Deion “Coach Prime” Sanders and Entergy Group President of Utility Operations Rod West at EEI 2023

Actually came from basketball. You know, I think I dropped like 36 that night. I had a couple dunks back to back, and we were going back across town on the yellow bus through our trips. And one of my homies, he said, 'You know what, man? He played football and baseball with me. He said, 'You Prime Time.' I said, 'You're right.' And the nickname stuck.

High school. I went to college. I'm at Florida State now, okay? And I'm saying, dang, the defensive backs, they're not making a lot of money. They're below the lineman. That's not good. I told my mother when I was seven years old I was gonna make a lot of money. I was going to be rich, and she was never gonna have to work another day in her life. And that right there is not gonna get that. So I went in the bathroom in my dormitory, looked in the mirror, and I created this character, Prime Time. It was all marketing. And the guys were out there chasing girls, which most college men do. Not none of y'all in here, you would never do such a thing. But I had a little black book, not with girls. The work ethic, all I had to do was exercise the marketing because I know I had it. And from that, I created this character, Prime Time, which some of you love, some of you hate, but you wanted to see him play.

I was 19.

It was from the dream. I'm not a liar. I tell the truth to a fault. And I told my mother that she was never gonna have to work another day in her life. You got to understand also, coming out of high school, yeah, you could clap, it's okay, Miss Connie. Yeah, also was drafted by the Kansas City Royals out of high school, and they offered me a substantial amount of money. But that was not the route. I bet on you. I bet on me. I'm going to college, and I'm going to do this thing. Then I will have balance. Not only football player, baseball player, but now I could play this one against this one because if I have two people bidding on me, that creates more value. I thought like that as a young man because I had this insane confidence. No, no, I want you to understand. Do not allow my confidence tonight to offend your insecurity. Because everybody that's confident, you're gonna clap with me. But if you're insecure, you're going to say, 'Lord, I can't wait till he gets from up here.' I could see you tossing and turning. But I had that confidence because I worked my butt off, because I saw my mother working her butt off. So I worked my butt off, and I knew I had it.

My mom is who she was. She was one of the hardest working women I've ever seen. Never complained, never begrudged, never murmured. Never talked negative about my biological father, who was a drug addict, my stepfather, who was somewhat of an alcoholic but he wasn't abusive. Never complained a bit. To this day, never asked me for a first class flight. She's going on her fourth home. Never asked me for a home. Never asked me for anything. But I provided for her because that was my mama. My mama never saw me playing in high school. See, it's hard for me to have a pity party on some of today's kids because my mother never saw me play in high school. So it's hard for me to understand. I was in college. She would drive six hours to Tallahassee to see me get down from Florida State, but never saw it in high school because she was working on Friday nights. So it was a challenge. So when you ridiculed me, when you naysayed me, when you doubted me, when you hated on me, I didn't give a damn because between all the smoke and all the ignorance and all the adolescence, I saw my mama in that hospital pushing a dirt cart. And you think I'm gonna let a critic who has critics criticize me and I'm going to adhere to that foolishness? You've got to be lost your mind. I was out there balling for my mama. Now right now, you're supposed to clap.

Man, I watch the way people move, the way they reacted. I had several different shows: white shows, black shows, Hispanic shows. I watched everything. I watched the relationship between Fred Sanford and LaMont. I watched Archie Bunker and Edith. I watched The Partridge Family and The Brady Bunch. I watched The Jeffersons. See, I watched Good Times, even though it never was good. I don't know why they called it Good Times. So I watched all that stuff, and I just studied. I just studied and I prepared. And I said, okay, I'm gonna take that out. And then I had these heroes that I couldn't touch, I couldn't feel, but they were my heroes. But I never tried to emulate them or imitate them. But I did take little bits and pieces. I loved Muhammad Ali. I loved how he called himself a doctor and he didn't have a PhD. I loved that. I love Hank Aaron for what he endured during the home run title chase. I love how he stayed focused, even the gentleman ran out to disrupt him when he was running around the bases when he eclipsed Babe Ruth, and he still was focused on just getting home to touch that plate. And my last guy, I know he may disagree at this stage in age, but O.J. Simpson was O.J. Simpson. Not the OJ the young people know. I'm talking about the old OJ, you know, not the OJ in the Bronco. I'm talking about the old OJ where he had the white community, the black community, he had all communities, and he was beloved by his teammates. So I took bits and pieces out of those persons and I incorporated. And I learned from them. I learned from their mishaps. I learned from my father's mishaps.

