Sanders at the University of Colorado’s spring football game in April.
Photographer: Michael Ciaglo/The Washington Post/Getty ImagesDeion Sanders Is Writing College Football’s New Playbook
In his first season at the University of Colorado, “Coach Prime” has harnessed the power of social media, the NCAA transfer portal and his own celebrity to transform a perennial loser into must-see TV.
On the second Saturday of September, when Deion Sanders entered the press room beneath the stands at Folsom Field at the University of Colorado at Boulder, he halted for a split second to feign surprise at the number of reporters in the room. “Oh my God!” said Sanders, who took over as head football coach last December. “We must be winning. Shoot!” The Buffaloes had just defeated the University of Nebraska, 36-14, in their first home game of the season before a crowd of 53,241, their largest in 15 years. The week before, they had upset Texas Christian University. The room was packed to bursting with reporters from across the country.
Sanders—or Coach Prime, as the 56-year-old styles himself now—shuffled across the room (his stride is reduced to a limp after multiple surgeries to deal with the effects of turf toe suffered during his playing days) and took his seat behind the microphone. Sunglasses on, with a white hoodie under a dark suit coat and the customary gold cross on a chain around his neck, he was less combative than he’d been after the TCU game but still his full braggadocious and beguiling self. “It was tremendous,” he said of playing in front of the home crowd, “not just the number, but the energy and the love and the expectation.”