The hottest show in all of football is currently playing in Colorado. And it has nothing to do with the NFL team that has won three Super Bowls.
The Colorado Buffaloes have taken the sports world by storm, led by first-year head coach Deion Sanders. He’s generating ratings, attracting attention, and justifying a fresh 60 Minutes profile, even though 60 Minutes has already done a profile on him within the past year, when he was thriving at Jackson State.
He loves Colorado. He also loved Jackson State. He justified leaving Jackson State for Colorado by declaring his mission to be accomplished, and by citing the better opportunities created for so many people around him. There’s no reason to think he won’t do the same thing once, as he inevitably will explain it, God relocates him.
So where will God relocate him next? If an NFL owner is smart, a large check will be written to God & Son, Inc. to bring a moving van full of Deion’s stuff to that team’s town. Yes, Deion says he won’t jump to the NFL. If offered enough money (remember, there’s no salary cap for coaches), he might change his mind.
He has said he doesn’t think he can motivate guys who are making $20 million, $30 million, or $40 million per year. If Sanders is making that much or more, maybe he’ll change his mind. And maybe he threw out those numbers as a message regarding what it would take to get him to coach in the NFL.
Even at $50 million, Deion would pay for himself, quickly. He makes the irrelevant relevant. The boring exciting. The humdrum a humdinger.
If no NFL owner makes Deion an offer he can’t refuse, another college eventually will. Why wouldn’t it? College football is premised on recruiting the best players. Deion has the ability to get any player he wants, wherever he might be. The ability to amass a locker room full of superior talent — and EVERY highly-skilled high-school player and college transfer-portaler will want to play for him.
Deion clearly believes in his ability to go toe-to-toe with the best of the best. Asked by John Wertheim of 60 Minutes to identify the best coach in college football, Deion said, “Let me see a mirror, so I can look at it. You think I’m gonna sit up here and tell you somebody else? You think that’s the way I operate? That somebody got that on me?”
That personality, confidence, and charisma will allow him to thrive at any school. Eventually, the best school with the biggest budget and the most money will come calling. Eventually might arrive as soon as January.
In the end, Deion will be inclined to stay at the college level because he can use his recruiting skills to stockpile the equivalent of a dozen first-round picks each year. That’s why Nick Saban remains the Alabama coach, nearly 17 years after notoriously declaring while coaching the Dolphins, “I’m not going to be the Alabama coach.”
Speaking of Saban, Deion had high praise for him. “I love and I adore and I respect and every time I do a commercial with Coach Saban,” Sanders told Werthheim. “it’s a gift. Just sitting in his presence and hearing him and throwing something else out there so I can hear his viewpoint on it. Because he’s forgotten more things than I may ever accomplish. So I’m a student looking up to this wonderful teacher saying, ‘Just throw me a crumb of what you know.’”
It almost sounds as if Deion would be willing to succeed Saban at Alabama, whenever Saban is ready to call it quits. Or maybe Saban, now 71, could graduate to an emeritus role, with Deion taking over and not trying to close the door on the former coach but it keeping it wide open so that Deion can continue to learn and grow and develop with the benefit of Saban’s wisdom.
Again, all it takes is one owner with the willingness to obliterate the curve and bring Deion back to the NFL. It feels as if that won’t happen, and that Deion’s destiny consists of God relocating him to Alabama or to Florida State or to Ohio State or to Michigan or to some other top-tier college football powerhouse.