Welcome to Deadspin’s The Sports Nihilist, where all is for naught and we are but accidental jolts of electrified meat stuck to the surface of a rock in an indifferent universe. Fuck you.
The current coverage of Colorado football coach Deion Sanders couldn’t be better if Eric Hill wrote it himself. “See Coach Prime. See Coach Prime coach. Funny, funny, Coach Prime.” There’s little substance beyond covering the day-to-day because the day-to-day is so entertaining.
On this week’s episode of fall camp, Coach Prime scolded members of his team who didn’t turn a routine practice skirmish into a riot, saying, “If one fights, we all fight.” His, umm, approach shows an overt disregard for consequences and accountability — and it’s standard operating procedure.
Whether he’s forcing a full-on exodus of players, or trying to amputate his foot ASAP so he’s ready for the season, it’s a refreshing(?) take on rule-breaking that’s already upset the apple cart.
Coach Prime does things differently from his peers, and is being covered like he’s college football’s Walter White. Never mind that a terminal disease was the impetus for the latter to break bad, nor that he became a meth kingpin who killed a kid. None of that matters because Walter White, like Coach Prime, has palettes of money.
Brand awareness and endless self promotion chart the path to riches, and riches lead to happiness, and happiness leads to anger, and anger leads to pain, and pain leads to suffering. (I think that’s how the quote goes, right?)
I’m not going to knock Coach Prime’s hustle though. In fact, I’ve already started microdosing with narcissism in hopes that I, too, can be successful regardless of the cost. You only get one life, and why spend it as if someone is keeping a ledger of our actions? Nobody is, other than maybe the police and the government, but they’re all fascists, so they can go fuck themselves.
And Coach Prime is all about telling institutions to go fuck themselves — the NCAA, the coaching fraternity, Jaskson State, HBCUs. I cannot wait for the Coach Prime impersonators and imposters to pop up like a field of GOP candidates. Who will be Coach Prime’s Meatball Ron? Will one of Coach Prime’s assistant coaches turn on him like Mike Pence after Buffs’ players storm the opposing locker room?
That also assumes he has assistant coaches, because this is the Coach Prime Show (now streaming on Amazon), and Coach Prime is the only one who matters. Other than his kid, we only hear about his players when he’s cutting them, or overhauling the roster. They are in service to Coach Prime’s ego, and Coach Prime’s endgame, which is Coach Prime’s ego.
Coach Prime is all about results, and how Colorado, or his next team, gets there is irrelevant. So what if there are only 20 of the 83 scholarship players left from the 2022 season? Those players were, by definition, losers. Yes, I know Deion is lopping off toes in spite of his coaching future, but I’d hack off my pinky for $1 million right now, no questions asked, medical bills be damned. It takes sacrifice, blood, sweat, and complete devotion to Deion Sanders to get ahead, both in football and life.
Incidentally, football is life, and since nothing matters in life like life, football is the only thing that matters. (I seriously think I could do this for 250 pages, send a copy to Coach Prime’s agent, and Deion would slap his name on it, no questions asked.)
We’ve seen hucksters in college football before, but never like this. Coach Prime is more than a brand; he’s a lifestyle. What that means, I don’t know, but it sounds cool enough to be monetized.