DENVER – Nobody has lived on the edge of the risk-reward nature of sports more than Deion Sanders over the years.
One place the Colorado coach won’t go — gambling on the college game, the likes of which has generated a scandal inside the very conference his team resides. Wagering has jumped to the forefront of college football as Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby won a court order early last week that restored his eligibility and set aside a ban by the NCAA for betting on pro and college sports. Colorado plays Big 12 rival Texas Tech on Oct. 3 as part of homecoming festivities.
Recommended Videos
“Somebody’s gambling on a sport they’re playing? You don’t think something’s wrong with that?” Sanders said in a recent interview with The Associated Press and before the latest court ruling with Sorsby. “Just say that to yourself: This guy on my team is gambling on the sport, in the competition, that we’re about to go out there and have. Something’s wrong that.”
Sanders has plenty of thoughts on refining the game in this day and age of the volatile transfer portal and lucrative name, image and likeness deals. His takes include a salary cap in an effort to even the NIL playing field, hiring a retired coach as commissioner (a Nick Saban type ), instituting some sort of an age limit, expand the College Football Playoff to 24 teams and, of course, a hard pass when it comes to betting (he's talked to his squad about this topic).
“The game is still the game,” Sanders said. “The game is just positioned differently. Money’s involved, and any time money’s involved people tend to migrate to what they think they can get out of it, instead of what they could put into it — and that’s unfortunate.”
Bladder cancer diagnosis
A year ago, Sanders was going through treatment for bladder cancer, which included having a section of his intestine reconstructed to function as a bladder. This being Men’s Health Month, he's working with Depend underwear to encourage regular checkups (and launching a program titled “Depend Wake Up Calls” that allows consumers to receive video messages from Sanders through June).
Earlier this spring, Sanders stepped away from the team for a few days as he dealt with blood clots. But he said he's “feeling great. I've got my old swagger back.”
Along with it, a new outlook, which includes actually taking vacation time. Sanders recently partnered on a beachfront property in St. Croix with his son, Shedeur, who's entering his second season as a quarterback with the Cleveland Browns.
“I never would’ve done that, because I don’t go anywhere,” the 58-year-old Sanders said. “I'm stepping out, just living life.”
Sanders missed football camps last summer in Boulder as he went through cancer treatments. The Buffaloes finished with a 3-9 mark a year after making a bowl game behind Shedeur Sanders and Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter.
This offseason, a more hands-on version of Deion Sanders.
“I have everybody in that locker room because we said we want them,” he said. “Because I sat there and watched tape on them and said, ‘That’s who I want, that’s what I want. Let’s go get them.’”
The new landscape of college football
Sanders found it funny that his heavy reliance on the transfer portal once drew so many raised eyebrows.
“Now, everybody’s doing the same thing that I did,” he said. “But it was crazy back then, right?”
He's seen and heard the plans from conferences — and the legislation proposals from lawmakers — on how to adapt college football in this new landscape. It’s a lot to untangle, which is why he advocates for an authoritative figure to help oversee the sport.
“A guy like Coach Saban and some of the other coaches that have walked away from the game not because they can’t coach anymore but because they were fed up with how things are operating,” he said.
Sanders also would be in favor of implementing a salary cap (see: NFL).
“So you can really have a consistency with the game,” Sanders said. “The thing about the pro game, everybody gets to spend the same amount of money. It’s who is crafty in regard to business. College football isn't like that. You may have a team that's spent $40 million playing against a team who spent $10 million. You darn well know the outcome in that game.”
That leads him to his next point — a potential age cap.
“You can’t have a 30-year-old man playing against a 21-year old man and think it’s fair,” he said. “Should be a transfer rule as well. You’re teaching kids not to fight through adversity when you're having kids able to transfer two or three or four times.”
As for NIL, he momentarily pondered if anything might have been different for him had a similar system been in place when he was at Florida State.
“It probably wouldn’t have (changed),” said Sanders, a college and pro football hall of famer. “I've had a pretty good run. I’m still running, too — still high stepping. I’m probably in the third quarter of this game (of life) and we’re winning. We’re up by about 21. I’m loving life.”
___
AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football