Lured by TV money, there are about to be eighteen teams in the Big 10 Conference, while both Stanford and the University of California are likely headed to the Atlantic Coast Conference. College players can suddenly earn more than their pro counterparts, thanks to NIL deals. Coaches could always carpetbag, but now players, too, can enter the transfer portal and instantly avail themselves to the highest bidder. College football is changing fast and becoming evermore transactional.
And now, here comes Deion Sanders—the ultimate disrupter, the ultimate chaos merchant—to hack and crack the system.
Who knows what to make of Sanders? He’s a 56-year-old man who calls himself Prime, and swaddles himself in jewelry. But, he is sufficiently old-school that he doesn’t curse. He will go down as one of the towering athletes in sports history. But now, on account of various surgeries and amputations, he is mostly immobile, consigned to a souped-up golf cart. His level of ego is such that he tells off reporters for “not believing” in his ways, and he chases off college kids he doubts can help him win. At the same time, his acts of charity and small touches of thoughtfulness (often performed when cameras aren’t rolling) are too numerous to name. O.K., here’s one: He refrains from using the designation of team “captain” because it cheapens a term used in the military and on police forces.
