They say we write about Deion Sanders enough. Even after I said we’d be doing Daily Deion stuff from the pre-season. But so, we focus too much on a 4-8 football coach whose team finished last in the Pac-12? Maybe, but here’s why.
Here are the other last-place finishers in the Power Five for the 2023 season: Indiana, Cincinnati, Vanderbilt, and Wake Forest. Aside from being baffled at the brashness of new Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti here…
Holy douche chills. WTF.
— Mike Farrell (@mfarrellsports) December 23, 2023
We don’t write much about Cignetti (or Tom Allen before him), Scott Satterfield, Clark Lea, or Dave Clawson. So why so much focus on the last-place coach named Deion Sanders? Many Deion worshippers claim racism and that everyone wants to keep a proud, loud black coach down. Nope, that’s not it. It’s because of the following factors…
1. Coach Prime is beyond famous
— Name a head coach who came into college with more fame. I’ll wait. No one. Guys like Urban Meyer, Nick Saban, and others became polarizing after great success, but Deion went from a failed high school program to OC where his son Shedeur played to head coach in the FCS to head coach in the Power Five. It wasn’t as fast as some think, as he began coaching in 2012 and wasn’t a head coach until 2020, but name another coach who went from high school OC to head coach in college. It doesn’t happen.
Many high school head coaches have gone in to become assistant coaches and then coordinators and then head coaches in college, but to jump from high school OC to head coach only happens to the famous. Deion was one of the best all-time college football players at Florida State. He was one of the best cornerbacks in the history of the NFL. He’s a Hall of Famer. He’s Neon Deion, he’s Prime Time, he’s an icon. Cignetti, Satterfield, Lea, and Clawson are solid coaches in many ways, but they are a flea on a buffalo’s backside compared to Deion when it comes to fame.
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2. Deion is brash
— Brash coaches are rare in college football. Terms like “we coming,” “ain’t hard to find,” “keeping receipts,” and “better get us now” aren’t often muttered by college coaches. In fact, many of their sound bites are predictable and boring. And so, honestly, we love Deion for his bravado.
But we also can’t stand it. I’ll be the first to admit it and probably the last. As media members, we pray and pray and pray for a coach to say something, anything controversial. And then we absolutely pounce on it and kill them for it. And that’s what we do to Deion. Right or wrong — and it’s probably wrong — it’s the way media works these days.
Deion challenges us to watch what’s coming, and he will glow and relish in our shame if he succeeds. And if he fails, we will hammer him all the more. That’s what happens to outspoken coaches, black or white, in 2024. Cignetti’s example above is a good one. He appears to be a cocky jerk. If he wins, he can brag, and if he loses, we will destroy him. But Deion is different. The combination of fame and his icon status is Cignetti on steroids. It’s good and bad for Colorado and Deion as TV ratings are through the roof, and the money pouring into Colorado is amazing. But with that comes negative attention as well. Deion has us all watching. It’s what he wants. And we are so focused on him we don’t even see the others with similar records.
3. The media feeds itself
— Perhaps some small newspaper in Bloomington is writing about Cignetti this week. They probably are. Maybe a newspaper in Nashville has an article on what Lea needs to do to survive another year at Vanderbilt. But it’s 1% of the coverage Deion gets, and so we, as media members, feed each other. Deion says something on Undisputed or recently on RG3’s podcast. It gets national attention, everyone writes about it, and more and more, it feeds itself.
This isn’t Deion’s fault. He’s an icon. It’s not Taylor Swift’s fault they show her every second at Kansas City Chiefs games. We are drawn to fame. And maybe, as a miserable society, we are drawn to criticize it. But everything Deion and his kids do (and Travis Hunter to a lesser extent) is covered. That’s the price of fame. These other coaches are famous. They are known. These other coaches aren’t icons. They are just dudes. What Deion does attracts attention, and we feed off it.
4. Deion is naive
— This doesn’t mean he’s dumb. Deion is a smart dude and as savvy a marketer as I’ve ever seen. I’m convinced he says one thing one day and the opposite the other just for attention and to keep us guessing. I think he could be a genius. I know he’s a genius marketer. But he’s also naive to the ways of college football. There’s an innocence to it that’s offset by his fame, and it’s a tough mix. We expect him to know better because he’s a legend, but honestly, he doesn’t.
His recent comments about negative recruiting against Colorado are fodder for a separate article. Everyone negative recruits, and it’s been going on for decades and decades. But Deion doesn’t know that because he’s new to this world. And that’s cool and all, but it’s also an example of why he gets so much hate. For a smart, ingenious self-promoter, he’s still very clueless when it comes to the ways of college football, and he will learn some soft lessons and some very hard ones.
So there you have it, why we are enamored with Deion. Call it whatever you want, but those are the real reasons. And I know my site will continue to write about him as much as is warranted.
