In college football, 2023 has been the year of Deion Sanders.
Imagine, however, if instead of picturesque Boulder, Colo., the Colorado coach was building his glamorous program in sunny Tempe, Ariz..
It might have happened, but Arizona State president Michael M. Crow judged Sanders too green for the job last September.
"I get a lot of messages about Deion and Deion seems to be in just his early age of learning how to be a coach,” Crow said of then-Jackson State coach Sanders on KTAR-FM in Glendale, Ariz. shortly after the Sun Devils fired coach Herm Edwards in 2022. “We’re going to find the most fantastic football coach that we can."
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A year later, with Sanders’s Buffaloes 4–2 and recent 27–24 victors over Arizona State, Crow is singing a different tune.
“People love to see creativity, people love to see energy,” Crow told William C. Rhoden of Andscape during the Sun Devils' loss to Colorado Saturday afternoon. “What coach Sanders brings to the table is that there are lots of ways to activate, motivate, stimulate creativity in sports and build new leaders. So, he’s off on a new model, which I think can help us to sustain college football.”
Arizona State drew 54,086 fans Saturday, a sharp increase from 44,803 in the Buffaloes' last visit on Sept. 25, 2021.
“Colorado has never produced, to my knowledge, a sellout in this stadium in the time I’ve been here,” Sun Devils athletic director Ray Anderson said. “We’ll sell more hot dogs, we’ll sell more water, we’ll sell more beer. There’ll be more people paying for parking. That’s good for everybody. That’s community impact that we realize is important. You got to give Deion credit.”