In my life, I've never smoked. I never drank. I stopped using profanity when I was 18 years old. So all the idiotic stuff that you've seen me do, I was well aware of what I was doing. Thank you. It was strategic. It was a plan. It was part of the process. So for all the executives in the room, it was intentional. Yes, he knew exactly what he was doing.

Shutdown corner. Yes. And my teammate, I don't know why they still calling it corner. Should it just be Prime? It should be Prime. Like I want to see kids say, 'What position do you play?' 'I play receiver.' 'I play quarterback.' 'I play Prime.' I like that. That should be it.

I don't know what that means, man. Everywhere I go, they talk about culture. They talk about culture. When I was at HBCU, they talked about culture. Now at Boulder, they talking about culture. Cultures we create. Times, I don't adhere to times. We create fashion. I don't adhere to fashion. I do me because I want to be happy. God only made one me. Well, I would look like a fool trying to emulate and imitate you when there's only one me. And I'm uniquely and wonderfully made. Why in the world would I ever in my life try to be like anybody? I sure shared previously that I would take bits and pieces, but it was incorporated into me. God has given me a tremendous gift, and I've been able to see past the smoking, past the fire, and past the curtains, and walk through and enter in some places that I wasn't supposed to be in because I had the nerve. Quit allowing people to tell you who you are that don't even know you, that don't even know your middle name, they don't even know your address. That brother that understands who he is in this day and age and stage of life, I've always understood who I am, where I am, where I'm going, and how to get there. And that's powerful, my brother. Amen.

No, it's great. He's my Hula Bowl coach.

He was my coach at the Hula Bowl when we went to the all-star game. Okay. And he'd get in front of the team at night, he's talking about the culture.

They influenced me from the birth, from the beginning. Coach Dave Capel, a Caucasian man, seen me playing in the hood on this rec league team. Came over to my crib and asked my mother could he take me to the other side of town. And I went over to his home. From that relationship, I had never seen long driveways and tennis courts in the backyard and families eating their meals together. I had never seen a Mercedes-Benz. And you didn't have to hide from the police at that point in time. I had never seen a family sitting around the table with the father at the end of the table eating dinner together. I had never seen those type of things. And it blew my mind when I went over to their homes after the proposed games. And I saw something that was so structured and organized that when I was out of football, I organized one of the largest youth programs in the country called TRUTH: trust in God, respect myself and others, understand I have unlimited possibilities. And I got suspended. You were kicked off the team. And I was in the library minding my own business, and a fight broke out. And I go try to break up the fight, and the teacher came in and saw me in the midst of it and said that I was being insubordinate. I had to look it up since I was in the library. I know what that meant. I'm like, I was not insubordinate, whatever that word means. But I got suspended and I was kicked off the team. And I let him down. And it broke his heart, broke my heart because I let my teammates down. But then I became the best leader I ever been in my life because of him disciplining me. And I needed that. And when I went to Florida State, Coach Bowden and Coach Mickey Andrews was just constant professionals. And Coach Mickey Andrews taught me some of the techniques and taught me some things about life that I still use today. So bosses, be careful what you do around your staff because they're watching. And you have no idea the lives that you are impacting. You may not receive the results right now, but 10 years from now, you may bump into that gentleman, that young woman, and they may say, 'You know when you said this on this particular day, it changed my life.' You have no idea. So I'm very conscious of the power and authority and the position that I hold in life because those men, if it wasn't for those men, I wouldn't be where I am to this day.

