The Deion Sanders Experience

For a brief moment, on Saturday afternoon in Boulder, Deion Sanders is invisible. Hard to believe, I know. Since he took over as head coach at the University of Colorado, Sanders has become college football’s centrifugal force, the planet around which attentions circle on loop after thirsty loop. The Buffaloes were on Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff the past two weeks, and will host ESPN’s College GameDay this coming weekend. Sanders’s every word—whether spoken in press conferences or in private locker-room meetings—seems to not only get filmed, but to go instantly viral. The 56-year-old has become such a larger-than-life presence that countless adults appear to have collectively decided, without second-guessing it, that we will henceforth address him as “Coach Prime.”