Deion Sanders had the usual complaints of a football coach surrounding his team’s red-zone execution, some opportunities left on the field in its homecoming win against non-conference foe Campbell University and some other elements of Jackson State’s seventh-straight win of the 2022 season and its 18th in 20 games.
“We gotta run the ball,” Sanders said on the Southwestern Athletic Conference’s weekly coaches’ Zoom. “We gotta be more aggressive with the run.
“Everyone knows we’ve got a quarterback that can spin it and wide receivers that can go get it. That’s pretty much the formula. It’s just attitude there, the ‘Red Zone’ is straight-on attitude. … We just gotta want it a lot more than they want it.”
Then Coach Prime once again embraced his platform to try to shine a greater light on not only JSU and its athletics programs but also Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
ESPN earlier announced that it will host its ever-popular Saturday morning ‘College GameDay’ show live from Jackson, Mississippi, this week when Sanders’s Tigers host longtime SWAC rival Southern.
This comes on the heels of the Tigers seeing cultural icons Snoop Dogg, Rick Ross and several cast members of the “P-Valley” show that airs on STARZ and is set in the “Dirty Delta” of Mississippi.
For Sanders, these are opportunities to inform greater swaths of society.
“I think it’s very important. You gotta understand, ‘P-Valley’ is a wonderful show which should be an award-winning show that touches all demographics, all social climates,” Sanders said. “Shouldn’t we be like that as men and women? We should not be judgmental by any means.
“We should open our minds and hearts to everyone and show them love and respect and appreciation. I feel like that’s what we should do with HBCUs. We’ve got to open our hearts and minds to changes, to different ideologies and just different thoughts and proceed with those thoughts and make them manifest.”
Strong faith and belief in God.
— Governor Tate Reeves (@tatereeves) October 23, 2022
Doing things the right way.
Discipline.
Work ethic.
Competence.
That’s what @DeionSanders has brought to @GoJSUTigersFB.
And that’s why this honor is so well deserved: pic.twitter.com/zkvCgAWLfS
Sanders insists he has no time for the refrain of “this is how it’s always been” at the HBCU level and in the SWAC.
“We can’t be narrow-minded and close-minded thinking and say, ‘Well, it worked like this for 25 years,’” said Sanders, whose team has climbed firmly into the top 10 of the Football Championship Subdivision national rankings. “Well, it really didn’t. It really didn’t (work). We say it did, but it really didn’t.
“No one talks about the truth and matter of, we have some dysfunction and we need to fix it. So I’m just willing to go out there and step out and say you know what, I want all to come. I want to invite everybody.
“We’re going to keep on continuing to do what we do. Because we’re trying to reach and teach and touch the majority not the minority because we’ve already touched the minority.”
Veteran Alcorn State coach Fred McNair, a former record-setting quarterback for the Braves, also touted the impact of SWAC Commissioner Dr. Charles McClelland.
“I think ESPN has been doing a great job, I think the commissioner has been doing a great job of getting us exposure on ESPN,” said McNair, who noted ESPN had previously aired its showcase college football program the SWAC-MEAC Challenge. “I think he’s doing a great job of getting us that exposure and it’s been that way for a while now. It’s just something that’s going to be added on in terms of that.”