Colorado's Rick George envisioned Deion Sanders being successful early
Rick George was all smiles and overjoyed with excitement when Deion Sanders was introduced at Colorado. The longtime CU athletic director has always been easy to read and wears his emotions on his sleeve, but this was different. You could tell that George found his "diamond in the rough" and was ready to get Coach Prime cooking at Colorado.
Many schools passed on the idea of hiring Sanders, including Florida State. Prime's former institution was "blown away" by him in the interview process, but decided to go another director because they deemed it wouldn't be a good fit with the alumni base and he didn't have a degree, according to a report by The Athletic.
Whatever the case, George wasn't here for the nonsense and made Sanders the centerpiece of CU Football, which has struck a chord on Sanders' heart strings. The first person Coach Prime thanked after the big win at TCU was George. The two have great respect for each other, mostly because George took a chance and saw Sanders for who he was as a coach when others wouldn't give him the time of day.
George envisioned Sanders would be this successful from the beginning. He went into detail with The Jim Rome Show on Thursday about how this has all played out the way he expected. Also, George turned his swagger all the way up in his response.
"(Deion) has talked about winning and winning now. He's put an emphasis on that," George told Rome. "I'm not surprised that we're having these conversations. The fact that we had 7.3 million viewers on the broadcast, the biggest first week of Big Noon they've had, ever says there's a ton of interest in Coach Prime."
Colorado heads into another week being featured on FOX's College Football Game of the Week. A "Red Letter" rivalry game with Nebraska with kickoff scheduled at noon ET from Folsom Field.