The University of Colorado is offering a new major this year. All you have to do is follow its gutless lead, and you can earn a B.S. in Cowardice.
The school has banned Denver Post columnist Sean Keeler from asking questions of football coach Deion Sanders and his players because it doesn’t like what it perceives as a negative slant to his coverage of the team. It doesn’t take much imagination to believe that Coach Prime, as he likes to be called, is behind the ban.
During a news conference this month, Sanders accused Keeler of ‘‘always being on the attack,’’ adding, ‘‘You don’t like us, man.’’
What is Sanders afraid of? That people a
re going to figure out he talks big and delivers little? That fans are going to realize he’s running a below-average program built not on a solid foundation but on the cult of a flashy coach lacking substance? That he’s going to have to answer questions about why his team doesn’t win often enough?
Here’s Colorado’s statement about the ban:
‘‘After a series of sustained, personal attacks on the football program and specifically Coach Prime, the CU Athletic Department in conjunction with the football program have decided not to take questions from Denver Post columnist Sean Keeler at football-related events.’’
Asked by the Post for examples of Keeler’s personal attacks on Sanders in columns, a sports-information staff member listed ‘‘false prophet,’’ ‘‘Deposition Deion,’’ ‘‘Planet Prime,’’ ‘‘Bruce Lee of B.S.,’’ ‘‘the Deion Kool-Aid’’ and ‘‘circus.’’
That sounds like every column I’ve written about the Bears in the last 25 years. As much as the McCaskeys might have wanted to ban me from Halas Hall for calling out their inadequacies, they knew better. It’s called being professional.
In Sanders’ world, going 4-8 last season apparently doesn’t merit criticism or probing questions.
That’s one piece of the cowardice on display in Boulder. Another is the absence of anyone in the university administration willing to tell Sanders to knock it off. This kind of thing happens when a school sells its soul to a coach who doesn’t care about education. And I’m not talking about education in the sense of books and lectures. I’m talking about the education you get being on a college campus, seeing how adults handle difficult situations and learning lessons that might help later in life. That’s why the lack of response from Colorado’s president is so shameful. How do you deal with a problem, kids? You run away from it like a frightened deer.
Someone in the school’s sports-information department should have stood up and said that Keeler’s ban was unacceptable. Perhaps someone did. But the fact that no one from the SID’s office has resigned tells me they’re willing to let Sanders and the athletic department make a mockery of the ideal of a university as a place of honest, sometimes-uncomfortable debate. A good public-relations operation understands its reputation is partly based on helping media members do their job. It would be naive to think that sports-information staffers aren’t there to protect coaches and players. But nothing about Sanders indicates he needs protecting.
Colorado loves what it’s gotten out of the NFL Hall of Famer since hiring him in late 2022. He has brought national attention and money to the school. Maybe administrators have convinced themselves that banning a columnist is just Deion being Deion and that there’s no such thing as bad publicity when it comes to Coach Prime. There is such a thing as a lack of integrity, however.
I’m biased, obviously. I believe that the sports media represent fans and that, when writers and broadcasters ask questions, they do so on behalf of paying customers, which, in this case, includes taxpayers. Like Keeler, some of those customers might not buy what Sanders is selling. Reporters sometimes pose annoying questions and write scathing critiques, but coaches and players get an opportunity to respond. Sounds pretty democratic to me. Sending someone to journalism Siberia doesn’t.
If I were Keeler, I’d make sure I’d try to ask a question at every Sanders news conference from now on. Just because Colorado says he can’t doesn’t mean he shouldn’t. Actually, good journalism demands that he speak up.
If I were a member of the press corps that covers Colorado football, I’d suggest that everyone boycott Sanders’ news conferences until Keeler is allowed to ask questions again. The coach’s contract requires that he talk only with ‘‘mutually agreed upon media.’’ Good for him. But that doesn’t mean media members have to go along with it. A boycott is a tricky thing because it goes against what I mentioned earlier: that the media represent fans. Some fans probably
don’t care if Keeler ever speaks again, in public or in private. They just want to hear Sanders speak. But sometimes media outlets have to take a stand. Today, it’s Keeler; tomorrow, it’s somebody else. It’s clear that Sanders doesn’t think he has to answer to anybody. Fine. Don’t ask him any questions. See how he likes it.
A boycott wouldn’t be good business for anybody. It wouldn’t be good for Colorado, which already has embarrassed itself. It wouldn’t be good for news outlets, who have consumers eager to hear what the entertaining Sanders has to say. They could lose readers, viewers and listeners. But once in a while, principle is more important than good business.
A boycott would take courage. And, as we know, there’s a serious shortage of the stuff in Boulder these days.