Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
In my head, I’ve watched the “Deion Sanders as a college football head coach” era of my life with amusement but a sort of detached interest. For one, he was the coach of Jackson State University, and I went to Morehouse College. While I was glad he was at a historically Black university, I did think the hype machine was doing too much, largely led by Deion himself, and he wasn’t my school’s head coach. Deion “Coach Prime” Sanders, of course, has been a one-man hype machine since he became part of the sports landscape as a superstar-level (even legendary) two-sport athlete, champion and hall of famer, fashion maven and even rapper/singer. So while a lot of his rhetoric and even the various controversies during his time in Jackson State could clearly be chalked up as the Black equivalent of “doing too much,” it all seemed par for the course for the Deion Sanders we all knew. Plus, it would be irresponsible to say that he didn’t do a lot of good while at JSU, for JSU and those players.
Be that as it may, I was one of the people who felt bamboozled, led astray and run amuck when Deion announced he was leaving Jackson State for Boulder, Colorado, to take the head coaching job at the University of Colorado. I assumed he was chasing more money and an opportunity to be where he really wanted to be all along — at a big white school with lots of resources. I felt like for all of his big talk about how much he was doing for JSU, he basically bailed when he got a “better” opportunity. I even dedicated an entire…
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