Colin Cowherd was as guilty as anyone of talking Deion Sanders nonstop at the start of the college football season, and he doesn’t regret it one bit despite Colorado’s slow finish.
“Deion didn’t win enough,” Cowherd acknowledged on The Herd on Tuesday. “But I will say this in support of him, I thought September Deion, Colorado was great. It was new, it was fresh, it was fun. I don’t regret for a second leaning into it. I love new stuff. They were the most-watched team in college football for five weeks. They were a little bit like a TikTok trend, wild for about 24 hours, and then they fade into irrelevance. But that’s OK.”
While some fans may believe sports media personalities ought to be predictive and only champion outright greatness, Cowherd believes it’s more than OK to get onboard a hype train now and then.
“In September we all got a little over our skis, we bought into the hype. It’s OK,” he added. “We fall in love with a lot of things. People, teams, players, businesses, opportunities. It’s OK. Go ahead and be grumpy, never fall in love with anybody.”
And Cowherd expects that watching Sanders try to figure it out at Colorado is an equally interesting part of the story. Even if the chatter has died down amid another losing season in Boulder.
“Deion Sanders is realizing what all Colorado football coaches eventually realize,” Cowherd said. “It’s hard to build a great roster in Boulder, the athletic department doesn’t have a lot of money and support, the state does not provide a lot of great high school football players.”
Sanders may well turn out to be the next great college football coach. That doesn’t change for Cowherd simply because of a losing season his first year in the Rockies.
“Nick Saban lost to Louisiana-Monroe his first year at Alabama. This stuff is hard,” Cowherd argued. “Society is filled with people on the sidelines taking shots at successful people. ‘It’s so easy!’ No it’s not, it’s hard.”
While fans were tuning into Colorado football games every Saturday and Sanders was the talk of the sports world, it would be a mistake for a national host like Cowherd to not talk Deion. And like the rest, he moved off the story once it went stale.
In a crowded landscape, though, you have to win to get attention. And you have to win to get recruits.
The next chapter for Sanders will be most interesting, because you only get that first impression once.
[The Herd]
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.