I didn't really. I really didn't. My kids, I chose there because he wanted to start his freshman year, and my daughter was still in high school. But I said, you know what, I'm an empty nester darn near, because my daughter was staying with her mother. And I get to travel around and see my boys play. It's gonna be a beautiful thing. Then I start getting these calls. I was already a high school coach. We won four straight state titles in this beloved state. And I think I just found out that they banned us from coaching in the state, by the way. They would never let us coach again because we won too much. But the true story, but I got started getting calls, and I started preparing because whatever I do in life, I want to dominate it. So I start preparing and really doing my homework and research on how this stuff works. And I went ahead and had a few interviews and knocked it out of the park. Understand, it's hard for me to go into any situation and not provoke change. When I walked into this room, it probably was about 74. I'm pretty sure it's 72 or 71 right now because I cooled things off. Like I bring instant calm to situations. And there's no way that I'm not going to affect, infect every darn thing I do. And I've always been that way with every football, baseball, and basketball. And think about this: how can I not be impactful when I played for George Steinbrenner and watched it? I played for Marge Schott in Cincinnati Reds and watched her. I played for Dan Snyder with the Washington Redskins, Jerry Jones. I know how it's supposed to look and how it's supposed to be. So when you give me this college job, how in the world can you dare, and I was on television for 14 to 18 years, you can dare to tell me I'm not qualified? That's an insult. Not only did I give you a gold jacket-like performance, when I gave you television, so usually when these coaches get fired, where do they go? The television. I already beat you there.

Say more.

Jackson State University, historically black college and university, HBCU. And what was the transition like? It was no transition. I don't change. I change things. Where is Chris? Come knock. Where's Chris? Chris, where are you? Are you out there? Chris is one of the young men who's responsible for me being here. I coached his son when he was seven years old. And from then, we were winning then. The same principle, the same thought process, the same way we work, the same work ethic, the same knowledge of the game, the same want and hunger and thirst for the game. I coached the same way I was coached as a young man, and I added me into it. To expect someone to make the same decision that we would make, to do the same thing that we would do, or to react the way we would react, that's not even possible because there's only one you. God only made one you. That's why you're so special because there's only one you. But yet and still, I don't expect none of my cornerbacks to be Prime. Did you know how good I was? I'm just joking. No, no, I'm not. I really don't expect my cornerbacks to be that. And I want to see what that young man has, or that young woman who's employed in that program, what they have. And I want the best you you could be. That's the deal that I made with my kids. I don't need you guys to be the best on the team because I coach them from youth all the way up. But I want you to be the best you you could be. What you do with your 24, don't get mad at me because I'm living. Don't get mad at me because I'm dominating. Don't get mad at me because I'm owning it. I'm in it and I'm about it. Don't get mad at me because I'm alive. I asked my team the other day, I say, 'How long have you been living?' He said 18 years. He said 22 years. He said 21 years. I said, 'I didn't ask you how long you've been alive or born. How long have you been alive?' Cause you ain't nothing. It's a lot of y'all in here. You may be, I'm 55 and looking darn good, but I'm living. Like I'm living. Ask yourself that when you get back to that beautiful room up there. Are you living? Are you just alive? Baby, I'm living. And you can't get mad because I'm living. Every situation, every day, I don't have bad days. I may have a bad moment. I may have a bad minute, even a bad hour. But I'd never have a bad day because I got the remote control to my life, baby. And I'm sitting back there with a big screen running that thing. You think I'm gonna give you my remote and let you turn my channel and turn my volume up and make me get louder, make me get lower? You don't control me. I control me. And I am living. Now right there, you supposed to clap.

Understand. We've been sold out for the season for months. I want you to understand that we sold out the spring game. I want you to understand we've had over half a million viewers. Thank you, baby. You go girl. I want you to understand that we had over 500,000 to watch a spring game, the highest since 2016. I want you to understand that our apparel sales have gone up 700 percent. I want you to understand that we are the number one team in the portal ranking wise. I want you to understand that we finished, I think, in the top 25 in recruiting, and we just got there last December. I want you to understand that what we've done in that community, I feel bad that they've taken the thing we walk into. And the reason I say 'we' is because I can't do it by myself. The Bible says that rod and thy staff, thy staff comfort me. So I got a tremendous staff, and they didn't really give me credit like credit should have been given for the type of staff that we have. I mean, I could go get kids all day, but that staff. I got a head coach that was a head coach at a major college come to be an offensive coordinator. I have two coaches from Alabama on the roster. I have guys from the NFL, guys from high school that I gave opportunities to, as well as guys from college. So when you talk about being able to communicate to every player inside their locker room and having disruption, we've disrupted every darn thing, and they have never seen the likes of it. Our first two games are on national television. That's disruptive. Everything we do is disruptive.

