Thank the Lord that Deion Sanders is okay

I'm thankful for Deion's own sake that Deion Sanders is alive, cancer free, and continuing as Colorado's head coach. I'm thankful for his five children's sake. I'm thankful for his extended family, and the many friends he's collected across his legendary, uniquely American life. I'm thankful for the University of Colorado that he will continue as its ambassador, and that the Buffaloes won't have to trudge forward this season without their head football coach. 

But I'm also thankful for me, and for you, and for college football as a whole. 

After rumors circulated over the weekend that Deion Sanders, accompanied by his medical team, would announce a health-induced retirement at Monday's planned press conference, Coach Prime and company merely announced that he'd survived an aggressive tumor on his gallbladder. That's all. Through a robotic surgery, doctors have removed Sanders's bladder and reconstructed a new one out of his intestinal tissue. Now cancer free, Sanders will continue into his third season as the head coach of the Buffaloes.

More importantly, Sanders will continue living the second act of one of the rarest lives in this country's history. One of the greatest athletes of all time, Sanders is the most accomplished and the most famous athletes to attempt to coach. And among that group, he's the most successful. Removed from the disaster at Prime Prep, I watched in disbelief as Jackson State handed him control of its football program. I guffawed as he proclaimed that the downtrodden Tigers would fill the massive Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium to see future NFL players down Jackson State uniforms. Fifteen months later, Travis Hunter signed with Jackson State, and in the 2021-22 seasons, 60,000 regularly gathered to watch as the Tigers went 23-3 and won two SWAC titles in 2021-22. 

Now, he's brought life to Colorado, arguably the most rock-bottom Power 4 program upon his 2023 arrival. The box-office Buffaloes added a second Heisman Trophy and finished in the AP Top 25 in Prime's second season. Defying the doubters, Sanders is continuing to coach the Buffs after Shedeur Sanders's departure.

But even in this largely triumphant chapter of Deion's life, there have been plenty of valleys accompanying the peaks. He nearly died while at Jackson State, emerging from a blood-clotting issues without two of his toes. Sanders said Monday that he's endured 14 surgeries since 2021, more than he had across an NFL career that spanned 17 years.

He emerged through it all on Monday flashing the same 100,000-watt smile America has known for more than 40 years now. 

Deion will continue coaching because, he said, that's what God wants him to do. 

"I never once in this journey said, 'Why me?' Because then I'd have to say, 'Why you give me this wonderful position at this prestigious university? Why you give me five wonderful kids?' I said, 'Lord, whatever it is that you're doing, let me know what it is so that I can expedite the process. Because I know you got me.'"

And so now, in addition to a 2-time Super Bowl champion, a Pro and College Football Hall of Famer, a National League pennant winner, an SI Sportsman of the Year, and an Eddie Robinson Coach of the Year, Sanders added World's Most Famous Bladder Cancer Ambassador to his Daenerys Targaryen-esque number of titles. 

"Men, everybody get checked out. It wasn't for me getting tested for something else they wouldn't have stumbled up on this. It great so expeditiously I could say. Especially African-American men, we don't like going to the doctor you know. But I'm talking to everybody. Get checked out. It could have been a whole nother gathering if I hadn't," Sanders said. 

Bladder cancer is the fourth most common cancer among men, I wrote in a sentence I never would've otherwise written on a football website. "Blood in the urine in the absence of infection is never normal," CU Director of Urological Oncology Dr. Janet Kukreja said. 

With training camp set to open, Sanders will be there. Don't be surprised if he as a Port-a-Potty installed on the Folsom Field sideline, but he'll be there. He never imagined any other outcome. "I've got eight toes, man. I'm sitting up here talking to you with eight toes. My legs are cut up like shark bites. I'm built for this."

Fifty-seven years into a you-couldn't-make-this-up life, Deion Sanders is still with us, down two toes and one internal organ. God only knows what the rest of his days have in store. "I'm a messenger, that's all I am," Sanders said. "I'm a messenger delivering a message to all." And thank the Lord for that.