TCU’s interest in Deion what is wrong with college football coach searches | Opinion
TCU’s list for Gary Patterson’s replacement includes a Big 12 head coach who has 122 FBS games on his résumé and another whose résumé features 15 games on the FCS level.
This is not a decision.
If TCU can convince Matt Campbell to leave Iowa State for Fort Worth, deal done.
(FWIW: Campbell’s buyout is $4 million. He is, however, concerned that his background is strictly in the Midwest, a source said. Matt Rhule had no Texas ties when he came to Baylor and that worked. There is also a concern that Campbell eyes bigger jobs, which could be open soon: Michigan State or Penn State).
The inclusion of Deion Sanders as a candidate for the TCU job is everything wrong about the vetting and hiring process in big time college football.
The only reason Deion is on this list is because of our obsession with names over résumés.
If TCU went with a name more than 20 years ago, Gary Patterson never gets an interview, much less the job.
There are no less than 100 other qualified minority candidates that TCU could have considered, and still should, but it went with LaDainian Tomlinson’s friend.
We all hate nepotism or cronyism until it’s our buddy or our kid.
Clemson offensive coordinator Tony Elliott is on TCU’s list, and TCU is considering Nevada’s Jay Norvell as well. Both are more deserving than Deion.
TCU’s search committee consists of five people, including its most celebrated football alum of this era. LT is Deion’s friend from their days on the NFL Network.
In recent years LT’s voice has grown at TCU, especially after he joined the school’s Board of Trustees. LT’s value for TCU is incalculable and he is the best of the school and its athletic department.
However, as one notable TCU alum told me, “There are guys influencing this who give a hell of a lot more money to TCU than LT.”
Some of the powerful purple people want no part of Prime.
“If they hire him, I’m taking names off of buildings,” one of those influential types wrote via text.
There is some undeniable appeal to hiring Deion. Despite his baggage, his star power generates a wattage most humans don’t possess.
The thought is TCU head coach Deion Sanders would attract top tier talent to Stadium Drive in Fort Worth.
He might.
Just by talking to him TCU has brought attention to its coaching search from all over the U.S.
Deion is a convincing salesman. If you can somehow look past the self-serving garbage, he’s a bright man who has done some good things for some people.
When he started the charter school, Prime Prep Academy, in 2012, a lot of top high school athletes immediately went to that “school.”
According to former students, it really wasn’t much of a “school.” With a campus in Fort Worth and Dallas, the ambitious charter school closed in 2015.
It was a sad case of mismanaged money, and a face who was too busy to know what was going on, or the complexities to run a school.
But Deion is also a guy who could reach a college kid and talk to him about real life.
Former Dallas Cowboys defensive back Kevin Smith, who played with Sanders, said Deion would invite guys to certain investment opportunities, and he always stressed to his teammates to understand the business side and marketing of the game.
But there is nothing about his résumé that says Deion could win at a Big 12 job. Or that he has any clue the amount of work involved to win.
Deion has coached 15 games of college football, all on the FCS level. Of those 15, he has missed the last three after complications from foot surgery.
Previously, he had been a coordinator at Trinity Christian-Cedar Hill.
When he accepted the job at Jackson State in 2020, he said the goal was to give to the Black community and to “even the playing field” between HBCUs and the power names of the sport.
Deion may be full of it, but he has attracted a few to Jackson State who normally would have attended a Georgia, Alabama or other top FBS programs.
And Jackson State is winning. The Tigers are 8-1.
He has made a difference.
What he is doing for Jackson State, the SWAC and all HBCUs, he cannot accomplish at TCU. Or any Power 5 job.
“So how do you compete with (Power 5 schools)? You bring in a conduit for change,” he said during a May appearance on the I Am Athlete podcast. “How can we level the playing field? I don’t want to level nothin’. I want to have the advantage.”
“You mean to tell me that this brother here coming out of the heart of Miami is better suited to go somewhere like (Florida), than to come to me? When I speak his language. When I know his voice. When I know his needs and his wants, and I sit right where he sat.
“Now, you’re into the glamour? If you’re into the glamour, glitz, go where you want. If you into the real. Into the genuine. If you into, ‘Let’s build this thing and let’s get up out of this mess and never look back,’ you need to ride with me.”
That pitch for Jackson State is true. If he brings FBS caliber players to Jackson State, and builds a power, all of it will come.
He cannot sell that message, and set that hook, to a TCU or a Florida State.
If he should leave for an FBS school any time soon or possibly before he’s done with coaching, his journey to Jackson will not have been about anything more than serving Deion.
There are so many other Black coaches who have worked longer, harder, and are more qualified than Deion Sanders.
Alas, he’s a candidate for a reason, which is an indictment on the coaching search process that plagues college football.
This story was originally published November 10, 2021 at 3:53 PM.
