Doyel: Deion Sanders made history at Jackson State, but Colorado came calling
Selfishly – and by that I mean, thinking about almost everybody involved in this story but Deion Sanders – you were hoping Deion would stay at Jackson State. Not just for another week or month or year. No, selfishly, you were hoping he'd coach football at Jackson State for the next decade, to see just how far he could take a historically Black university, which is to say, a historically underfunded and underhyped program, in the big monied sport of major college football.
Didn’t you? Couldn't have been just me. For the sake of argument, let’s assume you were out there, agreeing with me, cringing at the news that broke this weekend that Sanders was likely to leave Jackson State for Colorado, which means leaving the SWAC for the PAC-12.
Sure enough, he told his Jackson State team late Saturday night that he was leaving.
USA Today: Colorado, Deion Sanders agree to deal worth $4.5 million annually
A no-brainer, that move, by any quantifiable measure. We get it. Deion is a competitive guy, and Colorado gives him a much clearer path to a national title. And not that he needs the money, but if you’re coaching in the SWAC, for whatever they’re paying – can’t be much – and you’re offered $4.5 million a year to coach in the Pac-12, you say yes. You don’t even think. You just accept. As I said, a no-brainer.
By any quantifiable measure.
But what about the measures you can’t, you know, measure – because nobody had cared enough before to measure them?
Deion got ESPN GameDay to Jackson State!
Look, you and I know that sports matter at Jackson State, and in the SWAC, and at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The kids playing, the coaches coaching, the fans and alums cheering? It matters to them.
But for everyone else? Do you even know the Jackson State nickname?
How about Alcorn State? Or Southern or Prairie View A&M? No way you know the locations and mascots of all three. I cheated – I grew up in Mississippi when Larry "Mr. Mean" Smith was dominating for the Braves – so I'm all about Alcorn State. But the others?
I’m thinking the Southern, um, Jaguars are somewhere in Louisiana, and the Prairie View A&M Indians (?) are in Natchitoches, Texas. Let’s see how I did … the Southern Jaguars (I was right!) are in Baton Rouge (another point for me). But the Prairie View A&M Panthers (ahem) are in Prairie View, Texas. Who knew?
Not you.
But Deion was changing things for the Jackson State Tigers, a nickname I’ve known since Oct. 29, when ESPN’s College GameDay show set up shop in Jackson, Miss., before the Jackson State-Southern game.
Don’t read over that sentence. ESPN sent Rece Davis, Desmond Howard, Kirk Herbstreit and Pat McAfee to Jackson State. It was a game-changing moment. Deion Sanders already had one of the top young quarterbacks in the country at Jackson State – his son, Shedeur – and now he’s got that orange ESPN GameDay bus pulling onto campus?
Impossible, you’d have said at this time a few years ago. But that was before Deion showed up at Jackson State and started attracting high-level talent in previously unattainable chunks. Walter Payton played at an HBCU; matter of fact, it was Jackson State. So did Robert Mathis (Alabama A&M) and Shannon Sharpe (Savannah State) and, sure, Shaquille Leonard (South Carolina State). It happens.
But not like this.
What else would've happened, had Deion stayed for another decade? No clue. Seriously, I put nothing past the gravitational pull of the charismatic Deion Sanders. Pretty soon Jackson State would've been able to compete with Power 5 conference teams. Maybe the Tigers could’ve done it this season if given the chance, who knows? But that’s where Jackson State was headed with Deion, and seeing how a rising tide tends to lift all boats, what would've happened around the rest of the SWAC?
As I said, it's a selfish wish on our part. Deion Sanders owes nothing to you or me or even the folks at Jackson State. Whatever they invested in Deion to get him to coach their football team, he repaid with interest.
And to be clear, Deion will win huge at Colorado. You’re not reading condescension packaged as a backhanded compliment – good for you Deion, but please stay in your lane – because I'm thinking he'll change the game at perennially hapless Colorado. If Deion can get unprecedented talent in the SWAC and coach it so well, what will he do in the Pac-12? With the transfer portal? The Buffaloes, 1-11 this season, are about to win big.
Kind of like, sigh, Jackson State had been doing. Four of the five Jackson State coaches before Deion, dating to 2003, had losing records. Deion? He was 27-5 in three years. He's 12-0 this season.
He'll be just fine at Colorado.
Zion chose Duke, but LeBron returned to Cleveland
This is bigger than Deion, though it took me a while to get there, didn’t it? This is a story about real change, if only the game-changer would do what we want. When historical recruit Zion Williamson of Spartanburg, S.C., chose Duke over South Carolina, I went onto Twitter to lament what he’d given up – the chance to transform an in-state school into a basketball powerhouse, even if for just one year – just to join a college basketball factory that didn’t exactly need him.
I’ve written the same thing about Breanna Stewart and all those basketball players, the best recruits in the country, who choose to play for loaded UConn.
Doyel at 2016 Women's Final Four: Going to UConn? Show some imagination
Look, same as Zion, players at UConn have the right to live their life how and where they want to live it. But when someone like Elena Delle Donne leaves UConn to play for home state Delaware – leading the Blue Hens, with an 0-1 all-time record in the NCAA Tournament, to the Sweet 16 as a senior – it’s a cool story. Delaware hasn’t been back to the NCAA Tournament since Delle Donne left. She must feel as much pride in that 2013 Sweet 16 as UConn players feel about their predestined trips to the Final Four.
LeBron James did a professional version of what I’m talking about, leaving the easiness of playing for a super team in Miami, where he’d won two NBA titles in four years, to return to downtrodden Cleveland – and his hometown, Akron – in 2014. The Cavaliers, coming off a 33-49 season, reached four consecutive NBA Finals with LeBron, winning in 2016 as he burst into tears and shouted into a microphone: “Cleveland! This is for you!”
Doyel: I've saved two box scores in my career, and one was a LeBron game
Those are magical moments, because they’re so rare. Who chooses the struggling home team or just stays where they are anymore? Lincoln Riley, born and bred on Big 12 football, leaves Oklahoma last year after five seasons for Southern California. Did he have the right to do that? Of course he did. But were some of us turned off by it? Yeah. Well, I am.
Bowling Green gives Urban Meyer his first head coaching job, and he thanks BGSU by leaving ASAP for Utah two years later. He leaves Utah two years later for Florida, where he wins two national titles, resigns in 2011 “to be with family,” then remembers he has neither heart nor soul, and goes to Ohio State in 2011. From there he climbs ever higher, into the NFL, where he flops in Jacksonville as a country rejoices. Because at our core we admire loyalty, and cringe at people loyal only to money or fame. Bobby Petrino and Lane Kiffin also come to mind.
Back to Deion Sanders, and to what I’ll say again: He has the right to coach where he wants. And leaving Jackson State, after three years, doesn't put Sanders in the same class as Meyer, Petrino, Kiffin or Hugh Freeze. He did so much for Jackson State, things few thought possible there.
But what else could he have accomplished for Jackson State? We’ve never seen a SWAC team in the College Football Playoff. At this rate, we never will.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Deion Sanders made history at Jackson State, but Colorado came calling
