As critics dismiss Coach Prime’s program as a hollow brand, Sanders faces a pivotal year to prove his flashy culture can finally translate into gridiron victories.
Deion Sanders and the Colorado Buffaloes are days away from opening the 2026 season in Atlanta. What might seem like a homecoming for the Hall of Famer is simply a business trip. And after a 3-9 season, most critics aren't cutting him any slack.
Jason Whitlock began a recent Fearless episode with a standalone quote.
“Coach Prime is not a football operation. He is a feeling franchise. Saturday’s are the costume. The congregation is the customer,” he said.
After that, Whitlock points to a segment from the Basement with Tim Ross, who compared Deion's experience to a legal drug dealer. “I feel like the way I experience you is like the drug dealer who did get old and made it, but it was legal.” Ross told Sanders. He replied by saying, “You know what you just said? You just described the picture that I tried to paint”.
What Deion is selling is not wins. It’s a feeling. Whitlock claims that the objective. Being able to win games is now secondary and that's caught standing in Sanders’ shadow. He would go onto attack faith-based parallels. As the University of Colorado is a publicly funded program, we will abstain from entertaining faith-based rhetoric.
Sanders has a saying most fans have probably heard by now. It’s posted throughout the walls of the Champions Center on CU's campus. “Look good, you feel good. Feel good, you play good. You play good, they pay good.”
While it’s a catchy thing to say, it rarely translates literally in the real world, which is a place Sanders does not often relate to.
Sanders’ swagger has receipts and is used to winning. He has a playing career that demands respect as one of the greatest athletes in professional sports history. To Whitlock’s point, there seems to have been an assumption that the way he is regarded as a player would simply carry over to being a coach. Regardless of the wins, Sanders the player was that way because the play on the field was unmatched. It's not the same for him as a coach.
Sanders’ worst year was 2025. His marquee players were getting dragged by the national media. He was coming off arguably his worst season of his football career, either playing or coaching. Then he was diagnosed with bladder cancer. No one would have blamed Sanders if he retired at that press conference, but no one was rooting for it either.
The cancer was real and threatening. The tone in the Dal Ward Center when he announced his recovery had a tone of relief by virtually everyone in attendance. While it did impact his ability to do his job, the way he would have done it without the diagnosis, cancer should not be a talking point for a Coach Prime detractor.
Sanders does care about aura or the optics of things more than most coaches would. You will not find Curt Cignetti, Kirby Smart or even Bill Belichick referring to aura or trying to massage the narratives as Sanders does. It's simply not tangible or quantifiable, and therefore has no place in the larger football discussion.
Another claim by Whitlock that deserves consideration is the infatuation with ‘haters’. “Cheers are untrustworthy, but jeers prove he’s still HIM,” Whitlock said about Sanders. He does have an irrational affection for haters, or at least the idea of them.
Since day one, he has treated his own press room like he’s addressing a small crowd of people who all want him to fail. Which is almost by definition illogical. The people in that room do better if he is successful. The hater narrative is one that he created and continues to perpetuate. Are there haters? Yes. However, Sanders inflates the numbers and their impact so that he can continue to claim the haters are at the gates.
The worst coaching analogy a former player can have is being the Michael Jordan of coaching. Deion Sanders is not the Michael Jordan of college football coaching, but he does have a Michael Jordan coaching issue. One of his biggest go-to speeches was to talk about the players he faced. The challenges he overcame. The problem is, there hasn’t been a Deion Sanders since Deion Sanders and the notion that he would coach another "Deion Sanders type" is unlikely at best. Putting these kids on a path and saying this is how I was successful will not work, because they are not him. Also, times have evolved since the 90s.
The final aspect worth reflecting on is the criticism angle. No one likes to be criticized. However, criticism is part of the job in sports. Any sport is a results-based business. Whether it was Tim McCarver as a player or Sean Keeler covering the game he just coached, criticism is going to come and how the player or coach responds to that criticism is wildly important. Sanders is too concerned with criticism. There has not been a single player or coach at any point in the timeline that was above criticism.
Sanders seems to view everything through the lens of "Do you support him or not?" As if that is a binary concept. The moment there is the slightest amount of criticism, it’s as if he puts that person in the "hater" category. The term hater derives from an irrational jealousy of someone else’s success or financial gain. Which simply does not apply to Sanders the coach at the frequency he uses it. If someone says the offensive line was not good enough, that is not hater behavior. It’s the objective truth.
USA TODAY Sports Take Sanders out of the equation. If Karl Dorrell had remained the CU coach this entire time and went 4-8 in 2023, 9-4 with an ugly bowl game loss to BYU in 2024 and 3-9 last year, he absolutely would’ve been on the hot seat, if not fired by now. The criticism would have been rampant. However, that’s the difference. Sanders seems to see himself above reproach, simply on the merits of him being a Hall of Famer. If he could take a step back to realize there aren’t millions of people hoping for his demise, several of the concerns he faces would not be an issue.
If a player or coach is truly confident in what they are doing, there would be no reason to spend a single minute worrying about the commentary of outsiders. We live in a plural society. The likelihood that any player or coach is going to be universally beloved without a single shred of criticism is wildly irrational.
Deion Sanders has an important season ahead of him. The detractors, like Whitlock, are not likely to stand down unless he starts winning. While a fair amount of what Whitlock said may seem over the line, he’s not wrong about several points. The product of football does not seem to take priority over the brand. The optics and manipulating narratives seem more important than they should be. If Colorado wins, however, most of that will be silenced.
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