College Football

Deion Sanders, Eddie George working for more than wins as new college coaches

Updated Sep. 8, 2021 8:23 p.m. ET

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By RJ Young
FOX Sports College Football Writer

When I was preparing to have a conversation with Deion Sanders, I didn't know what I expected him to say ahead of Jackson State’s game against Eddie George’s Tennessee State on Saturday.

As the head coach at Jackson State, Sanders has leveraged his image — "Coach Prime" to you — and fame to their full potential to bring exposure and players to a program that was once among the most distinguished incubators of college football talent in the country.

Deion Sanders joins RJ Young to talk HBCU's and life at Jackson State

Jackson State coach Deion Sanders talks with RJ Young about the significance of HBCU football and his approach with his players.

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From 1963 to 1972, JSU produced 40 NFL draft picks, including 11 in 1968 alone. In 1975, JSU gave us Pro Football Hall of Famers Robert "Dr. Doom" Brazile and Walter Payton. The old heads, of course, just refer to Payton as "Sweetness."

Payton is the one for whom the NFL named its Man of the Year award, annually recognizing the player who sets the standard for service, for community, for mentorship. 

I didn’t want to talk with Sanders about that, though.

I wanted to talk about the NFL and Pro Football Hall of Fame alumni the SWAC had produced, when I could expect to see first-round picks coming out of Jackson, Mississippi, and, most importantly to me, when I could expect JSU to start stacking wins like its coach stacked highlight film.

"You gotta understand," Sanders said, "a win ain’t a win for me."

What he means is that it’s not enough for Sanders and JSU to win the SWAC if none of his players go pro. That’s not a win for him. They have to go pro.

And not necessarily on the football field.

"A win for me is a multitude of players who won’t play professional football," he said, "but that can go professional in the workforce and make six figures a year. That’s a win for me."

The same is true for Tennessee State's first-year coach. George's squad faces Sanders’ in a game that features two of the most decorated players in the sport’s history.

"Prime is Prime, right?" I said to the former Titans running back.

"Prime is Prime," George said.

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Unlike Sanders, who was a high school coach before taking over at JSU, George didn’t aspire to become a coach. He aspired to play golf, build his various businesses, watch his sons play football and expand his résumé as an actor and media personality.

He vividly remembers Sanders’ announcement last year, saying that he’d been called to Jackson. George reached out to thank him, not once thinking he’d be in the same position in Nashville a year later.

"Wow, OK, God," he said. "You want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans."

He was totally surprised when the TSU job was presented to him, so much so that he criticized TSU president Dr. Glenda Glover and athletic director Dr. Mikki Allen for targeting him.

"I was like, man, please," he said. "This is why y’all continue to lose — because you make decisions like this."

But the more he thought about it, the more he saw an opportunity to do good. He concluded that he’d regret not becoming TSU head coach.

Having decided to take the job and being smart enough to know he didn’t know much at all about being a head coach, he reached out to his former Tennessee coach, Jeff Fisher.

With Fisher, George identified offensive coordinator Hue Jackson and three other former NFL assistant coaches and persuaded them to join his staff. Earning those commitments convinced George he was on the right path.

George and Sanders are in a unique position to not just bring exposure to their programs when they face off Saturday but also put a spotlight on Black head coaches and the lack thereof. Perhaps sometime soon, TSU and JSU might find themselves playing intraconference games or, better yet, at the FBS level.

Sanders has been vocal about merging the SWAC and MEAC, and George said he and his administration are open to moving to either conference or another more powerful one.

"Given where college football's going with the Power 5, making those alliances and those super-conferences, it’s a trickle-down effect to the smallest schools like ourselves," George said. "How that looks on a grander scale is something worth talking about. It has to make the most sense, financially speaking, for our university and where we’re trying to go and what we’re trying to do.

"I don’t know if it’s going to be the MEAC or the SWAC. It could be another situation that we're looking to do — maybe going to the FBS level at some point."

Tennessee State has never been a MEAC or SWAC member, spending the bulk of its time as a football program in the MIAC. It’s a member of the Ohio Valley Conference today, but George believes there is a road to bigger, better things for his program and the university at large.

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Under "Big" John Merritt, the Tennessee State Tigers were one of the best Black college football programs in the country in the 1960s, '70s and early '80s. He won eight national titles in 20 years, including seven at TSU and one at JSU.

