Whether Deion Sanders stays at or leaves Colorado, his importance is immeasurable

BOULDER, Colo. — I spent two days at Colorado this week. Unlike previous trips to Boulder, this visit had nothing to do with the school’s head football coach, Deion Sanders, the irrepressible Coach Prime. I was on campus to speak to journalism students, student-athletes, sports administrators and students from a Critical Sports Studies program.

Invariably, regardless of the setting, the subject of Colorado football — and the Prime effect emerged. For all of the great things that have gone on at the university, the last two years have been dominated by Sanders.

Last year, I made several trips to Boulder as part of my fascination with the Sanders story. Chapters 1 and 2 of that story covered Sanders’ first two high-profile seasons at Jackson State University including his controversial exit for Colorado. Chapter 3 covered Sanders’ first season here at Colorado where he was charged with rejuvenating a moribund football program that had finished 1-11 the season before he arrived. The team finished 4-8 in his first season, but Prime brought back the electricity.

We currently are in the middle of Chapter 4, which has seen Sanders reintroduce the university community to winning. Colorado finished 9-3 this season and came close to earning a berth in the Big 12 title game. The current excitement on campus is which bowl game Colorado will attend: the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio, the Holiday Bowl in San Diego or — most desirable — the Las Vegas Bowl in Sin City.

There are other issues on campus related to the football program: will two-way star Travis Hunter become the second Buffalo to win the Heisman Trophy? Will Shedeur Sanders be the first quarterback taken in the 2025 NFL draft?

The biggest looming question on campus, by far, is whether Sanders will remain in Colorado for a third season.

The urgency of an affirmative answer depends on which part of the university you occupy. For DaWon Baker, the associate athletic director for diversity, equity and inclusion, Sanders’ importance goes beyond wins and losses.

Baker came to Colorado from the University of Nebraska in May 2021. He has seen how the presence of Sanders has changed the culture and created an atmosphere that accommodates diversity and inclusion. Prime in some ways has made preaching the gospel of inclusion easier.

“He gives me an example of what embracing diversity and inclusion can look like,” Baker said during an interview Wednesday.

Baker said that it took work internally to attract Sanders, a Southern Black man from Florida, “who feels like he can really be fully who he is and embrace his individuality, his background his culture here.”

“It took a lot of work internally to be able to provide an environment where he felt he could be himself,” Baker said.

Baker’s job is helping create that type of environment in the athletic department, and perhaps beyond.

“Embracing Deion Sanders, and really allowing him to do what he does not only changes our bottom line but it can change the fabric of what the university looks like,” he said. “It changes who comes and who’s watching, it changes who wants to come to the games, who wants to visit Boulder, who wants to potentially go to school here. That change is something that we can actually utilize to change how it is that we do things. If we’re going to invite people in, we have to be willing to create an environment for them to actually want to come here and stay here.”

For Baker, Sanders’ importance to the university is immeasurable.

“As a university, people knew what Colorado was but they didn’t really have a reason to watch or pay attention, whereas now they do, and there’s an interest around it that he’s obviously played a huge part in,” he said.

Before Sanders arrived, there were student-athletes who were similar to Prime. “But we didn’t have leaders, coaches, administrators like a Deion,” Baker said. “I feel like I could be myself because we have given the keys to somebody who is unapologetically going to be himself. We’ve got arguably the most popular coach in all of college football who’s here advocating for people to be themselves and is unapologetically being himself.”

So, will he stay, or will he go?

On Wednesday, in what some may interpret as a sign that Sanders will stay put, five-star quarterback Julian Lewis signed with Colorado. Lewis is Sanders’ highest-ranked recruit since he was able to snatch wide receiver Travis Hunter, the No. 2 prospect in the 2022 class, from Florida State and plant him at Jackson State. Sanders has also talked to reporters about his plans to upgrade special teams, especially Colorado’s flawed kicking game.

I have no intelligence on whether Sanders will stay or leave Colorado, though, some of those who speak with him regularly say that Prime sees his ministry as one of mentoring young men and women, putting them on track to be successful in life.

According to Fox Sports college football analyst Joel Klatt, who said that he spoke with Sanders and asked him point blank if he planned to leave Colorado for the NFL, Klatt said Sanders said “No,” and explained, “Because I don’t feel like I would be fulfilling my calling and my purpose if I was there.”

According to Klatt, Sanders said, “Listen, my calling is to impact young men and be a mentor to young men. I happen to do that through coaching. And I feel like I can do that better at the college level than I could with a bunch of professionals that might listen to me and might not listen to me because of the amount of money they’re being paid.”

Should Sanders stay or should he go? If I had a vote, I’d vote in favor of Sanders staying at Colorado, following the tradition of legendary African American football coaches who played such an important role in the lives of players who attended historically Black colleges and universities. Many of those coaches stayed at one place for decades. In many cases, they stayed because there were not a lot of options outside of the Black college universe. Many were simply dedicated to the cause of turning out outstanding citizens who happened to have played football.

When segregation ruled the day, hundreds of NFL-bound star players at HBCUs had the experience of playing for legends such as Jake Gaither, Eddie Robinson, Earl Banks, John Merritt, Marino Casem and so many more. Sanders has options, but he is cut from that cloth.

Very few current Black players in the NFL had the experience of playing for an African American coach in college. Today, a handful of players at Power 4 programs such as Penn State (James Franklin), Michigan (Sherrone Moore), Syracuse (Fran Brown), Notre Dame (Marcus Freeman) and of course Sanders, have experienced playing for an African American coach. Those coaches can help create a comfortable atmosphere in which players and even Black students on campus, can be themselves.

If Sanders were to stay at Colorado for another decade, he would surely create that type of permanent environment.

“I don’t think he’s been here long enough to build an infrastructure to do that,” Baker said. “But I do think he’s been here long enough to show us what it means to embrace what it takes to be good in football.”

Of course, there are uncertainties even if Sanders stays at Colorado. Familiarity breeds contempt and there are ebbs and flows to winning programs. What happens when the luster wears off, when the high bar that Prime is establishing becomes the rule, not the exception? What happens if too many star players become disillusioned and leave?

Those are questions for another day.

For an administrator like Baker, the power of Sanders is showing an institution how growth can be achieved by embracing diversity and inclusion.

“If we take this diversity thing really serious and really let people be themselves, you might see this type of growth in a lot of different areas,” Baker said. “Not just football.”