Deion Sanders’s swagger lifts Colorado, reflects college football
Deion Sanders is the perfect disrupter for this moment in college football. The sport’s establishment has underestimated him in ways that his prolific mouth cannot articulate. Here he comes, loud and swaggering, armed with the coaching acuity and nimble leadership to navigate a wild time.
Once derided as a famous outsider masquerading as a coach, Sanders now threatens to be a cheat code. After posting a 27-6 record at Jackson State, Coach Prime is the talk of college football following his debut with Colorado. The Buffaloes, who finished 1-11 last season, defeated No. 17 TCU, 45-42, on the road Saturday. Never one for modesty, Sanders barked back at anyone bearing a resemblance to a naysayer afterward.
His antics, which included some “Do you believe now?” heckling of a reporter, obstructed appreciation of the stunning victory. Sanders went all-in with the disrespect card because playing the underdog isn’t his style. He ratcheted up the arrogance because, after Sanders has spent almost 40 years in the spotlight, does anyone expect anything less?
Sanders refers to himself as the most honest coach in sports, which is kind of like claiming to be the fastest long snapper. Honesty isn’t high on the job description. There are plenty of bad actors pretending they’re virtuous leaders of men. Sanders is neither hero nor villain, neither trustworthy nor deceitful. He is Coach Prime. He is who he is, right down to how he overuses “durn” to keep his bravado PG.
Sanders leaves no doubt why he came to Colorado: to build a dominant program. He plans to do so by using the current structure of the sport to his advantage rather than complaining.
A year ago, when Sonny Dykes arrived at TCU, he turned the transfer portal into his salvation, transforming the Horned Frogs from a 5-7 team to a 13-2 squad that made the College Football Playoff title game. And Colorado just beat TCU with extreme usage of the transfer portal.
When Sanders took over, he made a controversial remark to the Colorado holdovers: “I’m bringing my luggage with me, and it’s Louis [Vuitton].” The Buffaloes began the season with 86 new players on the roster. More than 50 of them transferred in from another college, including two-way star Travis Hunter and the coach’s sons, quarterback Shedeur Sanders and safety Shilo Sanders.
They all played for Coach Prime at Jackson State, and in their first game in the top tier of Division I on Saturday, Shedeur Sanders threw for a school-record 510 yards and four touchdowns, Shilo Sanders posted 10 tackles, and Hunter logged a remarkable 129 snaps, finishing with 11 catches for 119 yards as a wide receiver and making a diving red-zone interception while playing cornerback.
As a coach, Sanders is an interesting combination of old and new school, mixed with something he must have taught himself at home. He is inflexible about manners and the appropriate clothing to wear during meetings. But his teams play with flair, and the coach is as obsessed with their on-field style as he was during his Hall of Fame career. He commands respect, spurs laughter and delivers the most charismatic, unscripted locker-room speeches.
To build a stable program, Sanders will need to show patience and refrain from turning over the roster so dramatically from year to year. But in the future, he will be evaluating his players. For all the criticism he took for his callousness in encouraging the majority of last year’s team to transfer — only about 10 scholarship players from that roster remain — Sanders was forthright. He doesn’t do coy. And it seems the roster that this new coaching staff put together is exactly what the program needed.
Sanders came to win. He will exploit what he can exploit. Most coaches couldn’t stomach so much roster shuffling. He could, and while a victorious debut won’t define an entire season, he has momentum now.
It seemed impossible. The Buffaloes lost their final six games last season, five of them by 33 or more points. The combined score of their last four games was 221-55. They allowed at least 38 points in all but one game last season.
On Saturday, their revamped defense struggled, so they just outscored TCU. All of a sudden, there is hope for a program with a .338 winning percentage in its previous 12 seasons.
No matter what Sanders makes you feel, his magnetism is unavoidable. He is full of contradictions, but he epitomizes self-assurance. He is a mirror for college football. The way he navigates the sport and the minimal amount of hypocrisy he displays provide a truer image of the game.
Amid the Pac-12’s collapse, Sanders spoke the truth about realignment.
“All this is about money,” he told reporters in Colorado before the season. “It’s about a bag. Everybody’s chasing a bag, then you get mad at the players when they chase it. How is that? How do the grown-ups get mad at the players when the colleges are chasing it?”
Sanders can toggle between his 56-year-old mentality and the mind of a player. He’s already a formidable recruiter, but if you add his star power, initial coaching success and perspective, you can sense the potential. There’s only one Deion Sanders, and his appeal is greater than old footage of his athletic glory.
On Saturday, after his first Football Bowl Subdivision triumph, he talked about the fight for respect that Black coaches face.
“We’re going to continuously be questioned because we do things that have never been done. And that makes people uncomfortable,” Sanders said. “When you see a confident Black man sitting up here and talking his talk, walking his walk, coaching 75 percent African Americans in a locker room, that’s kind of threatening. Oh, they don’t like that.
“But guess what? We’re going to consistently do what we do because I’m here and I ain’t going nowhere. I’m about to get comfortable in a minute.”
If this is how Sanders acts before he’s comfortable, oh, my goodness.
Here he comes, gold chain glistening, his ambition as flashy as his jewelry. For months, you wondered whether Sanders could adjust to major college football. Of greater curiosity now is how the sport will adjust to him.