Merritt produced Pro Football Hall of Famers Claude Humphrey and Richard Dent, NFL stars including Ed "Too Tall" Jones and Joe Gilliam Jr., and the greatest HBCU quarterback of all time, Eldrick Dickey. 

And the tradition of winning national titles isn’t that far removed.

TSU won a Black College Football national title as recently as 2013. George’s grand vision is clear, and he is aware of the work that has to be done to bring that vision into focus.

"That takes a great deal of investment in infrastructure and facilities and stadium and experience," he said. "Given where the university is on that front — and, hopefully, getting land-grant money from the state that’s been owed to the university since 1960, along with donations and fundraising efforts — we have an opportunity.

"The bones are here for a university that’s sustainable, and it can really produce winning seasons, both on and off the football field and pretty much in any sport."

While George and Sanders might think of themselves as HBCU coaches, should they flip those programs into the kind that win championships and produce NFL draft picks, they’ll have opportunities to coach elsewhere.

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And not a moment too soon. There just aren’t many Black head coaches in Power 5 football.

Last year on NBC Sports’ "Race in America: A Candid Conversation," Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly appeared to throw down a marker on Marcus Freeman’s coaching future while in conversation with Steph Curry, Dell Curry, Vince Carter, Jimmy Rollins, Justin Tuck, CC Sabathia and Kyle Rudolph.

"My defensive coordinator is Black," Kelly said, "and he's going to be the next head coach. This is not about color or race. This is about the things that he just talked about. Steph talked about the important things to be a CEO and understanding how to make people around you better."

I say that Kelly "appeared" to throw down a marker because he backed off naming Freeman his successor last Monday. But this raises two important questions.

The first one is why is it a problem for Kelly, who turns 60 in October, to name a head-coach-in-waiting? He wouldn't be the first to do it.

Barry Alvarez did it at Wisconsin. Mack Brown did it at Texas, and Bobby Bowden did it at Florida State, among others.

Freeman is certainly qualified for the job, having coordinated Cincinnati to the Peach Bowl last year and being one of the best defensive coordinators in the sport over past three years.

But the other question is, I think, more interesting: Why is it a big deal for Freeman and not, say, ND offensive coordinator and former ND quarterback Tommy Rees to receive that kind of affirmation?

ND has had only one Black head coach since it began playing college football in the 19th century. That came in 2002, when the Fighting Irish hired Tyrone Willingham, whose previous stop was Stanford.

That tracks, too.

Stanford has one of the best records among the Power 5 in hiring Black head coaches. Former Cardinal coach Denny Green became the first Black man to be the head coach at a Power 5 program, at Northwestern in 1981.

But since 1981, only 39 Black men have been hired as head coaches to run Power 5 teams. That's 39 Black head coaches in 40 years at the highest level of the sport, with 65 jobs annually.

That means fewer than 10% of all head-coaching hires have been Black men. Just 30 of the 65 Power 5 schools have ever hired a Black head coach.  

Just three Black men were hired to become head coaches from 1991 to 1993, and Denny Green accounts for two of them. He was later, like Willingham, hired at Stanford, where David Shaw is the head coach today.

Just four Power 5 programs have hired back-to-back Black head coaches, and at least three of the four are not what we’d consider among the best college football jobs in America: Northwestern, Stanford, Vanderbilt and Colorado. The latter just joined the list with the hire of Mel Tucker before hiring its current coach, Karl Dorrell.

We’ve seen entire hiring cycles happen without a Black head coach. Thirty-five Power 5 programs have never hired a Black head coach, including the past four to win College Football Playoff national championships: Alabama, Clemson, LSU and Ohio State.

This is important because a large percentage of the labor force that wins those championships looks like me.

NBC found that 46% of Power 5 football players in 2019 were Black. That's the largest racial demographic represented. When incorporating the remaining five FBS conferences, the percentage of Black men playing college football rises to 52%, despite Black men representing just 7% of the United States’ population.

It's not a question of more Black head coaches as much as it is a question about managerial representation in a space in which Black men are overrepresented in the labor force. In a country that strives to be a more perfect union — that is to say united and equal, with a commitment to melting pot principles — this has to change.

RJ Young is a national college football writer and analyst for FOX Sports and the host of the podcast "The No. 1 Ranked Show with RJ Young." Follow him on Twitter at @RJ_Young, and subscribe to "The RJ Young Show" on YouTube. He is not on a StepMill.

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