Avoiding Prime Time? Don’t Expect To See Deion Sanders-Coached JSU Play Any Power 5’s

Jackson State head coach Deion Sanders shocked the college football world when he landed the nation’s top prospect, cornerback Travis Hunter, earlier this month. But don’t expect to see the top recruit attempt to lock down any top teams. Sanders isn’t interested in getting bullied by superior competition in exchange for a check.

“That's not worth it to me. To me, that's the ultimate sell out to children,” Sanders recently said during an appearance on The Rich Eisen Show.

Sanders, who led Jackson State to an 11-2 record this fall and an appearance in the Cricket Celebration Bowl, is aiming to turn Jackson State into an FCS power, rather than a perennial tune-up for Power 5 schools. “The goal is to dominate where you are, not win, but to dominate where you are,” Sanders told Rich Eisen. “Then, you look towards down the line to scheduling some of those games. Right now, those games are a financial beatdown. That's what I call them. That's what some HBCUs choose to do. I'm going to go to these various schools, get my butt kicked, but I'm walking out of there with $750,000 or a million dollars.”

For Prime Time, the risk of playing Hunter, or any of his other players, on a less than even playing field outweighs any potential reward – even if it is six figures: “I know I'm not going to win, I'm going to lose three or four players to injury and you're going to humiliate my team and I'm going to have to build them back up the next week to play again. That doesn't make any sense to me.”

All these years later, who would’ve thought it Must Not be the Money for Neon Deion?

 

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