In January, Deion Sanders leveraged his presence at NFL Network into a report from NFLN that he was a candidate for the Florida State head coaching job, even though he never was. Now, Deion seems to be leveraging his imminent presence at Barstool Sports to appeal directly to the players he’d eventually be recruiting, if/when his aspiration to become a college football head coach comes to fruition.
Andrew Marchand of the New York Post provides an inside look at Deion’s decision to leave NFL Network for Barstool. Greasing the skids for an exit from the league-owned network was, per Marchand, an effort by NFLN to cut Deion’s pay of nearly $2 million per year in half.
But Deion’s agent, Constance Schwartz-Morini, made it clear to Marchand that Deion’s desire to coach college football persists -- and that the Barstool will support Deion’s push for a college football head coaching job.
“Deion’s passion is coaching,” Schwartz-Morini told Marchand. “He loves to go where the kids are and the youth and the 18-35s and that is what Barstool has.”
“I got so much stuff inside me that I don’t get to say and it just baffles me at the end of each day, at the end of each program,” Sanders said in an appearance on Barstool’s SiriusXM radio channel, via John Ourand of Sports Business Daily. “You know, when you’re on a network show you may get 15-to-30, 45-seconds at the most to get your shot off, then you have to pass it to the next man. And then you go home frustrated saying, ‘Dang, I really didn’t get to elaborate on that subject.’ I don’t have to feel that way anymore. I got so much in me that I want to give out and now I got the mechanism and the avenue to do such a thing by the grace of God and Barstool, man. I’m elated. I get to reach out to the 18-34 [year olds] which you guys are plentiful in, and I love it.”
Reaching out to the 18-34 years olds is the key, apparently. Because that’s the path, potentially, to positioning Deion for the college football head coaching job he covets.
“You are not wrong on coaching in the future and Barstool is very supportive of that,” Schwartz-Morini told Marchand. “He is coaching now, but, as you said in your article yesterday, he still has aspirations to coach at the college level and Barstool is fully on-board for that.”
Deion’s agent also said that the bridge isn’t burned between Sanders and the NFL, and that he’ll try to create a relationship between Barstool and the NFL.
“We are in great standing with them,” Schwartz-Morini told Marchand. “The door is open to still work one-offs with the NFL and its partners. We will look forward to working with them. . . . One of Deion and my goals is to help bridge that relationship and see where we can go from there together.”
Frankly, that would be more impressive than Sanders parlaying his Barstool presence into a college football head-coaching job, given the obvious and longstanding acrimony between Barstool and the NFL.