Bigger and Boulder

Deion Sanders is the biggest thing to hit Boulder since Mork landed from Ork. It started with his “I’m coming” welcome speech to the players from last year’s Colorado Buffaloes football team. The speech, like everything he does, was recorded. It went viral. So has nearly every moment since. Only ten scholarship players from that 1-11 Buffaloes team are still on this year’s team, but like the rest of us, those former players are probably watching what has happened since they left. Everyone watches Deion Sanders because Deion Sanders is everywhere, from social media to 60 Minutes, and he’s turned the school’s Boulder-based team into the greatest show in America. They’re also undefeated. In some ways, what Deion Sanders has achieved in a matter of months is representative of all that’s wrong in college football—the money, the TV deals, the near complete separation between the athletic departments and the schools they supposedly represent. But Deion didn’t create that system. He’s just become, almost overnight, the best at exploiting it. How will it all turn out? All I know for sure is that everyone will be watching. It’s always Prime time. “Since 2020, when he skipped the assistant ranks altogether to become head coach at Jackson State University, an historically Black college in Mississippi, Sanders has become the most ubiquitous and polarizing figure in college football. He is the avatar for a tumultuous and money-soaked era in the sport, where players hop between schools in pursuit of marketing deals and colleges switch conferences in search of more lucrative TV contracts. With the same game-changing speed he showed as a player, Sanders has rewritten the playbook for success, using his celebrity, social media savvy and old-school charisma to attract attention and talent to whatever sideline he roams.” BusinessWeek (Gift Article) on the man who rocked Boulder. Deion Sanders Is Writing College Football’s New Playbook.

+ As a player, Sanders famously explained, “If you look good, you feel good, If you feel good, you play good, If you play good, they pay good.” It’s hard to predict if this week’s Colorado opponent will look good, because they change their uniforms almost every week. On Saturday, Oregon’s cleats will change colors with heat during Colorado game. Even this move reminds one of another Deion quote: “I never wear the same shoe twice.”