Former Colorado coach Bill McCartney died in January, nearly a decade after the national championship-winner was diagnosed with late-onset dementia/Alzheimer's. The program announced Saturday that it will honor McCartney with a statue outside of Folsom Field, news that Deion Sanders responded to by saying doesn't want any more Buffaloes football greats to have to wait before they're recognized by the school.
Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter, meanwhile, received their flowers from the program before they were even selected in the 2025 NFL draft.
Despite being just months removed from their Colorado careers (in which the Buffaloes went 13–12 with a 9–4 record in '25), the two players had their jerseys retired during Colorado's spring game on Saturday, much to the chagrin of many around college football.
Even as older Buffaloes with stronger jersey retirement résumés wait to be honored, Coach Prime pushed ahead with the plans to honor his son Shedeur and Hunter, who did have one of the most remarkable individual seasons in college football history as a two-way player and Heisman winner. On Saturday, he cited the McCartney situation while asking a simple question about honoring the program's legends: "Why we wait?"
"I give you your flowers now, I'm not going to wait 20 years down the street, then bring you back when you're limping, you can barely walk or some tragedy happens, to recognize your greatness and what you contributed to this program," Sanders said during his press conference after the spring game.
"I'm trying not to get in trouble with what I'm about to say, but why we wait, man? Why we wait? Wouldn't we have wanted [McCartney] to see, to be involved in it? To feel it? To feel the love, the respect the appreciation. Why we wait? ... He can't enjoy that right now."
Sanders added the case of Colorado Heisman winner Rashaan Salaam, who died by suicide in 2016. Colorado retired his jersey the following year.
"The same thing with Rashaan Salaam, right? How long did we wait? … How many years after his death?” When he was informed that it happened the following year, he asked, "So we gotta die to get recognized?"
Sanders believes his decision is a reflection of the reality of the current world, where immediate gratification is the expectation.
“We're a now generation. You guys are now people, this is a now time, and those guys deserve what they deserve right now, so I'm proud of them" Sanders said.
"Everything y’all want, you want it right now. And you go get it right now. You don’t wait for nothing no more, do we?" Sanders continued minutes later. "We wanna go, we call Uber. We wanna eat, who we call? UberEats? Everything we get is right now. We want something, we order it off Amazon, right now. We ain’t in no waiting generation no more. That’s over. That’s a wrap on that. Everybody in here's impatient. You’re downloading stuff right now putting it out, as I speak. This ain’t that no more. Let’s stop.”
Sanders and Hunter will now embark on their NFL careers, with both set to be drafted in Thursday's first round of the 2025 draft, and no need to wait at all to be recognized by their alma mater.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Deion Sanders Defends Shedeur, Hunter Jersey Retirements: 'We Gotta Die to Get Recognized?'.
