Deion Sanders' football purge at Colorado could use a touch of humanity
Did you hear about Deion Sanders calling a team meeting last week at Colorado? It was held in his courtesy car.
I’m kidding, though you’d be forgiven for thinking the entire roster could now fit inside a Mitsubishi. Coach Prime, as he likes to be known, is conducting the biggest purge in college football history.
He’s run off more than 80% of his players since being hired in December. Though Sanders made it clear from the start they weren’t “his” players.
They were the flotsam from an 1-11 season. Unwanted baggage left from a program he was hired to resurrect.
If you don’t like how he’s doing it – and you shouldn’t - too bad. As Sanders told players before last Saturday’s spring game, “If I’m honest and it hurts your feelings, that’s on you, that’s not on me. I have to be honest. That’s my deal with God.”
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Deion’s always had a bit of a Messiah Complex. In this case, he is doing a little bit of God’s work by making people face up to the disenchanting new reality that is college football.
The sport has always had its meat market aspects. But between NIL, the portal and loosey-goosey transfer rules, it has become NFL Lite. Colorado is practicing free agency on an industrial scale.
Twenty-three players entered the portal after the spring game, pushing the total to more than 50 since Coach Prime blew onto campus. No other school has had more than 30 players voluntarily or involuntarily move out.
By the time Sanders is done, at least 70 of Colorado’s 85 scholarship players will be newcomers. If he’s lucky, Ralphie the Buffalo will still have a job this fall.
We can’t blame this new reality on Sanders. He didn’t create this cutthroat world. But it is fair to question how he’s wielding the knife.
Deion has become Grim Reaper as he pares Colorado roster
Most coaches show a little tact and sensitivity when they send kids out the revolving door. Sanders relishes his role as Grim Reaper.
It comes off as a marketing plan. And if there’s one thing Sanders knows, it’s marketing.
Longtime Deionologists recall how he showed up at FSU as an unassuming freshman out of Fort Myers. He saw how Oklahoma linebacker Brian Bosworth was getting famous with his “Boz” act. So Sanders created his “Prime Time” persona.
At some point, it stopped being an act and became him. Sanders Prime-Timed his way through college, MLB, NFL, TV gigs and now his coaching career.
The Deion buzz was guaranteed to make the woebegone Buffaloes a major attraction. Last week’s game drew 551,000 viewers on ESPN, the largest TV audience for a spring game since 2016.
Sanders flaunts his celebrity. His assistants wear black hoodies with a gold “PRIME” emblazoned on the chest. It’s hard to imagine Georgia staffers sporting “KIRBY” duds, but it’s also hard to imagine Kirby Smart treating holdover players like spoiled milk he found in the staff refrigerator.
Cut players don't appreciate Coach Prime
“I’m not sure he knew the names of half the kids he got rid of,” offensive tackle Travis Gray told The Athletic. “He was worried about who he brought in. If you were on the 1-11 team, it seemed he didn’t really care about us at all.”
Another player who didn’t want to be identified said, “Wherever the camera’s at, that’s where Deion is.”
Sanders’ defense is that he told players from Day One that he was going to clean house. And that all will be justified when his upgraded roster starts winning games.
“It’s no way I can put new furniture in this beautiful home if we don’t clean out the old furniture,” Sanders said on the Pat McAfee Show.
How’d you like to be compared to grandma’s plastic-covered velour couch?
To Sanders, players aren’t 19-or 20-year-old student-athletes. They are commodities, assets to be used or discarded in pursuit of rebuilding a football program on the fly.
Harsh as that job can be, that’s what coaches are hired to do nowadays. It would just be nice if Coach Prime wasn't such a jerk about it.
David Whitley is The Gainesville Sun's sports columnist. Contact him at dwhitley@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @DavidEWhitley
This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Deion Sanders guilty of unnecessary roughness with Colorado housecleaning
