September 25, 2023 • 7 mins
Deion Sanders and Colorado have been polarizing figures in college football this season. Is racism to blame, or just College Football's scarcity issue?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You ready to check your feelings at the door? Check
it out. Check this is am I Reister or am
I Row. We're bringing you facts and only the truth. Now,
am I Reister or am I Row? There's a clear
backlash to the Deon Sanders hype and an even bigger
backlash to the backlash. But what's going on here, let's
(00:25):
talk about it. If you're a millennial college football fan,
this message isn't for you because Deon Sanders has been
famous your entire life. You watched him be a four
year starter at Florida State. His last two years there,
he was the best player on a team that never
left the top ten. You watched him be a first
round pick and go to Pro Bowls in Atlanta, win
Super Bowls in defensive MVP in San Francisco, in Dallas.
(00:47):
He's likely a top three corner and top three kick
returner of your lifetime. And if you're a baseball fan,
you watched him play in Atlanta, New York, the Bay
Cincinnati washed him. Hit over five hundred in the World
Series with five stolen bases in four games in Atlanta,
play two games in one day in two sports. This
man led the league in triples despite being only available
(01:07):
for sixty percent of the season. And Dion's been the
start of the show for almost five decades now. He's
the Elvis of sports. He doesn't just move the needle,
he hypercharges it. And if you're of a certain age,
you understand why Big Noon Kickoff is following him around
the country like a puppy dog. They're in the attention business,
and it's the same reason Notre Dame gets a TV
(01:27):
channel all to themselves. And that's the common ground that
we should all be able to agree on that, for
better or for worse, there's an extreme appetite to consume
all things related to Deon Sanders. Think about this in
food terms. There wasn't a fast food chicken sandwich war
because people weren't already eating chicken sandwiches. College football is
a business, and the market picks and chooses what people
(01:49):
want to see. It may not be what you think
you want to see, but there's no college football capital
that you can storm if you don't get your way.
But to be fair to people who are sick of
Dion and Colorado, who say that the needle is getting
moved by people who aren't just fans, of college football,
but people who are fans of the celebrity and getting
caught up in whatever's trending. Truth is, Dion is growing
(02:10):
the game, and he's making tons of new college football fans.
And what's a sending them for a brand new person?
A baby? And babies are a lot of things. They're cute,
they represent hope for a bright future, but they're loud,
they're emotional and needy, and that they believe that the
world begins and ends with them and their mom and dad.
So this last weekend you had a bunch of Toddler
(02:32):
Colorado fans running around saying, my dad could beat up
your dad in regards to Oregon. But what they do
know is that they love their dad. They've seen them
do wonderful things. But what they don't know is that
the other dad that they're talking about spent the last
decade as a professional buffalo hunting maniac. And Dion's fans
are gonna learn what every new college football fan learns.
(02:53):
The field tells the truth. And just because you can
get on stage with Lil Wayne and nine AM and
Boulder Colorado on game day doesn't mean that your offensive
line can stop some of the best defensive linemen in
the country from making your quarterbacks life. Hell, Dion knew this.
Though the roster's not ready. In the end, it's worth
it to deal with these new fans. The ends will
(03:13):
justify the means. I promise you that there's nothing like
college football, and seeing Colorado games sold out at home
on the road is absolutely incredible. But just because these
fans are new doesn't mean that some of their complaints
aren't rooted in the truth. Let's get back to the
backlash to the backlash, And if you think I'm gonna
say it's boilerplate racism, you're wrong. College football has a
(03:35):
scarcity issue. There are only a handful of teams that
can make the playoffs. There are only a handful of
game changing recruits. There are only a handful of excused
upun prime time television spots. The entire point of the
sport is to scratch and claw your way to the
top of the mountain, and then once you're there, turn
around and kick the people that are trying to get
(03:56):
on your level right in the face. Guys like Dan
Laying at Oregon, Marcus Freeman at Notre Dame, Ryan Day
at Ohio State, Mike Norvela at Florida State are on
their way up that mountain. Guys like Nick Saban, Dabo Sweeney,
and Kirby Smart are already there. And then Colorado slogan
is we coming, And what Deon Sanders means by that
(04:17):
is we coming up to that mountain and when we
get up there, we're gonna throw your ass down it.
Nobody that isn't a Colorado fan, a Dion fan, or
a fan of the team that will never reach the
top themselves wants to see that happen. And real college
football fans know that this movement has substance. Do you
think the best athletes on the earth want to go
into Tuscaloosa, Alabama because the pristine beaches and majestic waterfalls
(04:42):
know they want to be on the biggest stage. And
wherever Deon Sanders goes, he brings a pretty damn big
stage with him. And that stage that Dion brings makes
the people aware of the scarcity of college football fill
a whole lot of fear and a whole lot of jealousy.
