In an interview that aired some 18 hours after his team’s improbable, come-from-behind double-overtime win, Colorado coach Deion Sanders looked at ’60 Minutes’ host Jon Wertheim and Sanders called himself the best coach in all of college football.
As he appeared on CBS’ top-rated show for the second time in less than a calendar year, Coach Prime touted himself as someone who is able to “truly make a difference” and someone who has “that effect.”
But it was when Wertheim asked Sanders about the top coach in college football that Coach Prime requested a mirror. His Colorado Buffaloes improved to 3-0 when they rallied past rival Colorado State 43-35 late Saturday night into Sunday morning.
“Let me see a mirror, so I can look at him,” Deion Sanders said. “You think I’m going to sit up here and tell you somebody else? You think that’s the way I operate? That somebody else got that on me?
“I’ll tell you this: I love and I adore and I respect and every time I do a commercial with Coach (Nick) Saban, it’s a gift. Just sitting in his presence and hearing him and throwing something else out there so that I can hear his viewpoint on it. Because he’s forgotten more things than I may ever accomplish. So, I am a student looking up to his wonderful teacher saying just throw me a crumb of what you know.”
Sanders and Saban, the national championship-winning coach at Alabama and formerly of LSU, have done a long-running series of commercials for a nationwide insurance company.
Beyond his take on the sport’s top coach, Coach Prime also touted his impact as an element of change in college athletics.
“I make a difference. I truly make a difference,” Deion Sanders said. “I make folks nervous, I get them moving in their seats. I get folks twiddling them thumbs, second-guessing themselves.
“I have that effect.”
We asked coach Deion Sanders: “Who's the best coach in college football today?”
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) September 18, 2023
His response: “Let me see a mirror so I can look at it.” https://t.co/RXXGHI8gts pic.twitter.com/QTSlsCAPl9
After he publicly campaigned for his son, Shedeur Sanders, then a start quarterback at Jackson State, to be a Heisman Trophy candidate in 2022, Deion Sanders already has touted both Shedeur Sanders and two-way standout Travis Hunter as worthy candidates – if not the worthiest – for college football’s top individual honor in 2023.
“A coach that loves his kids, a coach that understands that’s what those kids desire,” Coach Prime said of his willingness to push his star players for individual accolades. “And I’m supposed to do that. That’s what we told them. …
“My kids that play for me … they didn’t choose a university, they chose me. That’s a difference.”
The No. 19 Buffaloes (3-0) travel to Pac-12 foe and 10th-ranked Oregon (3-0) Saturday with a chance to extend their unblemished start under Coach Prime.
Deion Sanders reiterated that the challenge at hand was guided by faith.
“God wouldn’t relocate me to something that was successful. That don’t make sense, do it?,” Coach Prime asked. “He had to find the most disappointing and most difficult task and this is what it was and this is what it is, and I love that.”