IT’S THE PERFECT TIME FOR COACH PRIME TO DAZZLE COLLEGE FOOTBALL
The Deion Sanders Extravaganza couldn’t have succeeded in the past, but now that the sport is a professional extension of the NFL, his hiring at Colorado becomes a must-watch, much-fun whirlwind
In a bygone era, when college football programs still could be exposed as morally disreputable, we’d be projecting a doom date for Deion Sanders and the death penalty. When would the infractions begin at Colorado? How long before the pay-for-play scandal? The academic fraud? The crime spree?
Next season? Next week? Yesterday?
He could sell his Coach Prime persona every waking hour, but wasn’t he still the prima donna who high-stepped his way into end zones and did a little dance, once pulling a groin muscle? The diva who suited up for an NFL game and an MLB playoff game in the same day, chartering a plane from Miami to Pittsburgh? The self-promoting megalomaniac who starred in “Must Be The Money,” his own music video? Wasn’t he still, at heart, the rabble-rouser who dumped ice water on a sportscaster’s head? The jerk who refused to run out a pop fly, incurring the wrath of Hall of Fame catcher Carlton Fisk?
“The days of slavery are over,” Sanders told him.
“There’s a right way and a wrong way to play this game,” Fisk shot back, “and if you don’t play it right, I’ll kick your ass right here in Yankee Stadium.”
If anyone ever would take nicknames to his grave, it would be Neon Deion/Prime Time. “Some people will come out to see me do well. Some people will come out to see me get run over,” he self-assessed. “Love me or hate me, they’re going to come out.”
But through all the outrageous behavior, including a divorce from his second wife that included accusations of infidelity and abuse from both parties, he dropped a hint during his stint as a TV studio commentator. The Atlanta Falcons needed a head coach. He nominated himself. “I can make them a better team, and I know that, because I know the things that really need to be done there,” Sanders said. “I still live football. I watch tape. I talk to head coaches and assistants, guys with whom I’m close, every week. I know what the job involves, believe me, and I know I can do it.”
Fast-forward to 2022. He still wears gold chains and oversized rectangular shades, but today, at age 55, his shtick has morphed into a coveted coaching brand. College football no longer has enforceable rules in a revolution that resembles a Wild West extension of the NFL, and now that players are paid for their names, images and likenesses — and can leave a program anytime they want, as often as they want, via the transfer portal — Coach Prime has found his niche in Boulder, of all places, where 0.9 percent of the population is Black. Tucked away in the shadow of the Rockies just 25 miles northwest of Denver, the town is known for art galleries and cafes and weed shops and a comatose football program that has managed one winning season in its last 17 tries. He arrived last week to take over the Buffaloes and, with one packed news conference, instantly became bigger than the Flatirons and Ralphie VI, the live buffalo mascot.
“This is my job and my occupation and my business and my dream to bring you back to where you know you belong,” Coach Prime said to the roars of famished fans. “I have the best coaching staff assembled, some of the best scouts, some of the best kids that we are recruiting, some already coming on the way as I speak. And now that I've gotten here, I see it, and understand it, and I can grasp it and I can touch it. I can feel it, I can taste it. I truly understand what you want — all you want is the opportunity to win. To compete. To dominate. To be amongst the elite. To be amongst the best.
“And darn it, I'm gonna give you that. It may not happen as quick as you may desire it to, but it's going to happen. We're gonna win. It's going to happen. I'm not going put a timetable on it, but it's gonna happen.”
Is he a coach? An evangelist? A salesman? All of the above.
“Sometimes I may look like an old fool but I'm just old school," Sanders said. “Guys, after we get finished with this work, I just want you to know we're on the way. Not to compete, but to win. Not to show up, but to show out. Not to be among the rest but to be the absolute best. We're coming into work. We're not coming to play. We're coming to kill, not to kick it.
“Baby, got to believe that we're coming. You've got to feel that energy inside of you that we're coming. When you get in that stadium, you got to get in early because by time of the kickoff, baby we're coming. You understand it? Do you feel that? Do you understand the intensity, the excitement, the adrenaline, the rush that I got right now, that I can't wait for this thing to kick off because we are coming.”
Whew.
Is this going to work? Why the hell wouldn’t it, now that the NCAA has been emasculated? His Hall of Fame profile and infectious charisma are exactly what will lure prized recruits away from the two mega-conferences, including the SEC, which doesn’t have one Black head coach after recycling the scandalized Hugh Freeze at Auburn. Major programs with vacancies were afraid of Sanders, what he might say, what he might do, how he might offend White boosters and power-players. Never mind what he accomplished at Jackson State, a historically Black institution in Mississippi, where he went 27-5 in three seasons and won the Southwest Athletic Conference title last weekend. He’ll be bringing transfers, including his son, Shedeur Sanders, already named next season’s starting quarterback, and two-way showman Travis Hunter, the top-ranked recruit nationally last year. He also has a five-star commitment from receiver Winston Watkins Jr., first cousin of NFL veteran Sammy Watkins, who was sought by 17 programs.
