Tag: Deion

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Deion Sanders’ debut with Colorado will boost Pac-12, just not enough to help ongoing media rights talks

Deion Sanders’ debut with Colorado will boost Pac-12, just not enough to help ongoing media rights talks

Back in December during a conference in Las Vegas, Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff was asked if the spectacular aura of Deion Sanders at Colorado would add value to the league’s media deal. CU’s new coach had been hired days before.

“He absolutely adds value to the league,” Kliavkoff told reporters.

While there may be added value when it comes to the perception of the league and the Buffaloes themselves, there’s not any actual monetary value being brought by Coach Prime. That’s the conclusion of several media rights consultants with whom CBS Sports spoke ahead of Sanders’ debut at Colorado in Saturday’s spring game, which has thankfully (and temporarily) overshadowed the Pac-12’s continued media rights slog.

It’s to the point that any discussions related to the actual playing of football is a win for the conference at this point. To that end, Coach Prime has absolutely owned the spring — not just at Colorado but around the entire country.

You can talk about the quarterback battles at Texas and Florida all you want. Sanders is literally trying to reinvent a football program.

“This city is going to shine,” Sanders said recently. “I don’t understand why you’re shocked or puzzled. You didn’t know me five months ago. You know me now.”

Colorado’s spring game is sold out for the first time in program history. The expected crowd of 45,000 (paying $10 each) is bigger than the last nine CU spring games combined. (The Buffs drew slightly less than 1,800 last year.)

There is a genuine buzz surrounding the program. Sanders moves the ratings needle — Colorado’s spring game is one of only two such contests ESPN is televising, the other being back-to-back national champion Georgia — but he won’t move the bottom line.

“Great story that will drive ratings, but given rights fees are long-term contractual revenue sources, team performance in the short run is not a factor,” said media consultant Patrick Crakes. “What is a factor is brand and relevance on national or super regional level. That’s what matters to pay TV [cable] distributors. So, it’s a slight positive at the moment, but in the medium and long run when it comes to rights fees, probably no impact.”

The Pac-12 continues to be in a wait-and-see mode for a new TV deal.

Meanwhile, there’s a reason they refer to Sanders as “Prime Time.”

He won the press conference in December, naming his son Shedeur the quarterback starter right then and there. Deion went 27-6 in three seasons while reviving Jackson State before trying to resuscitate what may be the worst Power Five program.

Sanders followed through with his promise bringing in his “Louis.” There were 42 new faces as of this week.

“I’m coming, and when I get here, there’s going to be change,” Sanders promised in his first meeting with the team.

But even Coach Prime can’t lift an entire conference at a crucial crossroads. Too bad. The Pac-12 has a great story to tell this season amid the media rights hubbub.

USC’s Caleb Williams is the defending Heisman Trophy winner. Utah is an emerging national power. Washington and Oregon are each coming off 10+ win seasons. Huskies quarterback Michael Penix Jr. is a 2023 Heisman candidate himself. Arizona State’s Kenny Dillingham is the nation’s youngest FBS coach.

Colorado gave up a bit of its identity — some would say, academic soul — in hiring Sanders. It relaxed some of its transfer standards. That’s what happens when there have been two winning seasons since 2006.

“Kirby Smart and Nick Saban don’t have to sell the legitimacy of Alabama or Georgia football,” said Josh Pate, host of “The Late Kick with Josh Pate” streaming on 247Sports. “Deion Sanders has to package and sell Colorado. He’s got to get you to take Colorado seriously.”

Realignment roulette

The news this week that the Oakland Athletics are preparing to move to Las Vegas should be setting off alarm bells.

How does one ignore Vegas’ college football future now that the city has emerged as a sports capital? Two men’s professional teams (Raiders, Golden Knights) soon to be three (A’s). Five leagues holding their conference basketball tournaments there each year. Plus major neutral-site games already being scheduled; LSU and USC open the 2023 season Sept. 1 at Allegiant Stadium.

It’s already a Pac-12 hub with the conference’s basketball tournament located in Sin City. Kliavkoff joined the league from Vegas where he was previously an MGM Resorts executive.

The Final Four arrives for the first time in 2028 after the NCAA Tournament debuted in Vegas last month with the West Regional. Don’t forget the WNBA Aces, XFL Vipers and NBA G League Ignite.

While UNLV doesn’t carry the cachet of other realignment candidates, its profile has been elevated alongside the city’s overall sports profile.

“I think something is going to happen. I don’t know what it is. But I think something is happen and I think something is going to happen rather soon,” said Jim Livengood, who is basically the godfather of college sports in Las Vegas.

Livengood, a former UNLV athletic director who also held the role at Arizona, has been aggressively involved in bringing sports events to town.

“I think they’re sitting in a great spot,” Livengood said of the Rebels. “Not only is it an institution that has improved themselves academically … athletically, I don’t think there is any question the new football staff has a great chance to hit the ground running.”

