Deion Sanders is SI's 2023 Sportsperson of the Year

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The hex of Sports Illustrated is already showing itself. Problem is, there are a lot of apologists still doing mental gymnastics to make his tenure look great and ground breaking. Expect year two to see the Buffaloes fold like a cheap suit.

I was hoping things would turn out better for Prime and the Buffalo Football program.
 






Time will tell if Sanders' coaching strategy works (I doubt it - nepotism, lack of experience and lack of discipline rarely succeed), but I think he deserves this award. Some Colorado games attracted extremely high ratings from nowhere. I know I watched a few before they tanked. On top of that, he basically took a sharp stick and poked it square into the middle of the NIL/Portal issue that all of us are bitching about and pulled the discussion forward. He the challenged the stale college coaching. paradigm. Bravo.
 

They do have AI written pieces, so maybe there was a glitch. He took an 1-11 team and improved to 4-7. Multiple coaches did better.
 

The whole Coach Prime/Colorado thing has been a fascinating storyline this year. Crazy it ended up where it did after the start to the season and all the hype that came with the early season wins.

Will be interesting to see what they do this off season to try and improve on this past season. I would assume Sanders will be very aggressive once again in trying to bring in players though probably not to the insane level they did this past off season.
 




But who is FanNation’s Sportsperson of the year???
 


Panthadad2 said:
Time will tell if Sanders' coaching strategy works (I doubt it - nepotism, lack of experience and lack of discipline rarely succeed), but I think he deserves this award. Some Colorado games attracted extremely high ratings from nowhere. I know I watched a few before they tanked. On top of that, he basically took a sharp stick and poked it square into the middle of the NIL/Portal issue that all of us are bitching about and pulled the discussion forward. He the challenged the stale college coaching. paradigm. Bravo.
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You're 100% correct, but I think this is more condemning of our society and its celebrity worship than anything. The way he went about negatively altering the lives of athletes who were once part of the program by showing them the door and how he poorly he treated and talked about his mercenaries when things got tough was egregious. The outcome was predictable, the man deserves no praise and his methodology should serve as a warning to anyone in the future thinking of using their status as a path to success. He's the cfb equivalent of Elon Musk. He's going to burn himself to the ground with his own arrogance. And if Deion takes off once his kid is gone, which I fully expect, it'll also expose him as the grifter he comes across as. Colorado is going to be gutted for years.
 



There have to be literally thousands of vastly more inspirational stories of players or coaches overcoming adversity but Deion as a lightning rod gets the page views and eyeballs. Sad. Narcissism generally ends poorly for all involved.
 

Remember when Colorado football was going to be as good as the Bill McCarthy/Gary Barnett era. That aged well!
 


mngg11 said:
You're 100% correct, but I think this is more condemning of our society and its celebrity worship than anything. The way he went about negatively altering the lives of athletes who were once part of the program by showing them the door and how he poorly he treated and talked about his mercenaries when things got tough was egregious. The outcome was predictable, the man deserves no praise and his methodology should serve as a warning to anyone in the future thinking of using their status as a path to success. He's the cfb equivalent of Elon Musk. He's going to burn himself to the ground with his own arrogance. And if Deion takes off once his kid is gone, which I fully expect, it'll also expose him as the grifter he comes across as. Colorado is going to be gutted for years.
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Most people have an issue with challenging the status quo. I do not. Heck, we have a coach that does that. That said, in the long run, his lack of discipline and nepotism, if not improved, are probably too much to offset the positives he brings. Even with that, the University of Colorado was right in hiring the man. They have sucked for a long time.

I predict Colorado goes bowling next near after the move to the Big 12.
 

Panthadad2 said:
Time will tell if Sanders' coaching strategy works (I doubt it - nepotism, lack of experience and lack of discipline rarely succeed), but I think he deserves this award. Some Colorado games attracted extremely high ratings from nowhere. I know I watched a few before they tanked. On top of that, he basically took a sharp stick and poked it square into the middle of the NIL/Portal issue that all of us are bitching about and pulled the discussion forward. He the challenged the stale college coaching. paradigm. Bravo.
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Just read an article in the Athletic about their pending demise because their line play blows. He realizes thst has to drastically improve. Will it?

