"I took them over to the hood": Deion Sanders on how he developed his kids as athletes
Deion Sanders' kids have all been into sports, with the youngest girl, Shelomi Sanders, taking up basketball and all the boys getting into football. They all witnessed their father's success in not just one but two professional sports as they grew up.
Coach Prime had his own ways of developing them as athletes. In an appearance on the "All The Smoke" podcast, Sanders talked about how he did that. He said that even though his kids grew up with everything, he made sure to get them out in the world to help in their development. According to him, he didn't want to raise cats who have "everything in the house."
“As far as my kids, they grew up with, but I took them over to the hood man. And put them in baseball, football, basketball and I ran my own programs because I wanted them to have this, but ain't want to raise no cat. I want to raise a dog, because, you know the cat got all the nice litter boxes and everything is in the house,” Coach Prime said on the podcast.
While Deiondra Sanders and Deion Sanders Jr. left playing sports to pursue other careers, Shedeur and Shilo Sanders are a part of the Colorado football program. Their younger sister Shelomi Sanders is an up-and-coming basketball player who transferred out of Boulder to play for the Alabama A&M Bulldogs starting next season.
Deion Sanders has ideas to fix NIL
During his podcast appearance, Deion Sanders proposed an idea for reforming the NIL structure in college sports, suggesting it should mirror the scale seen in professional sports. The Colorado head coach also said that the idea of everybody being equal is a lie.
“Because everybody isn't built like that. Everybody ain't equal. We all wanna say everybody is created equal, that's a lie,” Sanders said on the podcast.
The NIL has faced criticism since its inception in 2021 and the critics want wholesale changes in the way NIL functions at the moment. According to Sanders, something needs to be done to bring about meaningful change.