You got to understand, a lot of these coaches don't get it. Some of the big ones do, but some of the other coaches don't get it. I've been to the mountaintop. I've been in the NFL. So when I look at the portal, it's free agency to me. You know, when I look at kids coming out of high school, this draft is only a limited number of those kids that are going to get selected. Now because you have so many people out there in the portal, but it's different with the NIL. And I don't really, I keep remembering my head coach. I got to choose my words every now and then. Ah, it's the voice inside that says, 'No, don't say that, Brad. Don't say that.' But I think the NIL is great. But I think the collectives, I think it's a little different. Because if you have a young man that can't play, in business you would say, 'You know what, I'm going to give that guy an NIL deal.' That's named image and likeness. Other than that, how do they really add value? Two of those gentlemen we have on our team, that's Travis Hunter, which was the number one player in the country a year ago that chose to come to Jackson State with me, then chose to come to Colorado with me. And my son, who's the quarterback, who's phenomenal. So those are two young men that can flat out ball. And we have two of the possible three or four in college that you may recognize. Now the collectives is something different. That's just like everyone in this room, we pass a bucket like we're in a church, and they put the money in. Then I walk out of the room and they say, 'You know what, we're going to give that to him, we're going to give that to him, they're going to get that.' That's the collective. That's not the way it was intended to be. It was intended to be named image and likeness. It was intended to be that. But since it's not regulated, it's foreign.

Education is prevalent to me because I understand what education is and the journey that education could lead you on and give you an advantageous start. We just was notified last week that we had the highest GPA in Colorado's history on the football team in a semester ever. You know why? Because Coach Prime don't play. Because he's smart enough to know that 90 percent, at this point in time, because we got some dogs now, but I would venture to say 90 percent of these kids are not going to play in the NFL. So I got to assist on that 90 percent. Because I want that 90 percent to forget being a professional football player. You still could be unprofessional. Ain't nothing wrong with y'all. The most prolific and profound people in this country, and I read Forbes, I subscribe to Forbes, they didn't play football, baseball, or basketball, and they still making things happen in their community, their assets. So I invest wholeheartedly. If you have one F, I can deal with that for a few weeks. But if you have two, you can't even come on my practice field. I don't even let them come near the complex. You could come over and eat and get your butt back in class or classroom or do study hall. Do something. Don't even come over here because if you're lacking in this, you're going to lack in that. Because you know you got to get this in order to get that. I'm very proud of that.

I love it, but I don't. Okay, okay. When a kid wants to get compensated, he's placed himself in the understanding of he's a professional. But now you got all these people that are writing about you. And they got a platform. And their fingers turn into swords, and they don't care whatsoever because now they want to damage you because there's a jealousy inside of that spirit of it. Now you got bloggers, you got all kind of people who are writing about you. And then this is the worst thing ever: that phone. That phone. See, they come right in from practice and get on that phone to see what they're saying about them. And that thing right there is tough because it's some people down there that are gangsters with that phone. In that family, they're gangsters, and they will hurt your feelings. They would hurt your heart. But I tell my kids, 'Don't give them the power. Don't give them the propensity to control you all by post.' So you letting them control you because now they're saying you're great, you're high, but then they say you're low. So you got to be able to handle that.

See, it's several different types of leaders. So a lot of people think you always got to be up front and lead. You don't have to do that. Some people aren't built like that. Some people are just leaders. I never yelled at my teammates. I never gave the rah-rah speeches when I played the game. I just played the damn game at a certain level, and I practiced at a certain level, and I went about my business a certain way that people wanted to follow. But you never saw me like, 'Mike, guys, we're going to go out there.' I wouldn't like that because that wasn't real to me. Take the camera off, and I want to see if you do that there. You never seen a running back make up when they got ready to play Ray Lewis, did you? You've never seen a receiver make up when they got ready to deal with me, did you? So leadership is different. And it could be one intangible word, like right now, it's winning. Like I'm on winning. We take for granted that these young men have won, and we're teaching them a whole new thing. Some of them have won in peewee league, they have won in high school, they have won in college. Now you bring them here, and we keep talking about winning, but we got to teach them how to win. See, winning don't start in September when we go play TCU. Winning starts right now. So if you and your homie going to the cafeteria, I want you to just walk one step faster than him. Yeah. If you're sitting there eating and he on his last bite, I want you to hurry up and finish before he does. Dumpster play. I want you to win the day. At the end of the day, the lineman running, I picked out this lineman, I picked out that lineman. It's a two-player game because it's got to be competition because I got to teach you how to win. Everything we're about is winning. And see, you guys always talk about 'ain't no scoreboards in life.' That's a lie. The car you're driving is a scoreboard. The clothes you have on is a scoreboard. That purse you have, baby girl, that's a scoreboard. Okay. The house you live in, that's the scoreboard. We keep talking about this stuff, but there's a scoreboard everywhere you go. It's if you're gonna put up a scoreboard, baby, I got to win.

