Tremaine Jackson Visits Deion Sanders In Colorado and Returns To Prairie View With 'The Blueprint'

Prairie View A&M's Tremaine Jackson visited Deion Sanders at Colorado and returned with a business blueprint for HBCU football. Here's what he learned — and what's next.

Coach Tremaine Jackson (left) visits Colorado head coach Deion Sanders (right) | Credit: Tremaine Jackson

HOUSTON — Tremaine Jackson arrived at the University of Colorado's football facility last week with 12 members of his staff, a notebook full of questions, and a clear-eyed understanding of what he needed from Deion Sanders: not just football knowledge, but a sports business education.

What the Prairie View A&M head coach brought back—new training strategies, academic support initiatives, and enhanced recruitment practices—may reshape the trajectory of one of the SWAC's most compelling programs and could offer a model for HBCU athletics.

How did the Coaches Connect?

It all started with a call from Colorado head coach Deion Sanders.  He saw one of Jackson’s videos and reached out to Jackson months ago. Sanders called Jackson in January to congratulate him on his program's strong season and to extend an open invitation to visit the Buffaloes' facility.

"Whenever you guys want to come out here, let me know," Sanders told Jackson during that January call. Jackson said he had anticipated the visit ever since.

Without hesitation, he coordinated a 13-person delegation that included athletic director Anton Goff, football operations personnel, a strength coach, a trainer, an equipment manager, and coaches from both sides of the ball.​

Prairie View A&M head coach Tremaine Jackson visits with Colorado head coach Deion Sanders in Boulder, Colorado. | Credit: PVAMU Athletics

Business Over Ball

Jackson was candid about his motivations for making the trip. While football knowledge is always welcome, it was Sanders' mastery of brand-building — honed first at Jackson State University and now applied on the national stage at Colorado — that Jackson wanted to study up close.

"From a football standpoint, we can always use drills," Jackson said. "But I was more interested in the business side of how Coach Sanders did things".​

Sanders, a Pro Football Hall of Famer and one of the most recognizable figures in American sports, leveraged his personal platform to transform Jackson State from a program with a rich but under-publicized history into a nationally watched cultural event.

Jackson saw parallels and possibilities for Prairie View, which sits just outside Houston — the fourth-largest city in the United States — and has access to one of the nation's most robust corporate and energy-sector economies.​

"Football is now big business," Jackson said. "Always has been. Well, now the business is on the surface. You can see it".​

We will never forget the opportunity extended to us by @DeionSanders and the entire @CUBuffsFootball coaches and support staff. Your hospitality and openness meant a lot to our program.

Strength and love to the entire Colorado family.#PVAMU #Brotherhood #CollegeFootball pic.twitter.com/J81QualSQp

— Prairie View A&M Football (@pvamufb_) March 8, 2026

Confirmation and Credibility

For Jackson, one of the most significant outcomes of the trip was not new information — it was validation. Sanders confirmed that Prairie View A&M was already executing at a higher level than many outside the program recognized.

"He confirmed so many things that we were already doing," Jackson said. "He confirmed some things for me as a head coach when I'm wondering if this is a good path for us to go down — and he said we are on the right track".​

Jackson told HBCU Legend that Sanders wanted to connect with him after watching a video of the Prairie View coach speaking. According to the Panthers coach, Sanders said of the encounter: "This dude has got some vision".​

The coaches and staff compared preparation routines and found similar approaches already in place at Prairie View. "We already do some things that a lot of Power Fours do," Jackson said.​

Signage, Storytelling, and the Low-Hanging Fruit

When asked what Prairie View A&M would implement immediately upon returning to campus, Jackson's answer was pointed.

"Signage matters. Vision matters. What the players see matters," he said.​

He cited a telling gap: despite winning multiple SWAC championships, Prairie View's stadium does not prominently display those titles, the legends of the past, or the honors achieved. When the game is on the line and adversity hits, players have no visible reminder of what the program has accomplished and why they are competing.​

"You're talking about winning the SWAC championship every year, but there's nowhere in our stadium that has the SWAC championships we won that’s up," Jackson said. "When things get tough, there's nowhere in our stadium our players can look to and go — this is what we're doing it for".​

Coach Tremaine Jackson - Prairie View A&M Football Practice | Credit: PVAMU Athletics

The remedy, Jackson noted pointedly, is not expensive. What the Colorado visit dismantled was the assumption that Power Four programs spend extravagantly on every amenity.

