We're going to have one
of the best coaching staffs, assemble
some of the best scouts,
some of the best kids there.
We're recruiting
and commitments
already coming on the way as I speak.
So that is new.
University of Colorado head
football coach
Deon Sanders promising fans
and his new players
that he is going
to bring the winning culture
he established at Jackson State
and HBCU in Mississippi to his new team.
How about that?
Yeah.
How about that? Well,
well, you know, we just got to do that.
So Sanders is now being criticized
as a so-called sellout
for leaving Jackson
after many envisioned him
altering the landscape of sports
at historically black
colleges and universities.
He did land top recruits.
He went 27 and five in three seasons
and just won the school's second
Southwestern Athletic Conference
title and two years.
Sanders will now try
to replicate
that success in more competitive league,
a more competitively
with a Colorado team
that just went one and 11.
So joining us
now, the perfect person
to talk about that, Bomani Jones,
a third generation
HBCU graduate
who went to Clark Atlanta University.
He's also the host of Game Theory
with Bomani Jones,
which will kick off its second season
on HBO and HBO Max in January.
Wow.
That is a giant lead
into lots of accomplishments thank you
this morning. So,
you know, this is
I kind of feel like we're talking
about family business,
like in front of everybody.
You know what I'm talking about?
Because there's been a long
there's a long tradition in
the African-American community
about HBCU's
and whether you go with it or not.
And what this
why can't Deion Sanders
just choose to be with
who would he wants to be?
Oh, he can go take whatever job he wants.
But when you come into the first job
and sell the idea
that you are going to be
the savior of HBCU's,
and you are going to raise
a playing field
not just for Jackson State,
but for everybody else,
and you're going to do it
because God told you to do it.
He said that.
And he explicitly said
that God sent him to do this.
So then when you leave,
yeah, people are going to ask questions
about what exactly it was.
Now, I don't
go into the sellout place necessarily,
but I do think I mean, he's
the monorail salesman from The Simpsons.
He went in, he sold the big dream.
Now, if you paid any attention,
you knew the dream
he was selling wasn't possibly.
It was not an achievable one that he had,
but he sold it
and he got people to believe it.
And then he shut the doors
and let you know. Shannon Price.
So you've heard his comments.
And I want to play that for our audience
because he said
and staff has a sort of a rising
tide, lifts all boats.
If he did it for Jackson State,
then maybe that helped the entire HBCU.
Let's play
this and I want your response to
Deonte.
It's something
that very few coaches are able to do.
He leveraged his relationships skill.
No football team had more uniform.
Ben Jackson State,
except the University of Oregon
under armor every single week.
They got new helmets, they got new unis.
He did this with our Wal-Mart.
He took 150,000 of his salary
and he'll finish
building the facilities he did.
He leveraged his relationship
with American Airlines.
He brought us to HBCU Skip.
Then what am I talking about?
HBCU,
especially now
they're talking
about their own television.
That's because of him.
He gave you a bleep free it.
Now follow the blueprint.
He's saying basically,
mission accomplished.
What do you think?
Well, I mean, part of it
and I love Shana
to death,
part of where I disagree with him
is so much of
that was singular to Deon Sanders.
Like we do have to admit
that he is the charismatic individual.
Like, just because Don could do it
doesn't mean
that everybody else can do it.
That's the first part.
The second thing they're going to play
in the Celebration Bowl,
I believe, next week in Atlanta
against the champions of the media.
They played in that bowl game last year.
South Carolina State
blew their doors off in that game.
Do you know the head coach of South
Carolina State?
Can you name a single player
in South Carolina State?
I can't. It brought attention to Dillard.
It brought attention to Jackson State.
You weren't going to bring attention
to all these other schools in a time
period that he was there.
Like,
if he was really going
to accomplish that,
that's a ten year program.
At least you're saying he had to stay.
So 60 minutes profiled him
just like a month or two ago.
And it was on that program.
He said,
I believe that God called me collect
and I had to accept the charges.
And then he said this. Let's play it
it's a lot of folks sit
back on the
Twitter fingers and talk
about what they're going to do and
and I want to go do it.
Do what?
Change lives, change
the perspective of HBCU football,
make everyone step up to the plate
and do us right by these kids.
Didn't he do that
at least by starting it?
And now, as Shannon was saying,
is it up to others to carry it forward?
I mean, we can go fight
another Deion Sanders right?
