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Deion Sanders Rips ‘Jealous’ College Football Reporters for Attacking Players

Kristen Wong

Ron Chenoy-Imagn Images
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Colorado Buffaloes coach Deion Sanders went on a vicious tirade on the current state of college football media ahead of his team’s Big 12 matchup against Baylor this weekend. 

Sanders, who made headlines not too long ago for banning a member of a local media outlet, was asked a question about his relationship with Colorado star Travis Hunter in a Tuesday press conference. The Buffaloes coach digressed from the topic and launched into a rant about “envious” and “jealous” reporters who were attacking players because “they make more money than y’all.”

“The landscape has changed in football,” Sanders said. “Once upon a time, you guys never attacked college players. Now they’re making more money than y’all. And some of y’all are envious and jealous about that, so you’re on the attack. It was hands-off for a college player because he’s an amateur. You remember that guys? Now it’s hands-on, go at them, any kind of way you want.

“When you attack ’em, attack ’em, attack ’em, these guys are sensitive. They’ve never been attacked. They haven’t gone through what a grown man—what I’ve been going through with y’all for years—they haven’t done that. So it is what it is.”

Sanders added that he knew reporters had to “do their jobs,” but he issued a cautionary message to the media on excessively digging into players after their poor performances. 

“If they didn’t play well, leave it at that. The personal stuff, leave it to be personal, because if we start flipping the script on y’all, you wouldn’t like it,” said Sanders.

Sanders’s seemingly unprovoked comments come during a momentous shift in the college football landscape into the NIL era, which has seen a growing number of athletes profit from lucrative NIL valuations, including Travis Hunter ($3.1 million valuation) and Sanders’s son, Shedeur Sanders ($5.1 million valuation).

Colorado (2-1) will play Baylor on Saturday night for its first conference game of the season.

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Kristen Wong

KRISTEN WONG

Kristen Wong is a staff writer on the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. She has been a sports journalist since 2020. Before joining SI in November 2023, Wong covered four NFL teams as an associate editor with the FanSided NFL Network and worked as a staff writer for the brand’s flagship site. Outside of work, she has dreams of running her own sporty dive bar.

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