So yes, people are rooting for Deon Sanders to fail
because his success somehow means that they're falling down that
(05:03):
college football cliff side. And they aren't just rooting for
Dionnefeld because he's black. They want the same failure for
Lincoln Riley, Steve Sarkisian, Billy Napier, the whitest of the whites.
But we'd be fools not to address the elephant in
the room. Dion Sanders is black. He's proud of being black.
More importantly, he's proud of being a non sanitized version
(05:23):
of a black man. He's proud to be himself. He's
extremely outspoken about his desire to see Black Americans prosper.
And the objective truth in this country is that black
men and women have been systematically excluded from sharing in
all the privileges that this wonderful country, with all of
its wonderful ideals, has been allowed to some of its
(05:43):
lesser melonized citizens. Things are better than that they've ever been,
and I'm grateful for that. But the college football coaching
profession is one of those things that you'd have to
be an actual road wearing classman to say has made
too much progress. You have to understand how the exclusion
nature of college football, whose entire point is to get
yours and keep others from getting theirs so happens to
(06:06):
look and feel to black fans that are used to
that particular mindset being the exact delivery method for issues
of racism out in the real world. From an outside perspective,
you have a successful black man that doesn't drink, doesn't cuss,
loves Jesus, loves his mama, and uses his platform to
promote hard work and education to the youth of this country.
(06:27):
And he's making waves in a profession where not many
people of power look like him and nobody in power
acts like him at all. And the negative response is
loud and very critical. Excuse me if I don't blame
people for feeling like that this is a race issue,
even if that's not the whole truth. And I know
I'm gonna get people in my mentioned saying I'm just
sticken enough for dim because I'm black too. They're been
(06:51):
there every single time I've mentioned Dion Sanders name. But
I'm not worried about those people because they're not in
positions of power. In fact, it's because those people have
never had any power or control over a single thing
in their life that they get mad when they turn
on the TV and they see an interracial couple in
a Mountain Dew commercial, So of course they're going to
be mad when every channel on their television is talking
(07:12):
about coach Prime. Hopefully this helped explain the disconnect, because
new college football fans and the ones that have been
in the trenches have about as much as in common
as an infant and a boomer outside of the fact
that they both get a little cranky. College football isn't
inherently racist, and even though its structure has plenty of
evidence that systematic racism is at play, it also boasts
(07:35):
as good of a merit based system as any industry
in America. Most people that hate Dion Sanders don't hate
him because he's a threatening black man. They just hate
him because he's threatening their place in the college football ecosystem,
and he just so happens to be black. And Colorado
is better at football than they've been in a long
time because of Deon Sanders. But that doesn't mean that
(07:55):
your dad can be up my dad. Let that sink
in
You ready to check your feelings at the door? Check
it out. Check this is am I Reister or am
I Row. We're bringing you facts and only the truth. Now,
am I Reister or am I Row? There's a clear
backlash to the Deon Sanders hype and an even bigger
backlash to the backlash. But what's going on here, let's
(00:25):
talk about it. If you're a millennial college football fan,
this message isn't for you because Deon Sanders has been
famous your entire life. You watched him be a four
year starter at Florida State. His last two years there,
he was the best player on a team that never
left the top ten. You watched him be a first
round pick and go to Pro Bowls in Atlanta, win
Super Bowls in defensive MVP in San Francisco, in Dallas.
(00:47):
He's likely a top three corner and top three kick
returner of your lifetime. And if you're a baseball fan,
you watched him play in Atlanta, New York, the Bay
Cincinnati washed him. Hit over five hundred in the World
Series with five stolen bases in four games in Atlanta,
play two games in one day in two sports. This
man led the league in triples despite being only available
(01:07):
for sixty percent of the season. And Dion's been the
start of the show for almost five decades now. He's
the Elvis of sports. He doesn't just move the needle,
he hypercharges it. And if you're of a certain age,
you understand why Big Noon Kickoff is following him around
the country like a puppy dog. They're in the attention business,
and it's the same reason Notre Dame gets a TV
(01:27):
channel all to themselves. And that's the common ground that
we should all be able to agree on that, for
better or for worse, there's an extreme appetite to consume
all things related to Deon Sanders. Think about this in
food terms. There wasn't a fast food chicken sandwich war
because people weren't already eating chicken sandwiches. College football is
a business, and the market picks and chooses what people
(01:49):
want to see. It may not be what you think
you want to see, but there's no college football capital
that you can storm if you don't get your way.
But to be fair to people who are sick of
Dion and Colorado, who say that the needle is getting
moved by people who aren't just fans, of college football,
but people who are fans of the celebrity and getting
caught up in whatever's trending. Truth is, Dion is growing
(02:10):
the game, and he's making tons of new college football fans.
And what's a sending them for a brand new person?
A baby? And babies are a lot of things. They're cute,
they represent hope for a bright future, but they're loud,
they're emotional and needy, and that they believe that the
world begins and ends with them and their mom and dad.
