Colorado creates Deion Sanders-inspired course for student-athletes

Deion Sanders’ influence at Colorado has made its way from the field to the classroom.

Colorado is creating an elective course for the Spring 2024 semester that’s inspired by its football head coach. The course will be called “CMCI 4021: Prime Time: Public Performance and Leadership,” with the focus being on teaching student-athletes how to best use their voices and platforms in the early stages of the name, image and likeness (NIL) era.

“The course will focus on helping college athletes explore how to manage their time in college, prepare for [their] career, manage their celebrity, identify when to best speak into their profit center, advocate for worthy causes, coordinate with sports agents and how to interact with journalists and the media,” the school said in a press release announcing the course.

Additionally, the course will be “co-taught by a variety of media experts on the CU Boulder campus,” according to the release.

While the course aims to teach student-athletes the value of using their speech and platform, the class is restricted to certain students. Only students who are majoring or minoring in a program within the College of Media, Communication and Information who also have 45 credit hours or have passed the prerequisite course can take the class, per the school’s website.

Sanders, of course, came to fame in the 1980s and ’90s as a star football and baseball player, winning Super Bowls as an All-Pro corner with the 49ers and Cowboys and playing in the World Series with the Braves. But he raised his level of stardom with his colorful personality, earning the nickname “Prime Time” for his flashy play and quotes paired with his brief musical career.

While not all student-athletes are eligible to take the course, Sanders said after members of his football team were robbed of their jewelry during a game at UCLA in October that he teaches them about financial planning and literacy.

Sanders told FOX Sports’ Joel Klatt in June that he hopes to teach his players about whom to trust when they earn money with NIL now in the mix.

“These kids have agents, man. These kids got not only agents, they’ve got their homies who’s representing them, who’s just trying to use them and playing them,” Sanders told Klatt as part of his “Big Noon Conversations” series on his podcast. “They don’t go to the school that they should go to. They don’t even ask questions about the defense or the offense or the scheme or the personnel or how you’re going to use me. What am I gonna get? Out. That’s what you get. Out. That’s your prerogative, your first thing? I don’t want you. I want you to chase that NFL bag. That’s what’s going to sustain you. This may maintain you for whatever.”

Deion Sanders and Joel Klatt examine how NIL and chasing the bag impacts CFB

Sanders went 4-8 in his first season at Colorado. Even though it didn’t make a bowl game, it improved its win total by three games and Sanders brought a considerable amount of buzz to the program as it had a handful of games that were among the most watched in college football this season.