Mike Farrell Sports

College Football Recruiting, Opinion, and Analysis

Prime’s Unaccountable God Complex Turns Friends into Enemies

Deion Sanders squandered a compliant media and lost whatever goodwill he once had

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Jul 10
Jul 10
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By Rock Westfall

Hey, Coach Prime, let me introduce you to a stranger who will be with you for the rest of the 2024 season and, perhaps, beyond. Introducing, Accountability.

The honeymoon is over for Deion Sanders. For the first time in his football life, Coach Prime is encountering aliens known as scrutiny and accountability. Previously used to the worshipful adoration of the masses, Prime’s dalliance with reality is starting to starve the insatiable appetite of his ego and God Complex. Until now, Sanders had a fawning media serving as his personal publicity team.  But now, the narrative has shifted, and the media’s perception of Sanders is no longer one of adoration but of critique.

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The sports media, already imbalanced towards being what they mistakenly believe to be social justice warriors, saw Sanders as a transformational cultural icon who was not to be questioned but always exalted. As a result, the media was also terrified of being labeled as racists if they did not click its collective heels and hail hosannas to whatever the Great God Deion pontificated. This fear, more than anything, kept them from questioning Sanders. But the fear factor is now gone, and Deion Sanders is about to experience the adage of absolute power corrupting absolutely.

Coach Prime just unleashed and empowered a compliant, obedient media to attack him with reckless abandon and relish. And some can argue he deserves every miserable moment of it.  

Free At Last! – Sanders Turns Puppies into Pit Bulls 

Upon his arrival at the University of Colorado, Deion Sanders met a media ready to sell his brand word for word and without question. Sanders was loved for being what he is, which is a lightning rod and great copy. 

A headline about Sanders having to use the men’s room clicks significantly more than any serious football story you can find. While that is quite an indictment of America’s sports fandom and readership, it is also a reality that the media has had to embrace. 

Also, the media loved how Sanders annoyed traditionalist football fans. Anything that is perceived to annoy more conservative-minded football followers is intriguing to the sporting media. Thus, in Deion Sanders, they found God and became a choir.  

Prime had a great thing going with commentators making perpetual alibis for his failures and selling patience to critics. All Sanders had to do was play nice, and he had an entire national publicity team ready to swoon and write whatever he wanted word-for-word.

But like many “bullies” as Paul Finebaum labeled him, when a tiny portion of the media worked up a bit of self-respect and or courage to practice serious journalism and question Coach Prime about his revolving door roster and potential challenges, he took immediate offense. How dare anyone criticize the All-Knowing Deion Sanders, the Great God of Sports Pop Culture, who was going to reinvent football via the portal, all the while luxuriating in his plush digs without ever lowering himself to make a recruiting trip like all the other bumpkin coaches.

This summer, Sanders began to single out reporters and networks he would not take questions from. Like a dictator, he determined that nobody was to question him with doubts or negative judgments.

The American sporting press can be hard to stomach with zero self-respect. Also, from a practical perspective, they don’t want to lose access to personalities or teams. But the one thing they won’t stand for is the abuse of their own, even competitors. Following Sanders’s censorship tactics, coupled with his poor on-field results and questionable team building, the media finally found the courage to go after him. 

A Career and Faux Deity on the Brink 

As I have mentioned here before, the Deion Sanders era could meet its figurative, if not literal, end in Nebraska on September 7 in, appropriately enough, prime-time on NBC. With his son Shedeur Sanders, a senior starting quarterback, Prime may protect him on the bench if the makeshift offensive line of portal castoffs fails to prove it can’t protect what is projected to be a first-round NFL draft pick.

If the losses mount, a cadre of reporters will go after Sanders in a way he is utterly unprepared or trained for. And the press members that he has cut off now have the unbridled freedom that they lacked before. They can say or write whatever they want without consequence because they have already been banished. Beware the man with nothing to lose.

Deion Sanders’s pampered life as a football celebrity left him ill-equipped to deal with adversarial media. Desperate Colorado agreed to Deion’s diktat that he could pick and choose what media members to engage in or not. Colorado needs Prime to pay its bills, regardless of the field record, and press relations.

Sanders was able to use Colorado to pad his resume with a Power Four gig and prepare his son for the NFL. Prime can say, with some merit, that nobody can win at Colorado and then look for another P4 job (Florida State?).

Deion Sanders was never long for Colorado. His blowup with the press will only hasten his self-destruction and departure.

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