The article quoted Pac10 coaches anonymously and correctly said their skill guys can hang with anyone.

After their judicious start, The Athletic ran an article about how Prime could be an NFL HC someday, if he stuck with it.

I’m glad he lambasting NIL and love the irony of him being the face of the anti-NIL movement.
 

MNVCGUY said:
The whole Coach Prime/Colorado thing has been a fascinating storyline this year. Crazy it ended up where it did after the start to the season and all the hype that came with the early season wins.

Will be interesting to see what they do this off season to try and improve on this past season. I would assume Sanders will be very aggressive once again in trying to bring in players though probably not to the insane level they did this past off season.
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That type of wholesale roster change is only allowed in a coach’s first year.

He has to follow the same rules everyone else does now.
 


SeaBee_Gopher said:
Does anyone still work at SI other than AI and robots?
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Probably not many. SI appears to be a sad case of the worst kind of media merger - the private equity buyout of the name by a "brand holding company" that doesn't give a hoot about anything but cranking out whatever garbage is most profitable under that legacy brand name.

Most of the kind of journalism SI used to do (along with many of their old writers) is over at The Athletic now.
 

Gopher_In_NYC said:
That type of wholesale roster change is only allowed in a coach’s first year.

He has to follow the same rules everyone else does now.
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True, but he can certainly try to force people out to make enough room for the guys he wants to bring in. If Shadeur comes back he only has one more year with his kid so you can bet he will want to do everything possible to win next year before he does whatever it is he is going to do once his kid is in the NFL.
 


bleedsmaroonandgold said:
Coach Prime was savvy enough to stop at 4 wins so he didn't have to face the embarrassment of risking going to a bowl game at 5-7. Clutch move!
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Ha....guessing there might have been some other 5-7 teams with an APR a little better than Colorado's which was in the 90s so chances are they would have been safe from getting an invite.
 

Gopher_In_NYC said:
Just read an article in the Athletic about their pending demise because their line play blows. He realizes thst has to drastically improve. Will it?

The article quoted Pac10 coaches anonymously and correctly said their skill guys can hang with anyone.

After their judicious start, The Athletic ran an article about how Prime could be an NFL HC someday, if he stuck with it.

I’m glad he lambasting NIL and love the irony of him being the face of the anti-NIL movement.
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I agree on the line play. That's a question mark. Let's face it, it might be difficult to recruit top cornfed o-line types (available to Colorado) to hip hop culture. They require cohesion and years of development. Sanders knows this. He played behind some absolute beast lineman with the Cowboys.
 


How take:
D Sanders did not improve Colorado this year.


Last year non conference they lost to:
Playoff TCU
9 win Minnesota
10 win Air Force

They went 1-8 in conference, beating 9th place finisher 4-8 cal

This year they beat
5-7 Nebraska
5-7 TCU
5-7 Colorado state

They went 1-8 in conference beating 9th place finisher 2-7 Arizona state.


To me, that’s more a schedule getting marketably easier than showing a significant improvement. Especially when you consider this year they played and lost to 2-7 wazzu and 2-7 Stanford.
Last year they had a harder conference schedule by missing 1-8 Stanford on the schedule.
 

A once-great publication that is now a JOKE chose a complete JOKE as "Sportsman" of the year. Sanders and his cultists, of which there are several here, humiliate themselves with every utterance and action. Any non-worship of him and his 'methods' leads to cultists trying to convince the unbelievers that they are wrong to not be in the cult.
 

GopherWeatherGuy said:
I had no idea SI still existed
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They really don't.

They're a brand you can just buy if you want it and use it however. Whomever owns it is just milking it for whatever last cent they can get out of the brand:

Sports Illustrated Nutrition

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED™ Nutrition powers your active lifestyle with clean, professional-grade nutrition.
sportsillustratednutrition.com
 


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