Like that's the thing of this
is that if he was going
if you're talking
about establishing something long term.
Right.
Something that is sustainable.
The idea he got it started.
Now you go do it
I don't you making his blueprint argument
because there are
others who are in the NEAFL
or former NFL players
who have who work as charismatic
do it
and who could step into other cities
in the last 35 years telling us table
one dance
and now he's telling us
go find somebody else
to do what Deon Sanders does.
You can't have it both ways
I don't judge him
for taking the job at Colorado.
They probably increase the salary
by something like 15 times.
Right I totally get that.
It all makes sense.
But what he did
was something that college coaches
do all the time, which is
you have to sell people
four year, ten year plans
when your plan is always one
year at a time.
That's the only way
that you could really pull that off.
And so he came in
and he sold a long term vision
for what was going on in Jackson State.
But his goals and ambitions
were always to be a power
five head coach.
My take is always been
he went to Jackson State primarily
because he wanted to be a head coach
but didn't want to ever be anybody's
assistant coach.
So we had to find somebody
that would give him a job
and make him a head coach
so we could had that on his resume
and then he could take that to try
to get the job that he actually wanted.
Jackson State
was the place that could do it,
and he did a lot of good work
while he was at Jackson State.
But all the bigger, grandiose notions
of what he was doing for somebody else
no, it was what it always is.
He did it for Dad,
and that's fine
if you don't tell us
that you're trying to do this
for somebody else.
But can he do both?
Can't he go to a program
and be there for three
years, only have five losses like he did,
and bring the attention?
Maybe the next person won't be
prime time.
They won't be as as charismatic as he is
but he still did bring attention to it.
And what I've seen
from the athletic director
and other people is
they were grateful for him
and they talked about him going on
and something he signaled
because the financial disparities
are here. No, he's very good.
But I think the
magnitude of the financial
disparity is so much greater
than anybody realizes.
I think the magnitude
of financial disparity
between HBCU's and other FCS schools,
the smaller division in Division
One is bigger than people realize it is.
So there's room to criticize him
for the way that he is left
and for the fact
that his initial rhetoric is not in line
with his ultimate exam.
What would you have him do?
What would you have the man do?
Oh, well,
I wouldn't have come in
in the first place
and say
that God sent me here to fix ABC News,
and God decided that in the middle of it
you were supposed to leave, right?
I mean, like,
the thing I said is
maybe God wants 10% of 5 million,
not 2% to three 75.
If Guy can do math,
I can understand
why it is
he sold a dream
and then walked out on the dream.
People have the right
to be critical of that.
I also would have taken the job
that he took at Colorado.
Right?
It's not a judgment of the fact
that he took the job,
but this is not in line
with what he told us for all these years.
But the reason I'm glad we're having
this conversation
is because it does highlight
those massive financial disparities
and so I guess the question is not just
do you have to hire a charismatic coach
who brings attention
to your program to fix it?
What's the other way to fix it?
The problem that we have here
is if you watch
especially during the pandemic,
when everybody had all their crypto money
and had all these different schools,
they were like, yo,
we now have
more billionaires
donating to our schools,
plural billionaires,
because that's what makes this work
really is
those donations are big television deals.
That's where the money comes from.
We got eight black billionaires
in the United States,
and you can name six of them, right?
Like you may not know it off the top
you hear,
but they're all people that, you know,
the initial capital that is necessary.
That's the hard part at a school
like Jackson
State, in a city
that's been choked off
by the state of Mississippi
for as long
as anybody can remember in under,
underfunded, for as long
as anybody can remember
the money they need and the
things they need to be done.
Football is not the place
where we're going to start
with this in the first place.
And at some point,
we have to ask ourselves,
does it matter whether or not
the football team is great?
Does it matter?
Because everything that people were doing
and given them money
to serve these players
that they now thought could go to the NFL
could be done for all the players
that they have anywhere,
even if they are not as good at football
as the ones that did.
This is so weird for me
because it's weird to talk about this
sitting around the table as a kid.
I've lived
blocks from Southern University
and everybody, Southern Grambling,
my family.
So this is so weird
to be having this conversation
at this stage at this table
about HBCU and the athletic program.
We love having you back to.
Thank you for coming back
every week as
often as possible,
and everyone should watch
Bomani Show
Game Theory
with Bomani
Jones kicked off a second
season on HBO and HBO Max in January.