No Matter How Many Games He Wins Or Loses, Deion Sanders Is Good For College Football
We have a long-standing Father's Day tradition at my house
After church on Sunday we enjoy a wonderful lunch together after which I adjoun to the den to watch the final round of the U.S. Open.
I usually watch most of the tournament alone, but on this year, 2000, Tiger Woods was running away from the field at Pebble Beach. The only question was how badly would he dominate the best players in the World?
Slowly the family members started trickling in. Soon the room was full of people who, with one exeception, had never even played golf.
They didn't care about golf. But they wanted to see Tiger. Tiger had made it cool to care about golf.
And that brings us to Deion Sanders.
It's as simple as this.
Last season the University of Colorado football team went 1-11. The Buffs had seven home games at Folsom Field (50,183 capacity) and only one sellout.
With No. 8 USC coming to Boulder on Saturday, Colorado has six home games remaining.
Every single ticket for the rest of the season has been sold.
What changed?
One man.
Deion Sanders became the head coach at Colorado and has energized the campus unlike anything fans have seen since the days of Bill McCartney and Rick Neuheisel.
Sanders and Colorado isn't just a college football story. When the Buffs beat Colorado State 43-35 to start 3-0 they became an international news and entertainment story. "60 Minutes" went to the Colorado campus to do a story on Coach Prime. For that Sept. 16 game ESPN's College Game Day AND FOX's Big Noon Saturday pre-game shows were both in Boulder.
This stat tells you everything you need to know about the phenomena that is being labeled as "The Deion Effect."
Saturday night's Ohio State at Notre Dame game was a television ratings bonanza with two of the best brands in football playing a game that went down to the final second. The game drew a television audience of 9.9 million, according to ratings provided by SportsMediaWatch.com.
An exceptional rating for a regular-season game is in the 4 million range.
The Colorado at Oregon game, won 42-6 by Oregon, was never competitive. In fact it was over after just a few possessions. Still, it drew slightly more than Notre Dame vs. Ohio State with 10.03 million.
"People are just entralled with Deion Sanders," FOX Sports college football analayst Joel Klatt said on his recent podcast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSnY1tCyyRM
Now, as you might imagine, not everyone is enthralled with the "Show Time" aspect of Deion Sanders and his program.
Oregon Coach Dan Lanning invited cameras into his locker room before the game and said this to his players: "Their Cinderella story is over. They are playing for (computer) clicks. We are playing for wins."
It was 35-0 at halftime and 42-0 early in the third quarter. Lanning had made his point.
It isn't hard to translate what is going on here. Some coaches see the Deion Effect as a triumph of style over substance.
"Coaches don't like it (the attention given to Sanders)," Klatt said on his podcast. "They don't like it at all."
By Monday Oregon's Lanning had changed his tone and acknowledged that the 10 million people who watched his game were there, for the most part, because of Sanders.
"I'm also grateful and can clearly acknowledge the attention that we got this Saturday, in large part, was due to Deion and what he's doing to college football," Lanning said during his regularly-scheduled press conference. "If anybody can't see what he's done for college football and how he's bringing excitement to college football, you're crazy. I said that last week as well. He's done a lot for the game. He's building something over there."
Sanders acknowledged that opposing coaches don't want to beat his team. They want to beat HIM.
"That's what I signed up for. So let's go," he said.
Sanders, to his credit, called it a "good-old-fashioned butt-kicking" because that's exactly what it was.
He also said: "One thing I can say, honestly and candidly, is you better get me right now because this is the worst we're going to be."
And the hits keep coming. Colorado (3-1) returns home on Saturday to play No. 8 USC (4-0) and the returning Heisman Trophy winner Caleb Williams FOX's "Big Noon Kickoff" show will again be at a Colorado game. The game is at Noon, ET, on FOX. And between the star power of Deion on one side and the Trojans on the other, the TV ratings should again be off the charts.
The point is this: There were times when players on the PGA Tour wondered why Tiger Woods was getting so much attention. What they came to find out and happily accept was that Tiger was putting money in all of their pockets.
The same goes with football coaches.
Andy Staples of On3 said this a few weeks ago and I agree with it. Coaches need to understand and accept that the college football world is changing. And those changes go well beyound NIL and the transferr portal.
Coaches are no longer in the football business. Like it or not, they are in the entertainment business.
And there is one thing that can't be denied: Coach Prime, even when he's getting his butt kicked, is a helluva entertainer.
Stay tuned.