Deion Sanders Just Took Home a Top SI Honor

Not many with 4-8 record would earn Sportsperson of the Year, but Colorado Buffaloes coach just did
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 1, 2023 10:51 AM CST
Meet SI's Sort-of Surprise Sportsperson of the Year
Colorado head coach Deion Sanders responds to questions during a news conference on Aug. 4 in Boulder, Colorado.   (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Former NFL and MLB player Deion Sanders has been named Sports Illustrated's Sportsperson of the Year, a choice that has some cheering and others scratching their heads. "Coach Prime is here, and he's just getting started," the magazine tweeted on Thursday of the 56-year-old ex-cornerback, now head coach for the University of Colorado-Boulder's Buffaloes football team. "In less than a year, Coach Prime has not only transformed a moribund Colorado football program," Sports Illustrated says in its piece announcing the honor. "He's also breathed fresh life into the campus and transformed a community."

The AP notes that Sanders "reinvigorated a fanbase and put a downtrodden football program back on the map" (he took over a team that was 1-11 last year), and the Buffaloes did come out strong at the start of the season, winning their first three games. But after that streak, the team lost eight of their final nine games, finishing the season 4-8—which is why some aren't sure how Sanders earned the distinction from SI, reports Fox News. "AI must have wrote this in September," one commenter snarked on X.

Still, the SI piece touches on the possible "Prime Effect" brought by Sanders' arrival, with Black or African-American applicants to the school up more than 80% year over year, sold-out home games all season, and September sales via the team's online store up 2,544% over that period in 2022. "It has that 1990s energy all over again," says the owner of a bar not far from the university's Folsom Field. Read SI's full piece on Sanders here. (More Deion Sanders stories.)

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