There’s no denying that Deion Sanders and his son, Shedeur Sanders, are keeping college football on its toes. But are the antics of Coach Prime getting in the way of the actual game? The massive number of Colorado Buffaloes players who’ve entered the transfer portal since Deion has taken over as head coach has the sports world asking questions about how he leads the young people on his team.
Coach Prime’s most recent controversy kicked off Monday with a story from The Athletic featuring former Colorado safety Xavier Smith saying that Deion “never even tried to get to know me,” and adding that he “was destroying guys’ confidence and belief in themselves.”
This led Shedeur to respond on social media, writing on X, “Ion even remember him tbh. Bro had to be very mid at best.”
When Colorado wide receiver Kaleb Mathis responded to the chaos with footage of himself beating out Smith at a spring practice, Jaheim Ward, a teammate of Smith’s at Austin Peay, replied to Mathis with “Bruh you had 38 yards last year stop trying to down play somebody.”
The back and forth drew in a podcast host, who shared Ward’s somewhat unimpressive stats, which led Deion to quote tweet the numbers, “Lawd Jesus.”
Players fighting about stats is not new, it just happens in front of the world on social media now and not just in the locker room. What’s getting lost in all this beef about numbers is that a former player of Deion’s openly told a major sports media outlet that as a coach he “was destroying guys’ confidence and belief in themselves.”
Instead of addressing that part of the conversation, he jumped in the middle of a fight between a bunch of twentysomethings.
Deion Sanders is a grown ass man, NFL Hall of Famer and multi-millionaire. Whatever direction his coaching style goes in, belittling kids barely out of high school on social media is beneath him. Why is he punching down to embarrass these young people? How does that help them, his son or his football program?
Football parents usually know that winning is the most important thing to college football coaches, but when Deion is recruiting their children, he’s also promising to take care of them and protect them while they’re in his charge.
After seeing how he treats players he doesn’t deem worthy of his time and watching him use his platform to embarrass a mostly anonymous college kid, what parent will feel comfortable entrusting their child to Coach Prime?
No matter what polite, respectable show he puts on in their living room, they know it’s not the real Coach Prime. The guy who wants the spotlight for himself and his sons — and who seems more than willing to humiliate other players to get it — is the Coach Prime they’ll be working for every day. Is that someone you want influencing your kids’ self-belief and confidence when they’re still figuring out who they are as a person?
And if Shedeur really wants to be a top five pick in the 2025 NFL Draft, maybe he should calm down on insulting his teammates on social media. That doesn’t seem like the kind of leadership most pro teams want from their quarterback.