Coach Prime brought a bit of his patented flair to his first official event as the Buffaloes coach.
Less than 24 hours after winning the SWAC championship as the coach of Jackson State, Deion Sanders addressed the media in his first press conference as the new football coach at Colorado.
Speaking to a room full of reporters, Sanders delivered an impassioned speech about what he hopes to do with the Buffaloes, a team that went 1–11 and finished last in the Pac-12 this season. Coach Prime expressed in a rousing monologue that he hoped to completely revamp the program and bring the school back to achieve its ultimate goal: winning.
“Now that I’ve gotten here and I see and I can understand it and I can grasp it, and I can feel it and I can touch it and I can taste it. I truly understand what you want,” Sanders said. “All you want is an opportunity to win. To compete, to dominate. To be among the elite, to be among the best. And darn it, I’m gonna give you that.
“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.”
Sanders, who was officially announced as the new coach at Colorado late Saturday night, touched on a number of topics during the brief news conference. Among one of the subjects he addressed was why he chose to leave Jackson State, an HBCU that he elevated into the national conversation over the last three years as he amassed a 27–5 overall record.
“The thing that alarms me the most is just because I’m leaving Jackson, they think that I’m leaving African Americans. I don’t know if you noticed or not, but I’m Black,” Sanders said. “I can never leave who I am or what I am or how I am or how I go about being that. My calling is for young men, young women, people of all walks of life. Of all social climates and ethnicities. That’s my calling. My calling is not built on a location. It’s built on a destination.
“Now that was good, you’re supposed to clap for that,” Sanders laughed.
Sanders certainly makes wherever he is a prime destination for some of the top recruits in the country, as he’s already begun to prove in Boulder. On Sunday, Coach Prime pointed to his son Shedeur and introduced him to the room of Colorado-based reporters and supporters as “your quarterback.” Shedeur has not yet entered the transfer portal but hinted at the expected move after Saturday’s SWAC championship game.
Colorado and Sanders also landed a commitment from four-star wide receiver Winston Watkins Jr. on Sunday less than 24 hours after it was revealed publicly that the Buffaloes had made the hire. The wideout surely won’t be the last top prospect to make way for Boulder as Coach Prime assured fans Sunday that recruiting moves were already being made as he spoke.