Deion Sanders has thoughts. Lots of them as he prepares for his second season as a major college football coach leading the Colorado Buffaloes into the 2024 season.
On Nick Saban's retirement and the loss it represents for college football.
On athlete compensation and the need to pay players but also have a path to accountability with for-pay college competition creating a new class of athletes.
But for those wondering if Sanders, aka Coach Prime, might abandon his Colorado rebuild after the 2024 season, after which star quarterback Shedeur Sanders, star safety Shilo Sanders and star two-way wideout/defensive back Travis Hunter are expecting to be high-profile NFL Draft picks?
Yeah, Sanders has thoughts there, too.
"My sons, Travis included, are getting ready to migrate to the NFL," Deion Sanders says of the trio, again emphasizing he's a father and not a 'baby daddy' who's going to trail his kids, in a 'Big Noon Conversation' with host Joel Klatt. "I'm not following them to the NFL. So, I plan on being here and being dominant, here."
In fact, Sanders goes to a gas-tank metaphor to emphasize how much he says he is fully vested in returning the Buffaloes back to college football prominence as they transition into the Big 12 Conference following the dissolution of the PAC-12.
Emphasizing his arrival as a college football coach, Sanders also says he's a change-agent in the collegiate landscape.
"I ain't aiming; I'm here. It's a multiplicity of things that has to transpire. You've got to be successful in what we call success, you have to be present; you don't have to be perfect but you've got to be present and you've got to provoke change," Deion Sanders told Klatt. "I have the autonomy and the ability to accomplish all three simultaneously, and we're doing it.
"It's on me, how long I want to do it, and my tank is full. My tank is full. I'm full. I'm behind F. I'm leaning behind F (on a gas tank) I'm so full. And I love it."
Sanders explains he feels a freedom in his coaching role because he doesn't rely on his Colorado salary nor gain his identity as a man from being a coach.
"God has given me the strengths to provoke that [change]," he said. "That's why people get upset, and that's what I want to do, that's what I love to do but I don't have to do it. ... I'm in the third quarter of my life, and I'm winning."
Sanders also shares his support for college athletes being paid for their abilities -- across all sports -- but also believes there needs to be balance in the system.
He says today's college athletes aren't built for the media scrutiny that becomes inherent with paid athletes performing -- or not performing -- their tasks.
"Everybody wants it both ways. The kids want to be compensated like pros, but they don't want to be treated like pros," Sanders said, as he also touted his New York Times best-selling book, 'Elevate and Dominate: 21 ways to win on and off the field'. "Pros get talked to any way, not by the coaches but by the media. See, it's been a safeguard around college athletes that the media don't really go at them because they're amateurs. Now, you got media talking junk to college players because college players are making more than the media. A lot of these collegiate athletes ain't built like that to hear that. Because the first thing they do is at halftime, 'Let me go check my phone. What are they saying about me?' We try to safeguard that. You can't live like that.
"It's tough. They should be compensated, all of them, in every sport. But what does that mean? What does that look like? Because I don't believe that Tom should make as much as Harry makes because Tom didn't contribute what Harry did. But Tom needs to be compensated.
"If I give you something, I have an expectation. Now, if you're not meeting the expectation, what do I do? What? So I should have some type of recourse if I'm breaking you off and blessing you and you ain't doing nothing for it. No.
That's not with your Colorado drawers on, right? I want them to know that. You're analyst hat is on.
Let me tell you something: certain areas, we weren't built for the moment. Certain areas, we weren't built for it.
To do just what you mentioned, because I feel like we addressed the needs and tremendous concerns of protecting the quarterback. We've got a dern quarterback. Forget he's my son. Because when you place that in it, the hate comes.
I think we're better, not only on the field but off the field. That's not an insult to the guys that were here. But I think we got better and I think I'm better. I think the whole thing is better, and we're not done.
I want to be much more consistent. I've got to act on what I feel and I've got to act on what I know. It's like you see some things and feel some things, and I'm a nice guy, so I give it a chance to materialize and come to pass, then I call my support guys around the country, Coach Saban and some other guys I won't mention by name, and they give me so much love and advice. I've got to act on it. If I would've acted on it, things might have been a lot different. But I didn't.