One must assume the Pac-12 would be interested in making a play for UNLV as they are already considering expansion with the likes of San Diego State. The Big 12, which is also exploring its expansion options, has not indicated any official interest in the Rebels. When Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark recently said his conference was open for business, it’s wise to assume UNLV, among other similarly positioned schools, picked up the phone.

UNLV: Think of a buy low, sell high situation. While the school doesn’t bring pro rata (equal value) to the Pac-12 or Big 12, grabbing the Rebels may be investment in what Las Vegas is becoming — a sports mecca. It was thought at one time the Pac-12 would relocate to Las Vegas.

“If a Pac-12 kind of a thing were to happen, I can think of a lot of reason why it would be great for us,” said former UNLV quarterback Steve Stallworth, who has spent three decades in Las Vegas event management. Stallworth calls Las Vegas a “suburb of LA” — given the number of tourists from there — that would be a natural home for the Pac-12. 

“I don’t think it’s necessarily just a sports destination, it’s a sports capital based on everything that’s going on,” said Robby Findlay, an influential UNLV booster who is director of operations for the Findlay Auto Group.

All that makes the Barry Odom hire enormous. The former Missouri coach — most recently Arkansas defensive coordinator — has a lot of responsibility. Not only to turn around the program but possibly make it presentable for a new conference. The Rebels have posted one winning season since 2000. Since moving to Allegiant Stadium in 2020, UNLV is 7-23,

“We have all the pieces to the puzzle,” Stallworth said. “Now, have we made the right personnel decisions? It comes down to that. … You have to want to win from the top. I’m talking about from the governor to the regents to the [university] president. I think we’re closer in that regard. Are we there 100{515baef3fee8ea94d67a98a2b336e0215adf67d225b0e21a4f5c9b13e8fbd502}? I don’t know.”

Fresno State: Somehow, calls from the Fresno State administration to the Big 12 have been misconstrued as interest from the Big 12. At this point, there is no Big 12 interest in the Bulldogs, seemingly not even as a fallback option if other expansion falls through. Even with Yormark desiring a presence in the Pacific Time Zone, Fresno State doesn’t move the needle with San Diego State and Pac-12 schools possibly still in play. Complicating matters: Try to imagine Stanford in the same Pac-12 with Fresno State.

Boise State: Once the best of the best of the Group of Five, the Broncos have slid. Boise State is the No. 98 television market, somewhat isolated in Idaho and no longer the emerging power it was under Chris Petersen. The Big 12 already has BYU in the Mountain Time Zone. Like Fresno, Boise might qualify as Pac-12 backfill if the league loses teams.

Memphis: Through the years, the school’s boosters have never stopped trying to move up. Memphis’ name surfaced for the Big 12 in 2016 when the league was exploring expansion. Tigers booster and FedEx CEO Fred Smith even promised a lucrative sponsorship for his company for the Big 12 football and basketball championship games. Two years ago, the Big 12 spoke loudly when it expanded to Cincinnati and Houston from the American, not Memphis.

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Deion Sanders’ Rocky Mountain high is a low for Black colleges | College football

Deion Sanders’ Rocky Mountain high is a low for Black colleges | College football

Say this much for Deion Sanders: He didn’t slink away under cover of darkness, quiet quit on the season or reach for another dog-eared page from the opportunist’s playbook.

Instead, the 55-year-old coach gathered up his Jackson State Tigers players one last time over the weekend and told them that, indeed, the breaking news was true – that the University of Colorado had hired him away. “It’s not about a bag,” he told the somber room. “I’ve been making money a long time and ain’t nowhere near broke. It is about an opportunity.”

As good ol’ fashion Mississippi scandals go, only the case swirling around Brett Favre tops this. Coach Prime, as he redubbed himself, is a singular phenomenon in sports, the great athlete who is also a great coach. He talks a good game too – rhyming like a preacher, turning podiums into pulpits, framing his coaching odyssey as a divine calling. “Usually, a coach is elevated or terminated,” he said of his new position in Colorado. If he sounds like a cleric, that’s because it’s one of many positions Sanders has occupied in his dizzyingly peripatetic career.

When Sanders arrived at Jackson in the fall of 2020, he didn’t just vow to turn around a program that had been a loser for much of the past decade. He said he’d flip the field for historically black colleges and universities to make “HBCUs” like Jackson State as attractive as predominantly white institutions like Colorado. And he was promising the moon at a time when the social justice movement had turned HBCUs into a cause for reparations.

And once again Sanders walked the talk, losing just five games out of 32, setting scoring records and selling out stadiums all the while. He lured away top recruits (starting with his quarterback son, Shedeur), prompted fellow NFL alums Eddie George and Hue Jackson to join him in the HBCU coaching ranks. He had ESPN covering the Tigers with intensity that’s typically reserved for the Dallas Cowboys or the Alabama Crimson Tide.

