the nutty year of 2023. That’s all, Coach Prime.

     “They’re tripping about your post,” Deion said of Shilo’s tweet.

     “You tell them I’m trying to win?” Shilo said.

     The NIL wars can turn players into multi-millionaires. Jayden Daniels was struggling until he signed with LSU, where he became a Heisman Trophy winner and the overall No. 2 draft pick of the Washington Commanders. Bo Nix didn’t have an NFL future until he transferred to Oregon, where his talents were scoped by Denver’s Sean Payton and he became the overall No. 12 pick last week. The portal is where Sanders is expected to dominate, with more than 900 FBS players in the mix this year. Does anyone have any interest in playing for him anymore, noticing the way he treats his deportees?

     Of late, I’ve gauged him based on front-door promotions at a store in my California hometown, Santa Monica, nowhere near the Mountain time zone. Last year, he was the star of “an exclusive collaboration” with Blenders x, which sold his sideline sunglasses with “ a bold monochromatic look that, like Prime himself, ain’t hard 2 find.” Today? He’s no longer in the window.

     You wonder how long he’ll remain at Colorado after Shedeur leaves, assuming he isn’t killed when sacked 25 percent of the time under pressure. Last year, insiders asked if he’d head to the NFL for a head coaching job. Last month, he set us straight.

     “I do not plan on following my kids to the NFL,” he said.

     For now, he can peer outside and familiarize himself with the Gaza war. It might help him see reality and leave Lawd Jesus alone.

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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.