If Deion Sanders succeeds at Colorado, a lot of other schools are going to have some explaining to do. They will need to explain why they passed on a coach with a 27–5 record, who has won 21 of his past 22 games, and pulled off arguably the biggest recruiting coup in history. They’ll have to explain why they didn’t want the automatic boost of exposure, charisma and verve.
Maybe it doesn’t work—he is taking over the worst Power 5 program in the country, after all, which has one winning season in the past 17. But it’s a worthwhile gamble for athletic director Rick George, a boom-or-bust swing with sky’s-the-limit upside. And it stands out in sharp relief to all the programs that kept finding reasons not to hire Sanders.
The caveats, questions, concerns and rationalizations have been piling up for weeks around Coach Prime as an FBS coaching candidate. The more he has won at Jackson State, which improved to 12–0 on Saturday and won the SWAC championship in a rout, the more murmurs there have been about why he would be a risky hire at a bigger school.
