It looks like Coach Prime is coming to the Power Five.
ESPN is reporting that two-time Super Bowl champion and Hall of Famer Deion Sanders is leaving Jackson State to become the next head football coach at the University of Colorado. The network’s Pete Thamel broke the story Saturday, just hours before undefeated Jackson State was set to take on Southern for the 2022 SWAC title.
According to The Worldwide Leader, sources said the 55-year-old Sanders “and his associates have spent the week making inquiries to both potential members of his on-field staff and support staff at Colorado, pitching them to join him in Boulder.”
One prominent player in the NCAA’s transfer portal was reportedly encouraged not to make a decision on his next school because Sanders had an interest in recruiting him to the Buffaloes. Another player currently committed to Colorado also received a call from a Jackson State staffer asking about his commitment.
And Shedeur Sanders, the coach’s son who is also his sophomore quarterback at Jackson State, was expected by many to follow his father if he were to leave the small Mississippi HBCU school. Deion himself implied as much in an interview earlier in the week.
More players are sure to follow, perhaps even including Travis Hunter, the five-star recruit who Sanders lured away from Florida State (his own alma mater) to come to Jackson State.
Sanders was expected to depart Jackson State after the school won the SWAC Championship, 43-24, Saturday evening. An official announcement in Boulder was expected late Saturday or early Sunday.
Coincidentally or not, Colorado’s board of regents has called a special meeting for Sunday.
Sanders has gone 26-5 since assuming control of the Tigers in 2020. The Buffaloes, on the other hand, finished the season 1-10 under interim coach Mike Sanford after Karl Dorrell was fired in October.
The former Cowboys cornerback had been connected to head coaching vacancies at Cincinnati and South Florida in addition to the Buffaloes’ job. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said just this past week that he believes Sanders “is very capable of being a head coach in the National Football League” one day.
“Deion has such a positive enthusiasm about him,” Jones said. “It’s a positiveness about him. He has a real understanding of what a player’s mentality can and should be. Of course, he’s actually been around and gotten the benefit of some of the greatest people in sport, and look what he brings to the table. Deion Sanders has a little bit going for him when it comes to being able to be a coach… I’m just going to say he’s a great communicator and he’s a real leader of men.”
He’s already put tiny Jackson State on the mainstream college football map in a short time. If he can replicate that kind of success at Colorado, a program that’s had one full-length winning season since joining the Pac-12 in 2011, he may be a candidate for a Sunday gig very soon.
[vertical-gallery id=706426]
[listicle id=706404]
[listicle id=706267]
[lawrence-newsletter]
