Warren Sapp finding fulfillment in coaching CU Buffs

BOULDER,CO: April 18:Warren Sapp during CU football Spring practice on April 16, 2024. (Cliff Grassmick/Staff Photographer)

As Warren Sapp sat on his couch watching TV last year, coaching wasn’t in his plans.

Once he got a taste of it, though, he became hungry for more, and he is soaking up the opportunity to work as a graduate assistant with the Colorado Buffaloes and to work for his good friend, Buffaloes’ head coach Deion Sanders.

“For someone that never wanted to do this, I am really addicted to it right now,” the Pro Football Hall of Famer said Tuesday after the Buffs’ practice. “The babies are really giving me a purpose in life, and I’m enjoying it.”

A dominant defensive lineman during his playing career, Sapp, 51, was an All-American at Miami in the early 1990s. During a 13-year NFL career, he won a Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, was NFL defensive player of the year in 1999 and was a seven-time Pro Bowler before going into the Hall of Fame in 2013.

Sanders, a fellow Hall of Famer, invited Sapp to visit the Buffs last year and something clicked. Sapp sat in the hot tub at CU’s Champions Center to help his ailing hip one day and quickly had Buffs defensive linemen coming over to talk to him.

“They were reaching and grabbing and asking questions,” Sapp said.

That provided the spark to coach and teach that Sapp had never really felt before.

“I’ve worked with pros that are getting my phone number and tell me they coming to Miami, and my house is a mile and a half from where they work out and they’ll never call,” he said.

“These kids call me at 5:30 in the morning, ‘Coach, you wanna come watch tape with me?’ It’s crazy. I’m like, ‘Yeah, give me a purpose to get off the couch!’ So trust me, I was on my couch watching MSNBC, so I’m loving this. I am loving this.”

Players are loving it, too, as they feel blessed to work with one of the best defensive linemen in history.

“It’s just so great to soak up the wisdom from him, to go up and watch tape with him, have him correct you on the field, off the field,” senior Shane Cokes said.

Transfers BJ Green and Chidozie Nwankwo both expressed their excitement about learning from Sapp, as well.

Sapp did admit there’s been a bit of an adjustment to coaching, however. He was a dominant player, but said, “Coaching is a whole different thing.”

As a coach, he said, he has to “let somebody else drive,” because he’s not on the field and in control. But with that comes some satisfaction in watching his players learn.

“It’s a beautiful thing to watch my kids day in and day out get a little better,” he said. “I’m watching Shane come alive, because now he’s trusting the process. … I’ve been here 90 days; I’m thinking (by) 120 we’ll get it right. We’re just going at it each and every day and the best part about it is I’m learning every day.

“They’re teaching me too, because the game ain’t the same. It’s a different game. The way I played it, you can’t play it like that anymore. … So I’m learning, they’re learning, and we’re gonna learn together.”

A bonus for Sapp is that he gets to work with first-year CU defensive line coach Damione Lewis, who is five years younger but also a former dominant lineman from Miami who spent 10 years in the NFL.

“He came behind me at Miami, so he’s one of those guys that was the next baby Sapp,” he said. “So, he’s been trying to be me his whole life, so now we putting it together and see if we can turn them into something that’s better than both of us. We have a great push-pull relationship. We see the game the same way, and just love it.”

For Sapp, though, the main attraction to Boulder has always been the players and he’s eager to help them succeed.

“(Coaching success is) the seeds that I put into them blossom into those beautiful mountains that come out in the Colorado summer,” he said. “You know how those purples and yellows and everything come out? That’s what I want after this year. The seeds that me and D-Lew and (coach Vincent Dancy) put into them, I want to see them blossom into flowers, because it’s a beautiful thing when you see your kids doing what they’re doing.”