Many of the improvements Sanders' staff shared were what Jackson called "low-hanging fruit."  Those are cost-effective upgrades to recruiting spaces, wall graphics, and internal messaging that are fully within reach of HBCU programs operating under tighter budgets.​

"We walked away from there going, we just visited a Power Four program, and there's a lot of low-hanging fruit," Jackson said. "The things that just cost five dollars, there's a lot of those things that we can get done".​

Organizational Alignment: The Non-Negotiable

Sanders drew a direct line between institutional alignment and program success, citing his own experience at Jackson State, where his close working relationship with then-athletic director Ashley Robinson was foundational to the program's accomplishments.

Observing the relationship between Jackson and Dr. Goff, Sanders offered a pointed assessment: "Hey man, this is what y'all need. What y'all got right now is what y'all need to be successful".​

Sanders also pressed to understand the university’s presidential alignment - one of the issues Coach Prime had at Jackson State.  Coach Jackson reported that Prairie View's president, Dr. Tomikia LeGrande, is actively engaged with and supportive of the football program's direction. Sanders cited this as a positive indicator for the program's future.​

"That vertical alignment," Jackson said, summarizing Sanders' framework. "He asked about the president's alignment. We talked to him about how our president was and how she was actively aligned with what we were aligned with her".​

Anton Goff and Tremaine Jackson | Kyle T. Mosley, HBCU Legends

Content, Connections, and the Modern Recruiting Landscape

The Colorado program's social media presence — driven in significant part by Sanders and his son Bucky, whom Jackson praised as someone who "knows how to tell a story" — offered another set of transferable lessons.

Both programs use student-driven internal content teams, and Jackson said the visit helped sharpen Prairie View's approach to intentional storytelling.  This past season, the Panthers were active, showing the world not just that their players can win on the field, but that they are prepared to succeed in life beyond it.​

"We found out how we can tell the story," Jackson said. "Everybody ain't going to say yes. But we don't need everybody to say yes. We just need a few of them to say yes".​

Sanders also connected the Prairie View A&M staff with several of his own business partners, volunteering relationships that Jackson said the delegation had not gone to Colorado expecting to receive.

For a program working to move past dependence on modest alumni donations and toward serious corporate partnerships — particularly in a city with Houston's economic footprint — those introductions could prove to be among the most consequential outcomes of the entire trip.​

"We cannot rely on $10 and $15 sponsorships and donations from alums," Jackson said. "That's not going to get it done. We've got to get in partnership with people that have a unique interest in people in places like ours".​

Tremaine Jackson, Prairie View A&M Head Football Coach on the sidelines of the Panthers game against UTRGV. | PVAMU Athletics

A Ministry, Not Just a Meeting

Perhaps the dimension of the visit that moved Jackson most deeply was the personal one rather than the operational one. Sanders spent one-on-one time with Jackson — time the Panthers head coach repeatedly described as unearned and freely given.

"He didn't have to spend any time with me. He did not have to do that," Jackson noted.​

Their private conversations centered not on scheme or strategy, but on purpose.  For example, why they coach, how to recognize when the right opportunity is calling, and how to use their platforms to advance the lives of young Black athletes.

Sanders also invited Jackson to address the entire Colorado football team, a gesture Jackson compared to a pastor surrendering his pulpit to a guest.​

"People don't let you just go around and talk to their teams," Jackson said. "For that dude to do that — it showed me that he saw something in me, but it also confirmed that we're coaching for the right reasons".​

The visit unfolded even as Sanders and his program were processing the death of quarterback Dominiq Ponder that same week.  It’s a weight that, Jackson said, nearly led him to cancel the trip out of respect.  

However, Sanders pressed forward, remaining fully present and accommodating.

A Call to Action for HBCU Programs

Jackson returned not just with strategies and contacts, but with a clearly defined challenge for HBCU programs: apply these lessons, form new partnerships, and lead by example so others might follow.

"Prairie View A&M football is going to go first," he said. "We're going to form those partnerships and hopefully others follow".​

The blueprint, as Sanders himself told HBCU coaches years ago at Jackson State, has always been available. The only variable is whether programs are willing to set aside ego, seek collaboration, and act on what they learn.

Visible vision, vertical alignment, intentional storytelling, and servant-hearted leadership: according to both coaches, these are the essential elements needed to transform an HBCU football program, a process they note is neither mysterious nor unaffordable.

The blueprint just has to be picked up, read, and implemented.