BOULDER — A 4-8 coach gave a 3-9 news conference. This was Deposition Deion, a cornered and condescending man, the perennial victim who ain’t got time for mere mortals.
This was the Deion Sanders we’d read about for years, disdain boiling like broth behind shades too cool for the room. Coach Prime sat down Friday, made a joke about the Honey Buns sitting on the table in front of him — “trying to get my 6-pack” — and then disappeared.
Reporters at CU fall sports media day instead got a glimpse of Deion from behind the curtain. A man uncensored and unvarnished, away from the videos and the artifice, the control and the spin.
Prime at the table became Deion on the witness stand, the one from the tell-all books and magazine stories, usually out of Texas, where bridges had been burned. Yelling at everyone. Yelling at no one.
“I’m not doing anything with CBS. Next question,” Sanders said after KCNC reporter Eric Christensen introduced himself.
“It ain’t got nothing to do with you. It’s above that. It ain’t got nothing to do with you. I’ve got love for you; I appreciate and respect you. It ain’t got nothing to do with you. They know what they did.”
Christensen, like the rest of us, was flabbergasted. Largely because he hadn’t done a blasted thing.
“You are who you are. CBS is CBS, all right?”
It’s not. He’s not.
“I’m looking you in the eye as a man. I respect you,” Sanders continued. “I’ve got love for you. But what they did was foul.”
Who were “they?” A CBS Sports.com story that ranked Deion as the 15th-best coach in the 16-team Big 12? A CBS Sports.com column published last month that said the Buffs had an “uphill climb for bowl eligibility?” Or the reporting on son Shilo Sanders’ bankruptcy filing?
Christensen had nothing to do with any of it, guilty only of brand association. And a bonkers association at that.
Prime even got chippy about semantics. “Bolstered” versus “improved.” “Chemistry.” A few minutes later, the microphone went to me, and Deposition Deion pounced again. I’ve taken my swings at the pinata. Friday was Prime’s turn, and he didn’t miss. I had it coming, as the old song from “Chicago” goes. That’s fine.
But Christensen? Channel 4? A media partner? The station that outbid its peers to host Prime’s local coach’s show?
This was another side of Deion we’d heard about but hadn’t really seen yet: Biting one of the hands that actually pays him.
This was Desperate Deion, a man who stared into the future and saw 5-7 staring back.
This was Nebraska Deion. As in, Deion from the Nebraska postgame news conference in Lincoln. After the Buffs drop another heartbreaker.
This was a side of Sanders the Front Range hadn’t seen before. A confident man who suddenly looked and acted and sounded … afraid.
Afraid of critics. Afraid of the truth. Afraid of bad news looming like a tsunami at its crest.
It was as if Deion had been visited by the Ghost of Christmas Future. As if November Deion had stepped out of a time machine in the hallway and grabbed August Deion just before he walked into the Touchdown Club, handing the latter a game book from Oklahoma State.
Folks who’ve dealt with the Sanders team in the past have pointed out that Coach Prime, like all powerful men, pays people to make inconvenient things go away. Well, he can’t make a forgiving, occasionally fawning and comparatively docile press corps go away. He can’t make on-record and anonymous comments by former players and former staffers, real or imagined, go away. He can’t make the paper trail from his or his family’s past legal scraps, including allegations against Shilo, go away.
So he snaps.
He can’t hide the fact that CU, which hired him with the sheer and utter desperation of a lonely nerd on prom night, conducted a lousy vetting process, hoping that a lifetime celebrity wouldn’t come with a lifetime of skeletons in his closet, too.
Half the Power 5 schools and most of the NFL wouldn’t put up with The Prime Circus. The cameras. The contracts. The rules. The Buffs? They had no choice. Deion is the king of CU, El Caudillo del BoCo, the Emperor of Engineering Drive. Are you with me or against me?
Only once the train leaves the station, it doesn’t come with brakes. You ride that puppy out, full-speed. Until things go off the rails.
As Deposition Deion fired away Friday, sanity wobbled about the canvas and almost took a knee. It was easily the most bonkers news conference from a CU football coach since Nov. 13, 2018. Remember? Buffs boss Mike MacIntyre brought props to the Champions Center, whipping out a giant picture of a snow-drenched buffalo as the scribes’ collective jaws dropped.
“The buffalo is the only animal that walks into the storm. All the rest of them run,” said MacIntyre, who was skating on thin ice at the time. “If you walk into the storm, you get through it faster.”
Spoiler alert: The storm won. By a lot.
Four days later, Mac fell at home to Utah, 30-7. The morning after that, he was gone.
CU shouldn’t lose to scrappy North Dakota State on Aug. 29. I’ll say this, though: After Friday, Coach Prime sure as heck better not lose by 23. The storm’s an awfully cold, awfully lonely place if you’re 1-2. Media partners keep receipts, too.
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