Colorado head football coach Deion Sanders explained his controversial remarks on social media last week, saying he needs to do better but was bored, didn’t mean any harm and was misinterpreted in one case.
Sanders made two remarks last week on social media that gained more than 37 million views combined on X, formerly Twitter, while also triggering commentaries on ESPN’s “SportsCenter” and “Undisputed” on Fox Sports about whether his conduct was appropriate.
“I gotta do better on that and not ride with it, but I was bored,” Sanders said in an interview published over the weekend on Thee Pregame Show, one of Sanders’ favored YouTube channels. “I was bored, and I didn’t say nothing hurtful. I don’t attack people.”
In one case, Sanders said he was coming to the defense of his quarterback son Shedeur. A person on X with fewer than 300 followers had instructed Deion Sanders to “Tell yo son stop act like he the coldest out here then put up a 4-8 season.”
Sanders responded to that Wednesday in front of his 1.8 million followers.
“He will be a top 5 pick,” wrote Sanders, whose team finished with a 4-8 record in his first year last year. “Where yo son going ? Lololol I got time today. Lololol.”
Deion Sanders didn’t apologize for that remark, saying “that was real” in the interview published over the weekend. Shedeur Sanders is expected to be a first-round NFL draft pick in 2025.
In the other case, Sanders appeared to express amusement with a put-down remark made by somebody else (not Deion Sanders) to a player at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee named Jaheim Ward.
Sanders said he didn’t mean to ridicule Ward, but was following the verbal exchange on social media after Ward had mocked the statistical production of Colorado walk-on receiver Kaleb Mathis.
“Bruh you had 38 yards last year stop trying to down play somebody,” Ward wrote to Mathis on X.
Another party then jumped in to defend Mathis and posted Ward’s own stats from 2023, which included only eight solo tackles.
“Man go take a seat,” the Colorado supporter wrote as he posted Ward’s stats.
That’s when Sanders jumped in and responded to the latter remark with “Lawd Jesus.”
“I try my best to refrain, but like when you posted like stats, I said, `Lawd Jesus,’ like dang, he really went at him, like he really shot him,” Deion Sanders said in the interview. “That’s really what I meant, and I think that was taken wrong. I think that was taken sideways or something else.”
An article in The Athletic last week revisited how Sanders overhauled his roster last year after he inherited a 1-11 team from 2022. One of the many Colorado players Sanders effectively ran off was Xavier Smith, who transferred to Austin Peay and was quoted in the article criticizing how Sanders handled the situation. He said Sanders was “destroying guys’ confidence and belief in themselves.”
Shedeur Sanders than came to his dad’s defense on X, saying he didn’t remember Smith and that “Bro had to be very mid (average) at best.”
Mathis also jabbed at Smith on X, leading Ward of Austin Peay to defend his own teammate.
Deion Sanders said he didn’t understand why the article was revisiting this a year later with Smith, whom he said he barely remembered.
“You go find somebody to badmouth us that ain’t there with us − why you ain’t talking abot the team you with or getting ready to go to?” Deion Sanders asked in the intrfview. “Why us?”
Sanders said he never trash-talked on the field as a player. “But every once in a while I want to play, you know, and then, I get petty, you know, every once I a while,” Deion Sanders said.
“I don’t lose no sleep over it,’ he said in the interview. “I could have a tumultuous day in the eyes of others but to me it was a good day. Because you know why? They talking. They talking. They talking.”
Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com