In the days leading up to their matchup against North Carolina Central at the 7th annual Cricket Celebration Bowl, Coach Prime (Deion Sanders) officially notified the football players from his roster at Jackson State University that he would be stepping down as their leader to fill the head coaching vacancy with the Colorado Buffaloes. Coach Prime's highly publicized exit came on the heels of an impressive three-run at the helm of JSU football, where his Division I team boosted a 27-5 overall record, including back-to-back SWAC Conference Championships in 2021 and 2022. In many ways, Coach Prime put HBCU football back on the map, but his business decision garnered pushback from a number of pundits in sports media, such as Bomani Jones of ESPN, who accused the greatest cornerback in NFL history of leaving JSU high and dry for a lucrative five-year deal worth $29.5 (the contract will pay Coach Prime $5.5 million his first year) with Colorado University.
“I wouldn’t have come in the first place and say that God sent me here to fix HBCUs, and God decided in the middle of it you were supposed to leave,” said Bomani Jones back in December. “The thing I’ve said is maybe God wants 10% of five [million] and not 10% of 375 [hundred thousand dollars]. If God can do math, I can understand why it is. [Coach Prime] sold a dream and then walked out on the dream. People have the right to be critical of that.”
About six months after withstanding a fair amount of criticism for not his controversial exit from a prominent head coaching position in HBCU football, Coach Prime recently aired out his grievances with the NFL for overlooking the talent that HBCU's have to offer. At the conclusion of the 2023 NFL draft, over the weekend, only one player from an HBCU was selected. The New England Patriots selected Isaiah Bolden from Jackson State University in the seventh and final round of the NFL draft. The cornerback barely cut, as he was #245 out of the 254 draft selections this year. In response, Coach Prime shared his thoughts with a stern message for the NFL via Twitter.
"So proud is you [Isaiah Bolden]," Coach Prime wrote. "You deserved to be drafted much higher but I'm truly proud of u. I know how much u want this. I'm ashamed of the 31 other @nfl
teams that couldn't find draft value in ALL of the talented HBCU players & we had 3 more draft-worthy players at JSU."
Perhaps Coach Prime has a point; some of the greatest NFL players of all-time, such as Jerry Rice, Shannon Sharpe, Walter Payton, and Michael Strahan, were drafted out of HBCU football programs.
Scroll up and swipe right to view Coach Prime's tweet about the lack of HBCU football players at the 2023 NFL Draft.
Source: Yahoo!
