For the bulk of his professional career, Deion Sanders was known as “Prime Time.”
You can almost still hear legendary announcer Chris Berman in the near-whisper, as Sanders crossed the goal line returning an interception for a touchdown in one of those San Francisco 49ers throwback uni’s from the 1994 season. “prime time… prime time…prime time…”
And now Deion IS prime time. And he’s taken Colorado football prime time.
Martin Rogers of FoxSports.com examines the effect Sanders has had on college football in his short time in coaching, in this column (How Deion Sanders has transformed Colorado football into must-see entertainment | FOX Sports).
It’s difficult to deny now. I’ll be honest: when I’m not at Tuscaloosa, or College Station, or Fort Worth, Austin, or Starkville covering a game, I’m at my home office. And Saturday night, after the conclusion of Alabama-South Florida, the house was command central, getting scores and flipping back and forth from game-to-game like a madman, with thefootballbeat assistant editor Clayton Fletcher on the remote and me – well, beholding what was going on, and getting reports from different games (and grilling steaks).
I would be flat-out lying if I didn’t say that BY FAR the most entertaining game of the day was the Colorado-Colorado State game.
Sure, CSU coach Jay Norvell set himself up to be a bit of a villain, so to speak, with his hat-and-sunglasses quote from earlier in the week, and that continued with the pro wrestling-like behavior of the CSU players throughout the game, exhorting the Buffaloes fans on by waving their hands with every play a Rams’ player made.
Some of that is just good football. The entire thing made for quite a spectacle.
And spectacle – that’s a good word. That’s exactly what this whole Sanders thing was – BEFORE Deion turned it into a coaching career.
The man has a career. He has a future. It’s hard to deny now.
So the next time you find yourself in one of those memory-moments, wanting to say “Too legit… too legit to quit,” and trying to do that hand sign to go along with Sanders from the ’91 MC Hammer song, don’t think about Sanders in Niners, or Falcons, or Cowboys gear. Think about him in his new coaching mode.
Because quitting is something that Sanders doesn’t do. And his coaching career is just getting started.
This is gonna be fun.
