Deion Sanders does not plan on having Jackson State compete against Power Five schools anytime soon.
Sanders, who scored a coup in flipping the nation’s top recruit Travis Hunter from his own alma mater Florida State to the Mississippi HBCU where he’s head coach, appeared on the “Rich Eisen Show” on Christmas Eve. Eisen asked Sanders if he is seeking to put his team up against blue blood programs.
“The goal is to dominate where you are, not win, but to dominate where you are,” Sanders said. “Then, you look towards down the line to scheduling some of those games. Right now, those games are a financial beatdown. That’s what I call them. That’s what some HBCUs choose to do.
‘I’m going to go to these various schools, get my butt kicked, but I’m walking out of there with $750,000 or a million dollars. That’s not worth it to me. To me, that’s the ultimate sellout to children.”
Jackson State is an FCS school. While they have played some FBS schools like TCU and UNLV previous to Sanders’ tenure, the coach said the competitions would not only lead to an embarrassing loss, but a string of injuries.
“I know I’m not going to win, I’m going to lose three or four players to injury and you’re going to humiliate my team and I’m going to have to build them back up the next week to play again,” Sanders said. “That doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Sanders said if he had offensive and defensive lines to withstand the physicality, he would compete against bigger schools.
Eisen followed up by asking his former NFL Network colleague if not being able to get those linemen to Jackson State means he will one day jump ship to a bigger school.
“I’m not looking to tomorrow,” Sanders said. “I don’t do that. I promise you. I focus on today. I focus on the now. I focus on maximizing the moment and giving these kids all that I have today. When tomorrow comes, I’ll concern myself about that. I don’t look down there. That’s why we’ve been so successful.”
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