My new favorite thing to do on Saturdays in the fall is type in “Deion” to my social media search bar and just read about Colorado head coach Deion Sanders. With Thanksgiving around the corner in 2024, you’d think that man was coming to steal turkeys off your tables instead of trying to feed his community in more ways than one.
Someone is going to have to explain to me who is a better college football coach in the United States of America than Coach Prime. While you’re at it, please remind me which set of goalposts we’re kicking on when analyzing the Colorado football program, writ large. After the past six weeks of football, while it might have been a tough stretch to be a performative hater, it’s an even more embarrassingly awkward existence for people who genuinely believe that their issues with the program are legit.
Let’s take them one by one. And to be clear, for the purposes of this exercise, we’re going to act like any of these are in good faith, and not just revisionist history with ad hoc rationales used to justify many people’s public opinions.
Rick Scuteri/AP Photo
* Last year, the criticism was warranted. They lost eight in a row to close out the season and couldn’t stop anybody.
Sure, this construct lies in the idea that once a team is well out of any sort of contention for a division, never mind a conference, that nobody deserves to pay attention to a team that can’t win week in and week out. The rebuttal here is pretty clear though: They won exactly one game the year before and won 4 last year. Clearly, that’s a massive improvement. Not to mention that wide receiver/cornerback Travis Hunter, the most elite two-way player in the country, was must-see TV every time he stepped on the field and still is.
Furthermore, if we’re going to be real, they sold out every single home game that season. Right up until the end. I don’t even need to get into the statistics about the amount of money that the football program is bringing to Boulder, Colorado — never mind the school — if return on investment is big on your list of important things when it comes to college football coach contracts.
* He makes it all about himself instead of the kids.
Last time I checked, Sanders is in the College Football Hall of Fame. He’s also in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Meaning, the actual fundamental reward structure of the sport has already made it about him, which also, the last time I checked, is the goal in terms of what career accomplishments are about. God forbid that people actually respect his football acumen, since he obviously has it.
* Sanders treated the former players poorly in terms of how he treated them on the way out, when he arrived.
Tell me you know nothing about college football without telling me. This is the criticism I’m most sensitive to, because that’s where the real-life rubber meets the road in terms of how lives, families and careers are affected. But that’s been an unfortunate reality of the system that existed long before Coach Prime ever set foot on Folsom Field.
If you want to get really serious, do yourself a favor and look up the stories of what former Ole Miss, Auburn, Texas Tech and Cincinnati coach and current U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville routinely did to cut players, back when a.) guys weren’t getting paid and b.) all of this stuff happened behind closed doors.
If you want to truly expose your own ignorance, go ahead and tell me that such harsh and frank analysis is not the kind of thing that happens at schools like Colorado, a non-SEC or Big Ten program. Not so fast, my friend, to quote Lee Corso, a fellow Florida State alum who actually has more career interceptions than Sanders at the school. How quickly we forget one of the greatest news conferences in the history of the sport.
Oh, right, it was Dan Hawkins, coach of the Buffaloes from 2006 to 2010. It’s worth your time.
He absolutely rips a parent for even insinuating that their team is playing too much football, screaming into a microphone. “It’s Division I football! Go play intramurals, brother!” is a legendary line in sports talk lore and at the time he was roundly applauded for it. Worth noting that at Colorado, Hawkins never had a record above .500 and never won more than six games in a season.
Now, folks complain on main that guys aren’t doing enough football things because players are showing up at fashion shows and on livestreams? Please. You’re contradicting yourselves.
* He’s got a god complex overall that is obnoxious.
This is where we get to the good stuff. Even within this bullet point, there is so much specious logic that it takes a real spin doctor to find anything that makes sense. Presumably, the idea here is that nobody who “hasn’t won anything” deserves to behave as if they know better than anyone in terms of methods of operation or program philosophy. This would make sense were it not for the fact that the standard here overall is so impossibly stratified. By this logic, all coaches should be silent, demure, stoic leaders if they aren’t named Nick Saban. Reminder: Coach Prime and Saban have commercials airing together right now, nearly every Saturday. Apparently, someone thinks they deserve to be mentioned in the same breath.
Meanwhile, Brian Kelly at LSU is telling players on the sideline on national television, “Don’t walk away from me! You are f—ing uncoachable. Who the f— do you think you are?” This is the same guy who, by the way, was involved with a video assistant losing their life after he allowed reckless standards for his video team at practice. Also, the same guy who apparently made his assistant coaches and graduate assistants shovel snow and park cars at a holiday party at his home.
There’s no world in which you’re going to win any sort of argument when referring to Coach Prime somehow being a “bad guy” in a world of actual scumbags roaming the college football sidelines. Also, Kelly’s contract is worth $60 million *more* than Sanders’.
* He’s not really connected to the Boulder community, this is just another weigh station for him on a path to a bigger job.
Once again, tell me that a.) you’ve never spent any time in Boulder or b.) you simply have your head in the sand. For one, that town is not looking for anyone to reestablish culture anywhere other than on the football field. They’re doing just fine in the Flatirons. But, just as importantly, this season has shown that Coach Prime not only has a big bank account, but also a heart.