Sanders was right about the spotlight’s knack for finding him. It didn’t matter if he was peddling insurance in TV adverts with Bama’s Nick Saban, or getting stiff-armed out of a post game shug; little of what Sanders did at Jackson State went unnoticed. That he was also so generous about sharing his attention with the young Black men and women at Jackson State only further set him apart in a profession known for harboring white men with big egos and retrograde social values (ahem).

With the Colorado hire, Sanders becomes the 12th Black coach in college football’s top tier – and at a time when stalwarts like Florida Atlantic’s Willie Taggart and Stanford’s David Shaw are cycling out of their roles. It would be a shining moment for equity and fairness if it weren’t also such a dark day for HBCU football. Even though he ended his Jackson State tenure on a high note, winning a second straight conference championship last Saturday, the prevailing mood was downcast. “I think many Jackson State fans were holding out hope that the news wasn’t true, or he wouldn’t go through with it,” Tiffany Greene, who called Saturday’s game for ESPN, told me.

Sanders’ impact went far beyond Jackson State in his three years there, after all. He boosted the local economy and awareness of Jackson’s colleges and high schools. He shone a light on Jackson’s water crisis, which forced a shutdown of schools, colleges and businesses. Earlier this fall Sanders’ team survived on bottled water donations and lived in a hotel because of the water crisis; the cost, $15,000 a night, isn’t money Jackson State keeps lying around. “How can we go out there, dominate like that, and take a child back to something that is shut down and you have no water?” he said after the Tigers season opener. “You can’t even flush the darn toilet. You have to think about that stuff.”

Not only did Sanders appear to be invested in reviving HBCUs’ reputation for grooming pro talent like Walter Payton (Jackson State), Jerry Rice (Mississippi Valley State) and Shannon Sharpe (Savannah State), Coach Prime was fully engaged in the bigger, much trickier job of creating self-sustaining Black communities. That he had come so far in such a short period only heightened expectations. That there was still so much work to do didn’t matter because Sanders, reputation aside, kept cracking on. It didn’t seem long before the day would come when he cut the ribbon at a new stadium and punctuate the moment with news of a blockbuster HBCU television rights pact, or a similar tide that lifts all ships.

By staying at Jackson State, Sanders could have become even bigger than he ever was as a two-sport, twin Super Bowl-winning, double football hall of famer. Given that, as he says, he’s not hurting for money, he didn’t have to operate like some coach who paid his dues sleeping at the office while barely making minimum wage. Sanders could have been Jackson State’s version of Eddie G Robinson, the trailblazer who launched tiny Grambling State into a pigskin power – a coaching immortal. But now that Coach Prime is gone, well, much of that hope is too.

Nothing against Colorado. It’s a mint of a program, the Power Five equivalent of a double-digit miles Lamborghini. Before a decade-long swoon the Buffaloes ranked among college football’s elite, laying claim to the 1990 national championship and the 1994 Heisman trophy winner before an odious culture of alcohol and sex abuse toppled them. With Shedeur Sanders leading the parade of transfer students Coach Prime brings with him, there’s little reason to believe that the Buffaloes couldn’t dominate a listless Pac 12 conference and emerge as national title contenders soon.

The chance to compete at college football’s highest level wasn’t all that attracted Sanders. There was also the pay bump (to a reported $4.5m from $300,000, not that he needs the money – assuming Colorado can actually pay him) and the Buffaloes’ first-rate facilities. In his introductory news conference, Sanders praised Boulder as a “crime-free city.” For a Jackson State community currently grappling with a recent campus homicide case, the throwaway line must have stung.

Deion Sanders uses his mobile phone to illustrate how Rick George, right, Colorado athletic director, kept in touch while courting Sanders.
Deion Sanders uses his mobile phone to illustrate how Rick George, right, Colorado athletic director, kept in touch while courting Sanders. Photograph: David Zalubowski/AP

Jackson State, though a notch below Colorado in the NCAA’s Football Championship Subdivision, was hardly a cakewalk for Coach Prime. He took the reins during Covid, has only recently recovered from having two toes amputated, and spent a chunk of this year working out of a hotel during the Jackson water crisis. His tenure kicked off with burglars ransacking his office. If those aren’t justifiable reasons to move on, consider the massive stage he just secured for his son – who is rounding into a top NFL draft prospect.

Sanders is clearly hurt by perceptions that he sold out his people by not just going west, but to city that’s 0.9{515baef3fee8ea94d67a98a2b336e0215adf67d225b0e21a4f5c9b13e8fbd502} Black. “The thing that alarms me the most is just because I’m leaving Jackson, they think that I’m leaving African Americans,” Sanders thundered. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but I’m Black. I can never leave who I am, what I am, how I am or how I go about being that.”

Still: Without Jackson State taking him in and washing the stains of his checkered high school coaching career (once a resume sticking point), Sanders never reaches this Rocky Mountain high. But worse than seeing him take his man of the cleats act to another campus – but not before returning to lead Jackson State in the Celebration Bowl – is the realization that he is who he’s always been: a hired gun. He might not borrow from the opportunist’s playbook, but the game he’s playing at is no different.