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There are few bigger stories in the college football world these days than Deion Sanders.
The story is not where Deion Sanders is coaching, or who Deion Sanders is recruiting, but Sanders himself is a one-man show. Once Prime Time, always Prime Time.
Neon Deion shocked college football fans everywhere when he left Jackson State for Colorado just two weeks ago. Since then, the Deion Sanders news cycle seems to move faster than Sanders himself did on the field. Whether it’s his former Jackson State players having his back, or it’s Colorado changing its entire academic standards for him, everything Sanders does is major news.
But what about Deion Sanders the coach? Everyone knows he can recruit. But a big question many fans had about his move to Colorado is just how well he’d handle every other aspect of coaching college football.
David Ubben of The Athletic went behind the scenes at Jackson State and learned a lot about how a Deion Sanders-coached program functions.
The Six Words Every Deion Sanders-Coached Players Learns
Ubben’s deep dive gives a fascinating look into life in the Jackson State program under Sanders. But it also gives an equally fascinating look into Sanders himself.
On Thursdays, Sanders brought a group of around a dozen players — made up of random positions throughout the roster — into a position room. Once everyone was settled, he opened up the conversation with a simple question: What are you going through?
It made players open up. It made teammates interact with others whose names they didn’t know before the group began meeting, much less anything else. In time, they learned plenty, and meetings like that helped build unity and camaraderie on a roster facing constant turnover as Sanders flipped the roster with lots of high-profile transfers.
“He actually cares about his players. A lot of head coaches don’t actually experience the player side of football,” Griffis said.
Ubben also revealed the six words that Sanders uses most and that players quickly learned to get used to.
He also builds a roster around the four tentpoles that made an appearance in his initial meeting with Colorado players. Other than “domination” and “dern,” players will hear “smart, fast, tough, discipline” as the program’s four other favorite words.
“He cares about you and your future. He gets us ready for real life, it’s not only about football. It’s real-life skills,” Mercier said.
If Sanders can get the type of buy-in from players at Colorado that it appears he got at Jackson State, the Buffalos may be more of a force to be reckoned with than anyone knows.