Coach Prime saying the quiet part out loud.
Deion Sanders has only been in Bolder, Colorado as the head coach of the University of Colorado football team for a few months now, and he’s already turning the college football world upside down.
Sanders, or Prime Time, or Coach Prime, if you will, has never been afraid to speak his mind, and he showed that within the first couple of days he was on campus, when he basically told the returning players from Colorado’s 1-11 campaign last year that he was bringing in a ton of transfers, and if they wanted to leave, they were more than welcome to:
“We’re not here to compete but to win. Not to show up but to show out. Not to be among the rest but to be the absolute best. We’re coming to work, not to play. We’re coming to kill, not to kick it. Baby, I got to believe that we’re coming.
We got a few positions already taken care of, because I’m bringing my luggage with me… and it’s Louis. Okay, 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 comin’ and when I get here it’s gonna be changed. So I want y’all to get ready, to go ahead and jump in that portal, and do whatever you’re gonna get, because the more of you jump in, the more room we make, because we’re bringing in kids who are smart, say that, tough.”
And boy was his message heard, as he saw 14 players transfer out in the span of one day.
Now Sanders is speaking his mind once again, as he recently explained at a speaking engagement why he thinks kids are soft nowadays, putting much of the blame on the parents:
“Kids are different because parents are different. Parents are babying everyone right now. There’s no tough, hard-nosed parents anymore.
The reason is because that most of us have done better than our parents. And we look back at our lives and say, ‘You know what, when I’m a parent, I’m going to treat my kid so much better. I’m going to treat my kid so much better.’ I’m going to make sure I get my kid that Big Wheel and that Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots that he really wanted.”
However, Deion says that is detrimental to their growth as young men and women:
“You want it to be better, and doing that, you don’t even understand you’re negating what makes who you are. What makes you tough, and who you are, is because of what you dealt with as a kid. What makes you firm in who you are is because of what you’ve been through… and you came through it. You may be smelling like smoke, but you came through it.
You don’t want your kids to go through that and that’s when we cripple kids, because we’re babying them. Every time they fall down as a kid, you pick them back up. No, let them fall and sit there, right son?
I was a different type of father, I really was. I wanted my kids, because we had wealth, I wanted them to have some to have something tenacity, some toughness and some mental toughness, capabilities, so when the world hit them upside the head they ain’t crying for dada. They’re too old to be hollering ‘dada.’ They’re 27, 28 years old.”
They say tough times make tough people, and it sounds like Deion fully embraces that mentality.
Coach Prime won’t be popular with everyone, but it sounds like those boys are gonna leave Colorado as men, whether they play NFL football or not.
You can check out the full conversation below:
Back in September he made a similar argument:
“It’s starts at home… we’re so soft with our kids and we’re so guarding them and protecting their feelings and emotions. We’re not raising dogs, we’re raising cats. We’re raising mama’s boys and daddy’s dream kid instead of getting on these kids and making sure they fight for what they want.”
