Screw it, I’ll root for Deion Sanders and Colorado

This could all end in a matter of days. Colorado football head coach Deion Sanders takes his men to play Oregon in Eugene on Saturday afternoon. Oregon is currently favored by three touchdowns over a Buffaloes team that’s small, missing one of its best players, and perhaps a bit worn out after spending the past month as the toast of not just college football, but of the entire sports world. If Oregon drubs Colorado as predicted, then the entire Coach Prime media industrial complex will nosedive. No more traveling circus. No more visits from “60 Minutes.” No more Fox pregame shows built entirely around the cult of Deion. All of that will subside, if not vanish outright. This is because the nation’s collective attention span is only so long, and because people like me WANT the hype to end.

Let’s go back for a moment. Deion Sanders was not just one of the greatest college football players ever, but he’d go on to become the greatest cornerback in NFL history. Oh, and he was an MLB player too, stealing 186 bases and batting .263 across nine seasons. Sanders did all of this on HIS terms, back when white America was much more hesitant to embrace any Black athlete who talked big and dressed even bigger. He was not only the best athlete in the world for a spell, but also the coolest. If you didn’t think Sanders was cool, that was your problem. The rest of us had a blast marveling at a man whose on-the-field accomplishments somehow matched his impossible bravado.

But a heel turn was in the offing. After Sanders retired, he dabbled in TV as an analyst (NFL Network still misses him dearly) before devolving into a shady, unpleasant grifter, firmly in Brett Favre territory. In 2013, his ex-wife Pilar accused him of assaulting her in their divorce proceedings, with her sister backing her up on it, claiming she had not seen Deion choke Pilar but had seen injury marks on Pilar’s neck. Pilar also testified that Deion berated one of their children thusly:

“Are you crying? Go back to your momma if you’re crying. I don’t raise punks. I don’t coach punks.”

It’s only natural that someone with this kind of personal history would want to become a college football coach, so that’s what post-NFL Deion did, taking over HBCU Jackson State and leading them to just enough winning seasons that he could move up to the Power Five (soon to be Four) as the head coach of a Colorado team that had been floundering ever since its heyday in the 1990s. The self-christened Coach Prime told his original Buffs roster to GTFO so that he could bring in superior players via the all-powerful transfer portal, his own sons among them. He visited MAGA car dealer conventions and bragged that he ranked his own children to their faces to keep them in line.

Even when you account for straight pandering, all of this counts as pure, unadulterated villainy; no wonder Fox Sports took a shine to Colorado right away. This is why I was cheering for Deion to not only fail at Colorado, but to do so quickly, and in humiliating fashion.

Deion has not failed at Colorado. The Buffs have gone unbeaten through the non-conference slate, including a season opening victory over a TCU team that reached the national title game less than a year ago. And I’ve been so hellbent on wanting this man to fail in the job that I’ve ignored how FUN this opening run has been. No longer. This team was 1-11 a year ago and lost over 40 players in the portal after Deion took over, and yet they’ve not only won these games, but have done so with FLAIR. That TCU upset featured four lead changes in the fourth quarter alone, with QB Shedeur Sanders, son of Deion, throwing for 500-plus yards, with four of his pass catchers posting over 100 yards receiving apiece. They crushed a Nebraska team led by foremost “Be Pepsi, my friend” zen philosopher Matt Rhule, who is no one’s idea of a good guy. Then they survived a late-night thriller against Colorado State that got extra juice from Deion and CSU head coach Jay Norvell going the full WWE beforehand:

This has been remarkable entertainment, and I’m someone who has long prioritized my entertainment needs over my moral hangups. I’m an NFL fan, after all. I don’t have much of a leg to stand on here. I’m also someone who openly wished for some of the ‘90s football powerhouses to come back into the fold, CU among them. Well, here they are. The Buffs are fun to watch, they bring in millions of curious eyeballs, and they’re NEW. That last part is vital in a sport that has had just 14 schools make its playoff in nine years of existence. Sanders would be the first Black coach ever to make the playoff. College football needs new blood, even if it’s old blood. 

I’ve also realized that it’s foolish of me to single out Deion as the worst person in a sport that’s NOTHING but scumbags. Who says that Deion has to be NICER than other college football coaches? Have you met Dabo Swinney? Or Jimbo Fisher? Or Mel Tucker? How many vanity pickups do those three assholes own between them? And do I really want USC to beat these guys by 50 two weeks from now? This USC?

I don’t. I’d rather enjoy this run, and do so on my terms the same way Deion has. Because this could all end in a few days, and I don’t want it to. Not anymore.

But when the Dallas Cowboys hire Deion as their next head coach a year from now? Oh, I’ll want him buried all over again, and I’ll be right to feel that way.