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Deion Sanders ruffled a lot of feathers when he took over the head coaching duties at the University of Colorado in 2022.
Sanders pulled scholarship offers from players that had already committed to Colorado. He made some extremely insensitive comments about the type of family backgrounds he looks for in recruits. He supposedly made it difficult for some players to transfer to another school. Sanders angered parents of players and other college football coaches, and many of those said they didn’t believe that his roster building strategy would work.
That latter belief has yet to play out, but the dozens of college football players whose lives were turned upside down when they were sent packing by Deion Sanders when he joined the Buffaloes, has played out and several of those players are not happy with how things were handled.
On Monday, Max Olson of The Athletic shared discussions he had with several of Sanders’ “castoffs.”
Wide receiver Chase Sowell said being with Colorado “kinda felt like a reality TV show” because of Deion Sanders’ Amazon documentary series.
Sowell added that the new players appeared to have little interest in integrating with incumbent players.
“We felt like it was us vs. them instead of all of us together,” he said. “That’s the best way I can put it. The new guys were going against the players that had already been there. It wasn’t a good environment to be in. It wasn’t a team environment.”
Safeties Xavier Smith and Oakie Salave’a didn’t even get the courtesy of being told they weren’t wanted by Sanders himself. Instead, defensive coordinator Charles Kelly did the dirty work.
“We sat on the sofa, and he’s talking to us, but he’s not even looking at us,” Smith said. “I’m looking Coach Kelly dead in his eyes. (Sanders) said he felt like I should hit the portal. He didn’t want me to waste a year thinking I could earn a spot.
“I was actually getting mad, like tears coming to my eyes. Because, bro, you never even tried to get to know me.”
Smith added that Deion Sanders “was destroying guys’ confidence and belief in themselves” when he first got there.
“The way he did it, it could’ve been done with a little more compassion,” said Smith.
Offensive tackle Jake Wiley had another shocking tale of how he found out some players were gone.
“In our O-line group chat, one of the offensive line coaches texted the group and said, ‘Good luck fellas,’” Wiley said, “and then he just removed all of them. It said these five people were removed from the chat. We were like, ‘Huh? What happened?’”
After seeing more than 50 players exit the program in Deion Sanders’ first year, more than 30 from last season are now moving on in year two.
It will be interesting to see if those kids will also have troubling stories to share about how they were treated by Sanders and his staff during one of the most significant times in their young lives.