Picture the scene. During an interview for your dream job, your phone starts chirping. Nightmare scenario. Of course, you should have had it turned off but now you must quickly consider your options. Ignore? Send to voicemail? Answer? Most of us know the correct choice is to shut it down, apologise profusely for the disruption, and hope this faux pas doesn’t unduly colour the judgment of the person on the other side of the desk.
Shedeur Sanders found himself in just this pickle a while back, sitting across from a man with the power to hire him at an exorbitant salary. At some point in their conversation, Sanders’s phone rang. Rather than hurriedly silence it, he answered, went on FaceTime video and casually chatted with a close friend. Predictably horrified at this carry-on, his potential boss knew there was no way he was ever going to employ a 23-year-old with that kind of approach.
Sanders was being interviewed that day by the head coach of an NFL team, one of several vetting his candidacy in advance of the league’s annual draft of the best college players last week. Tipped to be a top-three pick and to earn a four-year $44 million (€38.65 million) contract, the University of Colorado quarterback’s entitled antics during encounters with prospective suitors instead caused him to be selected 144th by the Cleveland Browns. Seeing his first pro deal dwindle to a “mere” $1 million (€878,000) per season as he slid down the rankings was the least of his problems.
For three excruciating days, he sat waiting for his name to be called as the whole country watched on, grimly fascinated by his deepening embarrassment. Like everything related to the true national obsession, the NFL’s annual draft captivates America every April. With every minute of his humiliation that passed, the public debate about Sanders’s precipitous fall from grace intensified and even president Donald Trump, that famously astute judge of gridiron talent, weighed in, asking, “What is wrong with NFL owners, are they stupid?”
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An alternative take contends Sanders was always overhyped because his father, Deion, a true NFL great-turned college football coach and inveterate blowhard, exaggerated his son’s potential. The gullible media then dutifully amplified the kid’s achievements and boosted his reputation. Which was fine until professional scouts ran a more forensic eye over his performances and decided he was much less than the sum of his parts, especially since he also came trailing the baggage of the ultimate overbearing and interfering sports parent. A reasonable enough explanation. Or not.
“What has Shedeur Sanders done?” said Stephen A Smith, ESPN’s bloviator in chief. “He ain’t getting in any trouble off the field. He’s not acting up. He’s not being some irresponsible individual. He puts in the work. Some of those owners and some of those executives, they should be ashamed of their damn selves for what they did to Shedeur Sanders because they were really targeting ‘Prime Time’ Deion Sanders.”
A Hall of Fame cornerback in the NFL, “Prime Time” also juggled a career in Major League Baseball, once starting a game in both leagues on the same day. An extraordinary performer, the only athlete ever to play in a World Series and a Super Bowl, he scored a home run and a touchdown in one week back in 1989. Boasting an enormous ego and brash persona befitting his outsize talent, his tiresome showbiz attitude has lately invigorated the University of Colorado where he coached his protege and reminded his detractors of what they never liked about him.
Aside from an ill-conceived decision to try to forge a rap music career while in college, the son hasn’t attracted any great controversy to himself. He has always come off as cocky, although, in his defence, arrogance is kind of a necessary attribute to play quarterback. In the most difficult role in American sport, supreme self-confidence might just be as important as a good arm. Even throughout his latest ordeal, including taking a cruel prank call in the middle of his draft torment, he somehow maintained a bulletproof demeanour.
What seems to have hurt his candidacy most is deliberately tanking pre-draft interviews with teams Deion deemed beneath his talent. Unseemly behaviour, it has some alleging that miffed club owners subsequently colluded to teach him humility. The latter charge comes infused with accusations of racism, the charge being that some of these plutocrats still have issues dealing with black athletes asserting their autonomy.
Others prefer to point out the damage done to his candidacy by his refusal to showcase his skills in the traditional post-college season East-West Bowl game or to throw at the Combine, where draftees offer coaches a chance to rigorously evaluate their skills. Only the bluest of blue-chip prospects usually bypass those events. And, for all his father’s grandiose claims, he is not at that level.
Selected 199th in the 2000 draft, Tom Brady famously went on to become the greatest quarterback of all time. The most improbable story in gridiron has been referenced a lot by those now wondering whether Sanders’s career can recover from this. In his late teens, he worked out alongside the New England Patriot who subsequently signed him to an endorsement deal with his eponymous brand. Brady is now a very involved part-owner of the Las Vegas Raiders, a team that last week passed up seven different opportunities to use a pick on Sanders. Telling, that.
