There has been no shortage of speculation about Deion Sanders coaching this NFL team or that NFL team.
Speculation, mind you, not even rumors or anonymously sourced reports.
In a media landscape desperate for engagement, you aren’t going to miss when putting, say, Coach Prime and the Dallas Cowboys in the same sentence. And so it snowballs.
Up in Colorado, where he coaches an 8-2 team that controls its College Football Playoff path, Sanders just sort of smiles and waves it off.
“I’m happy where I am,” Prime said this week. “I’m good. I’ve got a kickstand down. You know what a kickstand is? … That means I’m resting. I’m good. I’m happy. I’m excited. I’m enthusiastic about where I am. I love it here. I truly do.”
The lengthy list of college head coaches who say they aren’t going anywhere that wind up going somewhere — often with head-spinning speed — prevents anyone from taking Sanders’ pronouncement at full value, no offense to him.
Tommy Tuberville, after all, once said he would leave Ole Miss only in a “pine box.” He wound up taking a private jet to the Auburn job.
Still, the visual of Prime content on his bike, his kickstand down, surveying all the good things happening around him presently, and seemingly into the future, is pretty compelling.
Consider that on Thursday, during an appearance on the “Pat McAfee Show,” Rivals.com five-star quarterback Julian “Ju Ju” Lewis of Carrollton, Georgia, announced he was headed to Colorado. The former USC commit, who fielded a late Georgia recruiting push, seemed eager to take over for Sanders’ son, Shedeur, who will head to the NFL Draft.
“I don’t think there is a better person to learn how to read coverages from than Coach Prime,” Lewis said.
Welcome to Prime 2.0 — at least in terms of his Colorado era.
It started as a seemingly chaotic, and perhaps cutthroat, flip of the Buffaloes’ roster that turned a 1-11 team into a sensation last season that led to sold-out stadiums, massive television ratings and endless media coverage.
Could it work? Would it work? Should it work?
Now cruising along with on-field success, there is a proof of concept. Sanders is still going to go heavy on the transfer portal — but there is a Moneyball-esque strategy behind it. He is also going, it would seem, to be surgically striking the high school ranks.
Lewis is expected to be the start of a train of commits and flips over the next few weeks from highly touted prospects.
The next might be Carde Smith, a massive four-star offensive lineman from Alabama, who decommitted from USC earlier this week. Then all recruiting eyes are on the half-dozen prospects — including Ohio State and Alabama verbals — who visited Boulder last weekend from Florida’s IMG Academy.
The talent that Colorado can get is particularly notable in the context of the Big 12, which doesn’t have big, traditional recruiting brands … but does have an automatic bid to the playoff. It’s a pretty good situation.
There is no more charismatic coach in college football than Deion Sanders. Now that he can point to victories, fun and NFL development, this is no longer about taking a flier on him. That’s what Travis Hunter did when, as the No. 1 recruit in the Class of 2021, he signed with Coach Prime at Jackson State. Three years later — and having followed Deion to Colorado — he might win the Heisman and go top-five in the draft.
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Sanders has been patient with high school recruiting. He knew he wasn’t getting much right away at CU, so he barely bothered. Even now, he isn’t flying around to visit prospects — they need to come to him — and he isn’t offering scores of kids. He only wants players he believes can contribute as a freshman. Otherwise, Prime argues, why not get an older, more experienced player from the portal?
“Let’s just say we get 25 high school players,” he explained last week. “How many are going to play their freshman year? At the most, let’s say four or five.
“Now you’ve got 20 guys redshirting. So when you go through that spring with 20 guys redshirting, how many are you going to retain after that spring? How many are going to jump in the portal on you?”
Sanders said his research suggests half will leave.
“Well why don’t I just focus on 10 [high school recruits] then?” he said. “See, when we grab a freshman, we expect that guy to play. We’re not looking to just redshirt you and develop you. No, no, no. We’re looking for you to come in and play some football.
“So our approach is somewhat different and heavily scrutinized, heavily criticized, but we know what we’re doing.”
The Buffaloes are now winning on the field in ways few envisioned. They are acquiring talent the same way. There was no limit to the number of critics or skeptics who said this would bomb out, or if it somehow succeeded, Prime would bail as soon as Shedeur and Travis were done.
Anything can happen. This is college football. But Deion Sanders looks like he’s settling in, not shipping out.
Kickstand down, the plan is coming together.
