Deion Sanders doesn’t play tardiness. But man, does he play favorites.
Coach Prime brands himself a disciplinarian, publicly preaching to CU football players the importance of academics, citizenship, respect, gentlemanly behavior, faith, family, punctuality and responsibility.
The problem, at least from what the folks inside the Grading The Week offices have observed, is that he doesn’t enforce those verities for everyone in his locker room.
The favored few can do darn well what they want, how they want, when they want. Walk the runway in Paris during the start of winter team meetings in Boulder, for instance.
“We don’t play tardiness,” the elder Sanders told his team, via Reach The People’s YouTube feed, to officially kick off their 2024 winter workouts earlier this week.
Good message. Right message. A disciplinarian’s message.
But here’s the thing: At the time, neither of his sons, two of the best handful of players on the Buffs’ roster, were actually in the room at the time to hear it.
And that’s the part that drives the GTW staffers a little nuts.
Shedeur and Shilo catwalking in Paris — B+
Buffs QB Shedeur Sanders and older brother Shilo, one of Buffs’ starting safeties, began the week 4,800 miles away from CU’s Champions Center. Why? The pair were modeling —  yes, modeling — menswear from Louis Vuitton’s Fall-Winter 2024 collection in Paris, the style capital of the world.
The brothers Sanders showcased American West-themed attire created by entertainer Pharrell Williams, featuring an eclectic pallet of greens, browns and oranges — a lot of orange, actually, which brought a little sartorial flashback to the Sanders brothers’ recruiting visit to CSU many years back. Shedeur’s ensemble in particular, with its bright orange vest, resembled what could charitably be described as upscale hunting gear.
And while the kids in the GTW offices fully admit to being about as vogue as a garden hose, we’ll also happily tip our caps to BoCo’s most nattily attired duo. They’re handsome young men with professional football futures, social media brands and burgeoning name, image and likeness (NIL) portfolios, taking advantage of a chance to participate on one of the biggest stages in the world for one of the marquee names in fashion. The audience in Paris reportedly included the likes of rapper Lil Yachty, actor Bradley Cooper and actress Carey Mulligan, all of whom we now expect to see on the sidelines at Folsom Field this fall.
For Shedeur and Shilo, it was a pretty cool look.
Deion Sanders’ double standard — D
But for Coach Prime, and for the Buffs’ football program, it’s a curious look, to say the least.
Papa Sanders is a proponent, on-record, of student-athletes being able to monetize themselves where they can, while they can.
And yet you also can’t shake the feeling that if a random, say, linebacker whose last name wasn’t Sanders, Hunter or Seaton requested a pass to miss the first team meeting of 2024, they’d be running steps from now until Palm Sunday.
It was Deion, after all, who kicked a player out of the CU weight room last winter for fashion-related purposes — namely, wearing the wrong color socks.
Many college coaches, even the “name” ones, throw out different strike zones for different stars and different situations. Happens everywhere.
But when one of the worst-kept secrets in BoCo is how different the balls and strikes for Sanders’ kids have been compared to almost anybody else on Coach Prime’s roster, the timing of this CU catwalking doesn’t exactly help.
And if you’re one of the many Buffs newcomers getting a taste of Boulder life for the first time, you’ve gotta be asking yourself this: If Shedeur and Shilo are too good to sit through the first team meeting of the year, what else are they too good for?