So this last weekend you had a bunch of Toddler
(02:32):
Colorado fans running around saying, my dad could beat up
your dad in regards to Oregon. But what they do
know is that they love their dad. They've seen them
do wonderful things. But what they don't know is that
the other dad that they're talking about spent the last
decade as a professional buffalo hunting maniac. And Dion's fans
are gonna learn what every new college football fan learns.
(02:53):
The field tells the truth. And just because you can
get on stage with Lil Wayne and nine AM and
Boulder Colorado on game day doesn't mean that your offensive
line can stop some of the best defensive linemen in
the country from making your quarterbacks life. Hell, Dion knew this.
Though the roster's not ready. In the end, it's worth
it to deal with these new fans. The ends will
(03:13):
justify the means. I promise you that there's nothing like
college football, and seeing Colorado games sold out at home
on the road is absolutely incredible. But just because these
fans are new doesn't mean that some of their complaints
aren't rooted in the truth. Let's get back to the
backlash to the backlash, And if you think I'm gonna
say it's boilerplate racism, you're wrong. College football has a
(03:35):
scarcity issue. There are only a handful of teams that
can make the playoffs. There are only a handful of
game changing recruits. There are only a handful of excused
upun prime time television spots. The entire point of the
sport is to scratch and claw your way to the
top of the mountain, and then once you're there, turn
around and kick the people that are trying to get
(03:56):
on your level right in the face. Guys like Dan
Laying at Oregon, Marcus Freeman at Notre Dame, Ryan Day
at Ohio State, Mike Norvela at Florida State are on
their way up that mountain. Guys like Nick Saban, Dabo Sweeney,
and Kirby Smart are already there. And then Colorado slogan
is we coming, And what Deon Sanders means by that
(04:17):
is we coming up to that mountain and when we
get up there, we're gonna throw your ass down it.
Nobody that isn't a Colorado fan, a Dion fan, or
a fan of the team that will never reach the
top themselves wants to see that happen. And real college
football fans know that this movement has substance. Do you
think the best athletes on the earth want to go
into Tuscaloosa, Alabama because the pristine beaches and majestic waterfalls
(04:42):
know they want to be on the biggest stage. And
wherever Deon Sanders goes, he brings a pretty damn big
stage with him. And that stage that Dion brings makes
the people aware of the scarcity of college football fill
a whole lot of fear and a whole lot of jealousy.
So yes, people are rooting for Deon Sanders to fail
because his success somehow means that they're falling down that
(05:03):
college football cliff side. And they aren't just rooting for
Dionnefeld because he's black. They want the same failure for
Lincoln Riley, Steve Sarkisian, Billy Napier, the whitest of the whites.
But we'd be fools not to address the elephant in
the room. Dion Sanders is black. He's proud of being black.
More importantly, he's proud of being a non sanitized version
(05:23):
of a black man. He's proud to be himself. He's
extremely outspoken about his desire to see Black Americans prosper.
And the objective truth in this country is that black
men and women have been systematically excluded from sharing in
all the privileges that this wonderful country, with all of
its wonderful ideals, has been allowed to some of its
(05:43):
lesser melonized citizens. Things are better than that they've ever been,
and I'm grateful for that. But the college football coaching
profession is one of those things that you'd have to
be an actual road wearing classman to say has made
too much progress. You have to understand how the exclusion
nature of college football, whose entire point is to get
yours and keep others from getting theirs so happens to
(06:06):
look and feel to black fans that are used to
that particular mindset being the exact delivery method for issues
of racism out in the real world. From an outside perspective,
you have a successful black man that doesn't drink, doesn't cuss,
loves Jesus, loves his mama, and uses his platform to
promote hard work and education to the youth of this country.
(06:27):
And he's making waves in a profession where not many
people of power look like him and nobody in power
acts like him at all. And the negative response is
loud and very critical. Excuse me if I don't blame
people for feeling like that this is a race issue,
even if that's not the whole truth. And I know
I'm gonna get people in my mentioned saying I'm just
sticken enough for dim because I'm black too. They're been
(06:51):
there every single time I've mentioned Dion Sanders name. But
I'm not worried about those people because they're not in
positions of power. In fact, it's because those people have
never had any power or control over a single thing
in their life that they get mad when they turn
on the TV and they see an interracial couple in
a Mountain Dew commercial, So of course they're going to
be mad when every channel on their television is talking
(07:12):
about coach Prime. Hopefully this helped explain the disconnect, because
new college football fans and the ones that have been
in the trenches have about as much as in common
as an infant and a boomer outside of the fact
that they both get a little cranky. College football isn't
inherently racist, and even though its structure has plenty of
evidence that systematic racism is at play, it also boasts
(07:35):
as good of a merit based system as any industry
in America. Most people that hate Dion Sanders don't hate
him because he's a threatening black man. They just hate
him because he's threatening their place in the college football ecosystem,
and he just so happens to be black. And Colorado
is better at football than they've been in a long
time because of Deon Sanders. But that doesn't mean that
(07:55):
your dad can be up my dad. Let that sink
in
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