Arizona State hosts Colorado Saturday in a PAC-12 clash, and both programs are under the direction of first-year head coaches.
Turns out, Arizona State’s Kenny Dillingham and the Buffaloes’ Deion Sanders, aka Coach Prime, nearly were colleagues in the not-too-distant past.
That’s according to Deion Sanders during his weekly press conference Tuesday, when Coach Prime was asked if he had any history with Dillingham – who spent two years as the offensive coordinator at Florida State – alma mater of Colorado’s star head coach.
“Got great history,” Deion Sanders told reporters. “I don’t know if he would want me to tell this story. I was assembling a staff once upon a time, I’m not going to tell you who, for what, but he was a part of it. We communicated quite a bit.”
Arizona State, which is ineligible for the postseason following the school's self-imposed bowl ban due to flagrant NCAA rules violations by the previous staff, hosts Coach Prime's Buffaloes -- 3-2 after last week's 48-41 shootout-loss to USC -- Saturday at 6:30 p.m. on the PAC-12 Network.
Prior to accepting the Colorado job last December from Buffaloes athletics director Rick George and during his dominant run atop the HBCU Jackson State program, Sanders also was linked to high-profile openings at Arkansas, TCU – and, at one point, there was considerable uproar to see Sanders given a shot at Florida State before Mike Norvell turned that program back into a top-5 team.
“I was happy with every step that he’s taken,” Sanders said of Dillingham, whose Sun Devils are just 1-4 but last week had a chance to take the lead on top-10 USC in the fourth quarter. “Because I know he’s that guy. I know he’s been more than capable. So when I saw him get this opportunity, I was ecstatic.”
Sanders said he visited with Dillingham earlier this year when the coaches gathered for a conference event.
“We saw one another at the PAC-12 meetings and that was like, yeah, that embrace was awesome to me,” Coach Prime said. “Because I know his climb and I know what kind of man he is. He’s great for their program, great for college football, he’s a tremendous mind, offensively, tremendous mind.
“But he’s going to be a great head coach, man. So I have the utmost respect and love and admiration for him, because we were going to work together at one point.”
Sanders said he finds the Arizona State and Colorado programs on parallel paths.
“Like us, they’re building something that’s going to be tremendous,” Deion Sanders said. “You’ve just got to keep watching the story and see how it unfolds. But you can’t take a team like that lightly whatsoever. …
“I believe in Coach Dillingham tremendously.”