Deion Sanders appears to clarify where his CBS beef stems from

Colorado Buffaloes head coach Deion Sanders had himself quite the press conference last week.

Sanders refused to answer questions from two different media members during his Friday presser. One was Denver Post columnist Sean Keeler, who has been critical of Deion and his program .

The other was Eric Christensen from CBS Colorado, who was stopped in his tracks as soon as he said the words “CBS.”

“CBS,” Sanders said while giving a dismissive hand-wave. “I’m not doing nothing with CBS. Next question. It ain’t got nothing to do with you. It’s above that. It ain’t got nothing to do with you. I got love for you. I appreciate you. I respect you. It ain’t got nothing to do with you. They know what they did.”

Christensen offered that he’s a local reporter, not a national one, but Sanders wasn’t swayed.

“You are who you are. CBS is CBS. It ain’t got nothing to do with you. I respect you. That’s why I told you that, I’m looking you in the eye as a man,” Sanders said while wearing sunglasses. “I respect you. I got love for you, but what they did was foul.”

The entire ordeal, for which Sanders received a lot of pushback , left many wondering what, exactly, CBS had done to him.

A few editorial possibilities emerged. CBS Sports had ranked Sanders as the second-worst head coach in the Big 12 and the 61st-best coach overall. Another recent CBS Sports article labeled him as more of an entertainer than a coach .

On3’s Phillip Dukes, who has a personal relationship with the Colorado coach, posited a different theory in a YouTube video on Monday, saying that Sanders is specifically upset about a project or partnership that didn’t come to fruition.

“Deion Sanders ain’t upset because somebody ranked him second-to-last in the Big 12,” said Dukes. “That’s something that he can control because these rankings don’t get you into the playoffs. He ain’t mad about that. That’s his goal.

“I’ll say this. There was a project between [CBS and Sanders] that one person did their part and was vulnerable enough to say ‘Hey, you know what, I’m gonna share this with you.’ The other faction, without notice or without saying anything, after all of this time and effort was put into something, basically said, “Nah, this ain’t a good look for us right now.’

“So imagine you’re working on a group project and you say ‘Okay, I’m gonna do my part’ and then your partner says ‘Alright well I got my part too,’ and then when you get up in front of the class and get ready to present, you get a 50, which is a failing grade, or the class doesn’t see it because the guy doesn’t show up. Your partner doesn’t do their part. You’re gonna feel upset about that.

“If you wanna know why Deion Sanders reacted the way he did, there was an abuse of trust between the two, and I’m sure that will be expanded upon later on. But as far as what I can say, it was way deeper than a ranking.”

After Dukes shared his video on X, Sanders reshared the post and added some further context of his own.

“ Thank u my brother for keeping some things unspoken,” wrote Sanders. “We love it when they ASSume… The insanity is better than Sanford & Son at times.”

Sanders was a commentator for CBS’s The NFL Today from 2002 to 2004 when contract negotiations reportedly soured between the two sides, with the former NFL star demanding a salary increase that would have made him the highest-paid NFL TV analyst at the time. A two-year return to the NFL was followed by a long run with NFL Network, which included a brief return to CBS Sports as a studio analyst for Thursday Night Kickoff when Thursday Night Football was simulcast on CBS and NFL Network.

Boomer Esiason also recently admitted that he and Sanders were pitched a First Take -syle show while working together on The NFL Today . He noted that Sanders’ disinterest in moving from Texas to New York kept the idea in the planning stages.

So while we still don’t know the specifics of Sanders’ animus with CBS, it does seem likely that we can draw a line to that contract dispute in 2004, though there’s the possibility that there’s a different failed project we don’t know about. That would mean the Colorado coach has been holding onto this grudge for almost two decades, which, in the world of football, sounds about right.

[ On3’s Phillip Dukes ]

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