Is Steve Corder legit or is he just irresponsible? That’s the question regarding his article on the Athlon Sports Colorado Buffaloes site from August 2.
As with any published content, we can aggregate and opine on it as our Scott Solomon did in this piece — https://mikefarrellsports.com/college/coach-prime-if-the-allegations-are-true-you-should-step-down-immediately. Scott calls for Coach Prime to step down “if” the allegations are true and the word alleged is used more than once. Allegations, alleged, allegedly all means we don’t know and no one else seems to either. The bottom line? No one knows if this is a hit piece from a flaky author or well sourced material from what has been rumored to be a dysfunctional football program.
Deion Sanders chaotic culture turns into locker room violence in Colorado https://t.co/iH9mBdfl4T
— SMCORDER (@SM_Corder) August 2, 2024
So I’ve been inundated with comments, DMs and the like regarding this story and Scott’s take. Where do I stand? It may sound lame but I’m in the in between. I’ll explain.
On the one hand you have “sources” who seem to be former players. And honestly, I could contact former players of about any head football coach and find guys to say bad things off the record. Now talking about a gun culture, hazing and locker room violence isn’t easy to find. Most would talk about unfair treatment, a chaotic culture and much more tame issues. These are some serious accusations.
Corder has no following to speak of (124 followers) and his tweet of the article received 3 likes and less than 60 comments. Bottom line, few pay attention to him and he could have some weird axe to grind.
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On the other hand, I’ve heard from so many people over the last year about massive favoritism at Colorado for not only Deion’s sons and Travis Hunter but for the “A Team” or essentially the coaching favorites. These are the best players on the team and many sources have told me they can do as they please. I’ve also received random photos, videos and other evidence of team infighting and so on. But nothing really damning. After all, football locker rooms and practice are still football — it’s a violent sport.
Dan LeBatard had Corder on his show this week to talk of the allegations and has since deleted the tweet promoting his appearance. While Corder’s interview remains on the podcast, why delete a video snippet from it? Corder spoke of a video Colorado made about “who’s the most strapped on the team?” and took it to mean carrying guns. The video clearly shows the players are talking about who covered who the best…
Here is the full context of the video that this clown is referring to.
He’s either ignorant or intentionally misleading people.
Something tells me it’s the latter. https://t.co/RpB9y702ZK pic.twitter.com/rXAJqFZJtB
— RK (@RyanKoenigsberg) August 7, 2024
After seeing this video, LeBatard’s social media team deleted the tease to the interview which included Corder’s misinterpretation of “strapped”. It’s a big swing and miss by Corder. If he thinks for a second this video is about guns, then he’s not overly bright.
However, over and over again I hear of locker room fights, hazing and even guns in certain videos. Not to the extent Corder claims and I’m certainly not misinterpreting a video as badly as he is. And I don’t have any proof and it’s all alleged.
So where do we land on this? My best guess and opinion is that there is a culture issue at Colorado but a much more innocent one than Corder is trying to sell. Former players as sources, especially those who won’t go on record, are a hard sell. And accusations like “rampant” gun culture as Corder claims seems far fetched.
While I’m not a believer in what Coach Prime is building and we have every right to aggregate content with appropriate credit, I also know there are many Deion haters out there praying for a smoking gun — no pun intended. This likely isn’t it.
Athlon and Corder felt confident enough to publish this article so the sources were likely vetted. And for those who think Athlon, Corder, LeBatard and others can be sued for libel, it’s really hard to prove in any court of law the intent to damage especially in LeBatard’s case where he had the author on as a guest.
Coach Prime is an icon and he clicks, the mass media knows this. Heck, people thought a TD pass in practice from Shedeur Sanders was edited and the video has more than 10 million views and counting because of the questioned validity.
I’ve been sent a ton of “evidence” against the culture of Colorado over the last year and none of it was damning enough to publish. Perhaps Corder received the same stuff and ran with it.
So I land on this — I don’t think Colorado is some gun toting, hazing violent program. I do think there’s (allegedly) a poor culture in place with massive favoritism towards certain players. I’ve heard that far too many times to ignore it. And somewhere between these distant lines is where things likely stand. Is it worth an investigation? Perhaps as I heard whispers about bad things regarding many programs well before the news broke over my many years covering football. But is Corder irresponsible and a bit out of line? I think we may find out he is.
