Deion Sanders made clear on Tuesday he's taking the high road in a bubbling feud regarding a Denver-area story earlier this week that claimed that Coach Prime had ordered Colorado's marching band to not play the school's fight song after Shedeur Sanders touchdowns.
Colorado officials on Monday issued a statement that directly refuted the report, which spawned additional reports.
"This is not true. Nobody ever asked the band to refrain from playing the fight song," the CU statement read, in part.
Before beginning to preview this week's Rocky Mountain Showdown rivalry contest at Colorado State, Deion Sanders took aim at the story.
"Whoever reported that I told the band not to play the fight song, that’s idiotic," Sanders told reporters at his weekly press conference. "Y’all know that. When y’all saw that, you know that was a lie. We’ve got to start having some kind of accountability."
Sanders praised many reporters in the room for their professional approaches but pointed specifically to this report that he said had far-reaching negative impacts.
"I understand that this is a free and open world, that everybody is not a journalist, everybody really hasn’t put in a lot of work to do what you all do," Deion Sanders said. "I’m thankful for many of you all that take your job and your craft seriously and you get facts before you run with false narratives. But please know that that stuff affects people. Me. You been attacking me my whole life, so that’s good. Other people involved. Band members. Buffs faithful and alumni and all that. And sometimes they don’t know what to believe, and oftentimes in life we believe the first thing we hear, in which we shouldn’t.
"I just would challenge you to be more responsible with your reporting."
Sanders felt this report crossed a line into a personal attack on his family, and while he emphasized that his family would not invoke any personal attacks, he made clear it would be bad news for anyone had he and his family not been raised "to love thy neighbor."
"I never want it to get personal, so when it gets personal, you’ve got to really think about that," Coach Prime said. "You’ve got to understand, I’ve got a huge platform. I could really get personal, if I wanted to. I choose not to do that because that’s not right. Some things in life are just not right. And I don’t want to go there and I won’t go there.
"But think about: just my family alone, the platform alone is enormous. If we really wanted to go there, we would go there. But we would never do that. We weren’t raised like that, weren’t brought up like that; we were brought up to love thy neighbor as much as we can."
On the field this week, the Buffaloes (1-1), after a blowout-loss at Nebraska, travel to Jay Norvell's Colorado State program.
It's Colorado's first on-campus visit to CSU since 1996 and comes on the heels of last year's overtime-thriller won by the Buffaloes.
"I know the wonderful gentleman who coaches them said that we look a lot like that same team as last season," Deion Sanders said. "I’m not going to say that about them, I’m going to say they’re doing some wonderful things and we’ve got to be stout to stop them in all phases."
Kickoff for the Rocky Mountain Showdown is 7:30 p.m. ET and CBS has the broadcast.