Deion Sanders and the Reimagination of the College Football Coach

Aggressive player acquisition, swagger, and virality are now just as important in winning on Saturday as having great play design. And college football is a better product because of it.

College football kicked off this past weekend, and for the most part the games went according to plan with plenty of power programs dominating inferior competition (such as Oregon beating Portland State 81–7 and Oklahoma shutting out Arkansas State 73–0). The story of the weekend though was the FBS coaching debut of Deion Sanders. The Hall of Fame cornerback and former head coach at Jackson State brought his Colorado Buffaloes into Fort Worth, Texas and knocked off 17th ranked TCU 45–42.

The win was an impressive one for Sanders, who had his fair share of doubters coming into the season that questioned how successful he could be moving from the SWAC to the more talent-rich Pac-12. As expected Deion had a lot to say to a lot of people in the post game press conference, touching on everything from race-based expectations to the college football establishment being uncomfortable with him as a coach. With this win, Sanders and Colorado are putting the college football world on notice, but not in the way that you might think. Colorado likely isn’t contending for a national championship this year, but what Sanders is showing the…