Deion Sanders: “What I just said in the locker room to the team is they have to make up in their mind: are they IN LOVE with this game or are they IN LIKE with it? Because when you love something, you give to it unconditionally. You give everything you’ve got to it, but when you ‘like it’ that’s just a button you push. That’s what they do on social media. It’s hard for me because I LOVE this. I am truly 100% in love with this thing and I just want people to match ME. Match my passion, match my heart, match my love, match my consistency, match my mannerisms, just match every darn thing I give to this game."
Jason Whitlock: “That was bad. Inappropriate for a head coach, wrong message. Deion does not know what he’s doing. That is a fact. He does not know what he’s doing from a leadership perspective as a head coach. He’s never studied leadership. Deion has admitted that when he was a player, he was not leader, particularly not a vocal leader. His leadership came from ‘I go out here and perform on the field.’ That’s as far as he went as far as his understanding of what a leader is. When you’re as talented as Deion, that works. When you’re an on-field player, that works. But when you take on leadership responsibility for 100 or so guys in a locker room, it’s not just ‘I JUST SHOW UP AND DO ME! I CALL GREAT PLAYS! I DEVISE GREAT STRATEGY!’ Head coach, it’s a different standard. It’s a different discipline than just doing your individual job at a high level. You have to present and sell a message that brings out the best in your players on a consistent day-to-day ability. A football coach’s message is basically ‘we all need to be in this together, we all need to be focused and giving our best effort at all times.’ He comes up with a new way to say that over and over again that connects and resonates with his team. Deion has set himself off as the ‘standard’ for Colorado. You don’t lose a game after being up 29-0 and go into your locker room as the head coach and say ‘YOU GUYS NEED TO MATCH WHAT I’M DOING.’ Leadership is a coach going in there and saying ‘here’s what we did wrong, we ALL need to be held accountable, and we all need to go home, look in the mirror, and ask ourselves what can WE do to make this team better?’ Deion’s message is ‘I did nothing, and if you guys would just match what I’M doing this wouldn’t have happened. Deion’s message is clear: ‘I AM HIM. I AM YOUR SAVIOR. I AM THE PERFECT PERSON. I AM THE GOLD STANDARD THAT YOU SHOULD BE TRYING TO MIRROR.’ That’s a really, really, really irresponsible and stupid message for someone who claims Jesus Christ as his personal savior, presents himself as a ‘BELIEVER’, and litters part of his message with this Christian religious covering. The fraudulence of what Deion is doing is so crystal clear for anybody to see. If you take your racial idolatry glasses off and just evaluate the man’s actions, what he’s doing isn’t built to lead to a consistent, high-level performance. It’s not sustainable. You can say ‘WELL, HE DID IT AT JACKSON STATE!’... He had far more talent than everybody else so he could get away with bad habits. What Deion got away with at Jackson State, Brittney Renner, the gold chains, and all the other garbage, and the ‘ME, ME, ME’ talk... It’s not going to work at the Power 5 level. I know many of you are sitting there going ‘THEY’RE 4-3, THEY ONLY WON ONE GAME LAST YEAR! WHAT DO YOU MEAN? YOU’RE BEING TOO HARD!’ He’s not coaching the same Colorado team. He ran that team off and brought in an entirely new team. I don’t want to compare Deion to last year’s team because he’s not coaching those guys. He brought in a new group of players. When Deion walked into that Colorado building and basically told those players ‘TRANSFER, HIT THE PORTAL!’... That was the absolute wrong message. If you can’t see that was the wrong message, I feel sorry for you. Your racial idolatry is so out of control that you are blind to obvious facts. // Could you imagine a White coach going to Jackson State and his opening message is: ‘hey, I’m coming in here with better players, hit the transfer portal and get out of here, I’m bringing Louis Vuitton!’ How would that land? What names would we call that coach? Deion cost them that game padding the stats of his son, Shedeur. They’re up 29-0 at halftime, come out of the third quarter, and I believe on 4th and 3 or 4th and 4 at nearly the 50-yard line on their first possession of the second half they go for it and get stopped. Then Stanford walks in from half the field and gives them a ray of hope. Dude came back in the 4th quarter trying to pad his son’s stats and went for it again on 4th and 4. They didn’t get it, cut the field in half, and walked Stanford in for another touchdown. This is coaching, this is arrogance, this is someone with no humility, this is someone who thinks they’re coaching a Madden video game, this is someone who isn’t standing on firm ground. He thinks he is ‘IT’. He’s pointing to himself ‘GUYS, BE LIKE ME!’ There’s no leader that does that. Even if Deion was setting the standard, you don’t get in front of a group of people and say ‘EVERYBODY NEEDS TO BE LIKE ME!’ Deion’s level of self-idolatry is out of control, and those of you not willing to call him out, and calling people ‘racist’ or a ‘sell-out’, you’re contributing to the failure of Deion... No wonder he thinks HE is HIM, that’s what we’re telling him. Nobody is giving him the feedback he needs. ‘Hey man, what you’re doing won’t work over the long haul.’ Deion is creating a culture of no discipline and no real accountability. If you don’t hold yourself accountable, don’t be surprised when the people beneath you don’t hold themselves accountable. Colorado lost that game because they had 17 penalties that were accepted. You know who the most penalized team is in college football? There’s 133 schools playing Division-1 football, Deion Sanders’ Colorado Buffaloes are number 133. They’re averaging I think 10.7 penalties game. They averaged 5.3 penalties per game last year, half of what Deion’s team is averaging. That’s coaching, that’s environment, that’s culture. Deion needs to be sitting in front of a mirror seven games into the season asking himself ‘what did I do to create the most undisciplined culture in all of college football?’ Has all the talk of money, marketing, rappers, Hollywood celebrities, Hall of Fame football players visiting... Has all of that created a level of chaos and confusion, and taken attention away from the main thing—getting better everyday? Have I distracted from that with all the circus that I bring? Are the players feeding off of my energy that it ain’t really about the game, it’s about the sunglasses, it’s about the merchandise? Shedeur’s Twitter page was pushing merchandise at halftime of the game. Maybe one of his handlers sent it out, but that’s what the focus is at Colorado. Its not football. And you wonder why your team is the most penalized team in all of college football. That’s coaching.” (Full Segment Above)
Watch Jason Whitlock of Fearless discuss Deion Sanders and Colorado football’s rapid freefall from grace the past month, as Jason chronicles how Colorado went from media darlings to Pac-12 bottom feeders.
Check out the segment above as Whitlock explains why Colorado’s catastrophic 29-point choke to Stanford symbolized Deion’s profound lack of leadership and self-awareness.
Colin Cowherd Compares 5-1 Dolphins to Bitcoin: 'It's Not Sustainable'
Colin Cowherd Says Josh Allen Could Quickly Deteriorate Like Cam Newton
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce Spotted on Date For Second Night in a Row
Former NFL Star Antonio Brown Was Arrested
2023-24 AP Top 25 College Basketball Preseason Poll is Released
Details on Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's Night Together at SNL Afterparty
Jason Whitlock: Deion Sanders is Turning Son, Shedeur into Johnny Manziel
Jason Whitlock: Deion Cares More About Shedeur's Draft Stock Than Winning
Colin Cowherd: Brock Purdy is Better Than These NFL Quarterbacks
Colin Cowherd: It's Time For Patriots to Fire Bill Belichick