The Prime Example Not to Follow

Not every athlete can say they boast a career comparable to Deion Sanders. Arguably one of the best cornerbacks of all time while simultaneously playing in Major League Baseball as a left and center field, his athletic capabilities are nothing short of remarkable. However, while Sanders has an athletic repertoire that is virtually unheard of, it’s what he does off the field that has captured the nation’s attention.
After officially ending his athletic career in 2005, the media resonated with Sanders being a family man after a long and legendary athletic career with the start of his show in 2014, “Deion’s Family Playbook.” During the show’s one-year run, audiences looked inside the family dynamic of one of the nation’s athletic golden boys. One of the storylines the show touched on was the start of the Prime Prep Academy. The Prime Prep Academy was a charter school system founded by Sanders and DL Wallace in the Dallas and Fort Worth areas in 2012. It was marketed as a place that would provide a world-class education while also meeting the needs of student-athletes, who had aspirations of collegiate and professional careers. This notion is typical with the influx of athletic prep schools opening all around the country within the last two decades. However, with its peak enrollment of over 1,100 students, Prime Prep opened with legal and financial issues that would continue to plague the school to its official closing by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) in 2015. It is speculated that the collapse of Prime Prep Academy is the reason why no Division 1 football program entrusted Sanders to become their head coach when he wanted to make the move to collegiate coaching until his short but impact stint at Jackson State University. But what exactly happened for the legendary Sanders name to be withered with scandal? Prime Prep Academy was a sinking ship before it even set sail. The promised athletic powerhouse used the name, image, and likeness of co-founder and head football coach Deion Sanders to be able to recruit some of the country’s most talented athletes, including Emmanuel Mudiay and Terrance Ferguson NBA first-round draft picks and Baltimore Raven wide receiver James Proche II. Nonetheless, two months before opening, the school’s founders were faced with lawsuits by investors over a previous business transaction. This was the first piece of the domino effect when it came to the school’s issues. After the lawsuits, unrelatedly, the academy was incapable of producing a University Interscholastic League (UIL), the governing body of high school athletics, eligible teams for their athletics, which hurt numerous recruits from championship-winning teams. Championships draw attention to a team, which, in turn, results in heavier collegiate recruiting, which consequently ends with athletic scholarships.
In 2014, there was division between the school’s founders, D.L. Wallace and Sanders, after Wallace was accused of fraud and assault, which prompted Sanders to pressure his business partner to resign. This effort only led to the school’s superintendent firing Sanders, all while the school was being hit with negative press from the media in the Dallas metroplex area due to failing to hold open school board meetings and ranking as the lowest-performing elementary school in the northern part of the State of Texas. All while being investigated by the TEA for inconsistencies with the National School Lunch Program and failure to pay their employees. All of the controversy and scandal elicited the TEA to remove the school charter and force the school to shut down in January 2015 with over half a million dollars in debt, only 2 and ½ years after its opening. After its closing, School officials and the non-profit that held Prime Prep Academy’s charter got sued by former employees and settled out of court for $125,000. While you may believe that was the final chapter of the saga of Prime Prep Academy, it wasn’t. Prime Prep was essentially a full-time training facility for future professional athletes, but what happened to the athletes who dropped their livelihood to play under Coach Prime?
Just like the school, several former student-athletes who had a bright future also felt the destruction that ensued after its closing. Recruiting has always been a problem for sports programs because although “illegal,” there are certain procedures and protocols that need to be followed for said recruiting to be deemed legal. For a lot of the athletes who did have short tenures at the school, Sanders essentially illegally recruited them, which resulted in the NCAA deeming Prime Prep students entering athletically ineligible, changing the trajectory of life for many.
For the most part, this story was forgotten about or virtually unheard of by the public for years, but the NCAA never forgot, which is why it is believed that Division 1 college football programs wouldn’t touch him with a 10-foot pole. It wasn’t until 2020 when Deion Sanders signed on to be the head coach of a Division 1 Program in the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC). This move was highly controversial at the time as Sanders had no experience coaching at this level while Jackson State also is an HBCU, another subject matter of the conversation. Sanders stayed at Jackson State, leading the Tigers’ record to an astonishing 27-6 during his tenure. Ahead of the 2022 season, Sanders left to be placed in the Colorado Rockies. The University of Colorado, a Power 5, PAC-12 school, is where Sanders will continuously call home after signing a five-year 29.5 million dollar contract through the year 2027. The Colorado football program finished with a 1-11 record the season prior and has won 3 games with 2 losses as the 2023 season continues.
While Coach Primes’ collegiate legacy is writing itself, we cannot forget his tenure at Prime Prep Academy. He has the resources to come out of a situation like that unscathed, but what about the students? The students who dropped everything to play under him. Don’t they get a say in how his story is written?