It might have felt like obvious pandering last season, when he promised Colorado superfan Peggy Coppom that she’d see another bowl game in her lifetime. And there was a glimmer of hope for that last season that never panned out. But after Sanders embraced her legacy last season, taking her from local to national living legend, and appreciating her dedication to the program, it turns out that her 100th birthday is coming up next week. She’s been attending games since the 1940s. She’s a year younger than THE ACTUAL STADIUM THEY PLAY IN. And Saturday, during the game, the entire place serenaded her with an early happy birthday during their win against Utah.
To quote a famous rapper, “if your lame ass can’t feel that, your cord’s unplugged.”
Speaking of older adults, it’s also worth noting that guys such as Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy are holding their coaching shows at retirement communities because they’re too afraid to face their own fan bases in person, and he directly insulted his own fans on a media conference call, saying they were broke losers who couldn’t support their families. That legitimately happened and was said on Nov. 6. We’re not talking about some dude getting caught on a hot mic 20 years ago. Gundy, to be clear, has played for exactly zero national championships and won precisely one Big 12 title in nearly 20 years.
Lastly, to answer the initial prompt: So what? Since when did having a nice stop that brings success, cash and a tremendous morale boost become some sort of a problem in American society? Did I miss the memo that someone is required to be locked in to one location for the rest of their careers just to meet the apparent standards of random people? You’re talking about a guy who, as a player, won a Super Bowl with the San Francisco 49ers in 1994, then the next season went to the Dallas Cowboys and won another one. YOU might not be able to understand that, but it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t.
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* He’s just using his kids for personal gain and will hamper their careers in the NFL.
For one, I’m not sure what to say about the general pathology around “Black fathers” that somehow still exists in society even though demographic numbers consistently show that all the absenteeism stereotypes are just plain incorrect in terms of judgment. God forbid any dad enjoys helping his kids succeed. To some of us out there, that fact alone is wildly inspirational just on its face. We’ve still got Kennedys getting White House Cabinet nominations and somehow folks bristle at seeing two players named Sanders on either side of the ball? Make it make sense.
But more specifically to football, everyone gave Jack Elway and Archie Manning the benefit of the doubt when they orchestrated maneuvers for their sons to be in better situations once they got to the NFL. And Sanders shouldn’t be doing that either? He’s said that he doesn’t plan to do so publicly, but will manage as he can privately to make it work for his boys. This is called excellent parenting.
Quarterback is the worst coached position in the league by a mile, and he doesn’t want to set his son up for failure. As for Hunter, if anyone knows about how to best handle your career to play both ways, or at multiple positions, again, it’s Sanders. The first time the man touched a football in the NFL, he fumbled a punt return. Then he picked it up and ran it to the house. And he actually caught three touchdowns as a receiver in the league. Again, it ain’t trickin’ if you got it.
* Ultimately, he only cares about his kids, not his roster.
Tell that to Charlie Offerdahl. A walk-on three years ago, he was there when this team won only one game that season. He’s from just up the road in Littleton, Colorado, and is 5-feet-11, 185 pounds. Long shot doesn’t begin to describe his career. Against Utah on Saturday, Coach Prime made a point to get him his first career touchdown, which happened in the fourth quarter. Offerdahl said after the game that he looks at Sanders like a second father. And Coach Prime said that was the moment of the matchup that he was most proud of, as a team. You can see the joy in all his teammates’ faces when he finally crossed that goal line after years of hard work.
Say what you want about “winning cures everything” or whatever weirdly hyper results-based philosophies you want to espouse — for many people, this columnist included, stuff like that is what college sports are actually all about. Offerdahl will never play a down in the NFL, unlike a few of his teammates. But that moment will likely be the highlight of his sports life.
But perhaps my favorite moment from Coach Prime’s entire tenure — and that includes the football — happened last month. The coach had gotten wind of a middle schooler who was looking to become a football player locally, but was getting bullied, and decided to invite him to practice.
“Getting that letter from the father, and reading it, and then having contact with this young man, and seeing him crying his heart out, is touching,” Sanders said a month ago of “Lil Jan,” an eighth grader at Casey Middle School in Boulder. “It touched me, and it provoked me to move. That’s what I feel like I am, I’m a mover. I like to move people and move people in the right direction.”
The teen got to be a part of practice, and got some motivational words from the players, including an opportunity to break down the final huddle with the guys. When Coach Prime asked the squad for volunteers to take the young man back to school that day after his life-changing tour, it was his son, quarterback Shedeur Sanders, who stepped up and showed up. Surely, no kid at Casey, home of the Cubs, will forget that day. You don’t have to be the most altruistic program on earth to just plain do cool things that make people feel better about themselves, especially young folks. You never know who may need that lifeboat.
In real football terms, their path to the college football playoff is in their hands. Then-No. 6 BYU lost Saturday night to Kansas, opening the door to the Big 12 title. The actual gridiron results, strength of schedule aside (Colorado can only play the people on the schedule) have put the Buffaloes in a position to potentially win it all. At some point, all the bizarre disdain for the program just adds up to having an actual vendetta against one of the most electric athletes in American history. A very special blend of insecurity breeds such a mindset.
“Don’t allow their hatred for me to interfere with our kids’ success,” Sanders said regarding the potential of Hunter winning the Heisman Trophy and becoming the first defensive player to do so since Charles Woodson. “Get the kids what they deserve, man.”
Don’t talk to me about changing lives if the only thing you care about is victories in sports. You’ll probably always be a creepy hater. And the Sanders family will still probably be doing their best to make the lives of people around them better.
That’s called a winning mentality, which is what all kids should strive for.