'I'm coming': Coach Prime gets right to the point in first Colorado team meeting

Deion Sanders is coming.

If the Colorado football players didn't know it before their first team meeting with their new head coach Sunday, they certainly knew it by the end of it.

"I'm coming," Coach Prime told his players no fewer than 27 times during a 15-minute meeting the day after he agreed to become the Buffaloes coach after three seasons with Jackson State.

He used the phrase to punctuate sentences and to emphasize the notion that the culture of a team that finished 1-11 this year and had just one winning season (not counting the COVID-shortened 2020 season) since joining the Pac-12 Conference in 2011 will change.

"I just want you to know, I'm coming. Not to compete, but to win. Not to show up, but to show out. Not to be amongst the rest, but to be the best. I'm coming. I'm flat out coming."

Sanders uttered the phrase when he informed the players that they'd no longer be able to wear hats, hoodies or earrings at team meetings.

"Everybody's gonna look like everybody. I'm coming," he said.

He said it when telling them that complacency and mediocrity would no be tolerated.

"Our kids would go absolute crazy to be in the situation that you in, but you don't respect it. I'm coming," Sanders said. "You don't want it. I'm coming. Some of y'all don't even think you deserve it. I'm coming."

He used it when letting them know in no uncertain terms that many of them would be losing their spots on the team. Not only is Sanders coming, so are a bunch of new players, including his son, current Jackson State quarterback Shedeur Sanders.

"We have a few positions already taken care of because I'm bringing my luggage with me, and it’s Louis [Vuitton]. I'm coming. It ain’t gonna be no more of the mess that these wonderful fans, the student body and some of your parents have put up with for probably two decades now. I’m coming, and when I get here, it’s gonna be change. So I want y’all to get ready to go ahead and jump in the portal and do whatever you’re gonna get because if more of you jump in, the more room you make.”

For much of the meeting, which was later posted to YouTube by another of Sanders' sons, Deion Sanders Jr., most of the players watched stone faced. When Sanders prompted them to shout, "I'm coming!" for a social media post, it took two takes for a response enthusiastic enough for Coach Prime, who wrapped up his portion of the meeting with a request.

"If they ask you what he said at the meeting, what went down, I want you to say but two words: Flat out, he just said, 'I'm coming,'" Sanders said. "And everybody know what that mean when I come."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.