The industry paradigm has taken a radical shift. Prepared to pay, Colorado quickly has created a collective for donations to compensate the players. In the Pac-12, which needs a relevance boost with the defections of USC and (presumably) UCLA to the Big Ten, commissioner George Kliavkoff said Sanders’ presence increases the value of the conference’s media rights. Immediately, in a sport with traditional narratives tilted toward the South and Midwest, Coach Prime and the Buffs are a major story. He knows the local audience is hungry. But the national audience is intrigued, too.
“Boulder, Colorado, you have no idea what you blessed me with, the opportunity that you give me and I feel like I owe you," he said. “So every day I'm going to work for you. I'm gonna strain for you. I'm gonna develop for you. I'm gonna commit for you. I'm gonna do the things that others wouldn't do. Baby, we're coming.”
Wait, wasn’t his new life’s work supposed to begin and end at Jackson State? Didn’t he pledge, in 2020, that he wanted to “change lives, change the perspective of (Black college football), and make everyone step up to the plate and do what’s right by these kids. … It’s not about a bag. It’s about an opportunity.” He wasn’t there three full years before fleeing his humble salary for a five-year, $29.5 million deal plus incentives, including $750,000 if he wins a national championship. Isn’t he just another carpet-bagger like other college coaches? New York Post columnist Phil Mushnick called him “a scam artist” and “a self-promoting flim-flam man and black race hustler.” Bomani Jones, a prominent Black sports commentator, said of Sanders: “Well, I wouldn’t have come in in the first place and said that God sent me here to fix HBCUs. And God decided that in the middle of it you were supposed to leave? It’s like I’ve said, maybe God wants 10 percent of five (million) and not 10 percent of 375 (thousand). If God could do math, I could understand why it is. He sold a dream and then walked out on the dream. People have a right to be critical of that. I also would have taken the job at Colorado. It’s not a judgment of the fact that he took the job. But this is not in line with what he told us all these years.”
As always, Coach Prime had a response. “The thing that alarms me the most is just because I’m leaving Jackson, they think that I’m leaving African Americans. I don’t know if you noticed or not, but I’m Black,” Sanders said. “I can never leave who I am or what I am or how I am or how I go about being that. My calling is for young men, young women, people of all walks of life. Of all social climates and ethnicities. That’s my calling. My calling is not built on a location. It’s built on a destination.”
He paused and told the assembled fans, with his trademark smile, “Now that was good, you’re supposed to clap for that.” They clapped, wildly.
His staff is loading up with impressive names. Kent State head coach Sean Lewis is coming as offensive coordinator, and Alabama associate defensive coordinator Charles Kelly will run the defense. Willie Taggart, formerly in charge at Oregon and Florida State, will provide wisdom. They have hit the road with a mandate: Find the best players and bring them to Boulder. In a video posted to his overactive Twitter account, Sanders told recruits from sea to shining sea: “We plan to dominate, baby. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but right now. And I need your help in doing that. Recruits, I ain’t hard to find.”
In his mind, the transfer portal works both ways. Just as a player might want to flee for another program, he deserves the right to ditch players. He addressed his new players for the first time last weekend — videotaping it and posting it, naturally — and either inspired or frightened them, depending on one’s inner appetite to play for Sanders.
“I’m coming to restore, to replace and reenergize,” he told them. “Some of y’all are salvageable. I’m not going to lie, everybody that sit their butt in a seat ain’t gonna have a seat when we get back. But I'm coming. I started and we gonna go dominate and go to work. We’ve got a few positions already taken care of because I’m bringing my luggage with me and it’s Louis.”
Vuitton, if there was any doubt.
“It ain’t gonna be no more of the mess that these wonderful fans, the student body and some of your parents have put up with for probably two decades now,” he went on. “I’m coming. And when I get here, it’s going to change. So I want you all to get ready. Go ahead and jump in that portal and do whatever you're going to do, because the more of you jump in, the more room you make.”
Carson Mott, who signed with Colorado in June, was told to find another program. “Just spoke to the new Colorado staff and was informed they would not be honoring my commitment,” he tweeted Tuesday. “I am officially re-opening my recruitment.” Mott was a three-star recruit. Sanders wants four- and five-star recruits.
Tempting as it is for some to laugh off the experiment and predict Coach Prime’s demise, maybe we should listen to one of his good friends. “Deion, I think for anyone who loves the sport of football, the more people that are in it that have great expertise and knowledge, that understand why the games are won and lost, that are gonna bring the enthusiasm to it, the better it is for the sport,” Tom Brady said. “So, I think what Deion's done, and he was in the media and now he wants to be back out making an impact, coaching and changing people's lives. I’ll be rooting for him.”
If he fails, another NFL broadcasting gig will be there.
If he wins? An NFL head-coaching gig may be there.
Imagine that, if you possibly can.
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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.