You all. People. I'm that type of person. That's who I am. That's who I've been called to be. And that's what I love. I love life, man. I really do enjoy. Like every day I wake up, I'm like, 'Lord, thank you. I can't believe you chose me to be out here in Boulder, Colorado, this beautiful, viewing mountains and all this, and these expensive houses.' They didn't tell me that before they signed me. But all these expensive houses and all that, but I love it because I've never been in snow. I played in the NFL for 14 years, and I never played a snow game whatsoever. So I get out here and snow up here, I'm like, 'Yeah, baby.' And it's just another chapter. But if I'm ignorant enough to think that God only would bring me to Boulder, Colorado for football, I've lost my mind. See, the thing I love about the game, man, is that when you reach a certain level of excellence, you don't have color. I want y'all to marinate on that because that was so good. When you reach a certain level of excellence, there's no color. You don't see white, black, Hispanic, Asian. You just see excellence. So every day, our commitment should be to excellence. I just want to get a little better every day. I know I'm not perfect, and God ain't making me perfect because you're going to make me perfect. I would need him. So it's going to always be tribulations. I'm going to always trip and stumble, but I'm gonna get back up. But what if we all gave it our all every day? I don't call in sick, baby. I got eight toes, and I'm still stepping in the name of love. Like, like, I thank you for letting you see something in this gentleman. Thank you for giving me this platform because I would have never been able to talk to this wonderful group of people if not for you guys giving me this platform. And I thank you. I thank you so much because I'm going to touch someone in here tonight. Someone in here tonight is going to change their whole perspective, and they're going to go back to the office now, whether this week or next week, and they're going to be ready to go. They're going to call a staff meeting. They're going to say, 'Baby, let's go. I got a new attitude. Let's go. We're gonna do this, and we're going to do this together. Let's unite. Let's hug. Let's come by. Let's do whatever we got to do. But we're going to win. If we don't do nothing, we're going to win.' And it don't start with the big stuff. It starts with the little things. We're going to win. I hug and squeeze our custodians, our chefs. Be a winning attitude. And that starts with me. It's only two people in there that are going to get a record, and both of them last name Sanders. That's me and the quarterback.

Let me stand up and say this right. Look at man, come here. Let me talk to you. You want to front for your hood and do everything for your neighborhood, but what about everybody else? You got to start making decisions based on you and start making decisions based on us because God has called you to be so much larger than you could ever fathom. I know you're only 19 right now. You don't see this, but I do. You're gonna impact the whole entire country if you get it together. I know what you're going to say when I tell you there's no 'I' in team. You're going to look at me, you're going to say, 'That's the I in the middle of Deion.' There's an I in the middle of Deion. There's an I in the middle of Prime. But I'm not talking about that. I want you to understand that life is so much bigger than you. And you're going to do some things that you never felt. You may even be a coach one day. You may love the Lord one day. You may be a great father one day. And what I want you to do too, I want you to love your mother and take care of your mother like never before because you're going to lose both fathers. And you're going to be searching for a father figure. But remember I told you about the Lord. That's gonna be your father. And he's never, he's never going to forsake you. And I want you to tell your stepfather you love him. Because you never told either one of them. Because you and your father, you know he was your father, and your stepfather was so respectful of your biological father that he never tried to step on his toes. But he was a good man. But out of respect for your father, you never told him you love me. And I don't want you to have to deal with that and live with that for the rest of your life. But if you do, watch the type of father you're going to be. And anybody that you see bleeding on the inside, help. I'm not talking about the outside. I'm not talking about the exterior because we can all put it on and look good and look fabulous and cover it up and mascara it up. But I'm talking about that bleeding on the inside. Help them.