Deion Sanders and the Future of College Football

Football coaches, as a rule, are not the world’s greatest talkers. There are exceptions (Reporter: “What do you think of your team’s execution, coach?” John McKay, purportedly: “I’m in favor of it.”), though most have mastered the art of empty blather. Bill Belichick sometimes just grunts. But I would happily listen to Deion Sanders, the most exciting college football coach to come along in years, talk about almost anything. He usually does. His team’s success: “We smell like winning around here.” His preferred outdoor activities: “I’m fly while I fish, but I don’t fly-fish.” One might say he deserves his own reality show, and Amazon Prime agrees; he already has one on the streaming service, which jockeys for footage with the three YouTubers who embed with the team and who document things like Sanders’s health issues (blood clots in his foot forced him to have two toes amputated) and Sanders’s trip to get a pedicure with his son. “I’ve got eight toes,” he announced. “Do I get a discount?”