Culture

Deion Sanders says he’ll ‘privately’ intervene if wrong NFL team drafts Shedeur Sanders

Published

1 year ago

November 14, 2024

Deion Sanders says he’ll ‘privately’ intervene if wrong NFL team drafts Shedeur Sanders

Colorado coach Deion Sanders says he’ll do his part to steer his son, quarterback Shedeur Sanders, and Buffaloes’ receiver/cornerback Travis Hunter to better situations in next year’s NFL Draft.

During an appearance on Fox Sports 1’s “Speak,” Deion Sanders was asked by co-host Keyshawn Johnson if he would step in during the draft process if the “wrong” team drafted Shedeur.

“Yeah, but I’m not going to do it publicly. I’ll do it privately,” Sanders said. “I’m gonna be Dad until the cows come home, and with Travis as well.”

.@DeionSanders says he will step in if the wrong team drafts Shedeur. 👀 pic.twitter.com/WK67vSyouY
— Speak (@SpeakOnFS1) November 12, 2024

Shedeur Sanders and Hunter are both likely first-round picks. The Athletic’s Dane Brugler had Hunter as No. 1 on his latest list of the top 50 NFL Draft prospects. Sanders was No. 23, third among quarterbacks behind Miami’s Cam Ward and Alabama’s Jalen Milroe.

Sanders declined to identify teams he wants Shedeur to play for, but instead pointed to traits he wanted in a team for Shedeur’s next stop.

“Somebody that can handle the quarterback he is and somebody that can handle, understanding what he’s capable of,” Deion Sanders said. “Someone that has had success in the past handling quarterbacks or someone and an organization that understands what they’re doing. Not just throwing you out there amongst the wolves if you don’t have the support and the infrastructure of the team.

“Forget the (offensive) line. He’s played with lines that weren’t great but he’s been able to do his thing. But just the infrastructure of the team and the direction of where we’re going.”

Colorado is 7-2 and ranked 17th in this week’s College Football Playoff rankings. The Buffaloes host Utah on Saturday and are alone in second place in the Big 12, on pace to play for the league title and a spot in the Playoff.

Hunter is atop The Athletic’s Heisman Straw Poll this week.

Sanders has coached his son throughout his football career, from youth leagues to high school and at Jackson State before the duo came to Colorado together after the 2022 season. Sanders also reiterated he was happy to be at Colorado when asked if he would be interested in coaching the Dallas Cowboys, where he played for five seasons.

“Shedeur has started every game in high school, every game in college but one and he is like that, man. He has a true gift. It comes from God and he loves football,” he said. “This kid loves this game and he has an insatiable appetite to win. And I want somebody to be able to propel him to the next level as well, not just get drafted by a team because we ain’t having it.”

Eli Manning, who won two Super Bowls with the New York Giants, famously declared along with his father Archie Manning that Eli would not play for the San Diego Chargers ahead of the 2004 NFL Draft. The Chargers held the No. 1 pick but the Mannings opposed Eli beginning his career there, in part because of how the franchise handled personal problems that arose during Ryan Leaf’s tenure there after being picked No. 2 in 1998. The Chargers drafted Manning but traded him to the New York Giants the same day.

The move echoes one Sanders made during his own draft process in 1989. The Giants asked draft prospects to take a two-hour psychological assessment at the NFL Scouting Combine. Upon learning the Giants had the 18th pick in the draft, Sanders declined to take the assessment.

“I said, ‘I’ll be gone before then. I’ll see y’all later. I ain’t got time for this,’” Sanders recounted in a 2017 interview.

The Atlanta Falcons drafted him fifth overall.

Required reading

Photo: Christian Peterson / Getty Images

Related Topics:College Football Colorado Buffaloes Featured

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Culture

Try This Quiz on Oscar-Winning Adaptations of Popular Books

Published

1 day ago

January 26, 2026

Press Room

Try This Quiz on Oscar-Winning Adaptations of Popular Books

Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions — or even books. With the Academy Award nominations announced last week, this week’s challenge celebrates past Oscar-winning films that were based on books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their filmed versions.

Culture

What Kind of Lover Are You? This William Blake Poem Might Have the Answer.

Published

2 weeks ago

January 16, 2026

Press Room

What Kind of Lover Are You? This William Blake Poem Might Have the Answer.

By A.O. Scott and Aliza Aufrichtig

A.O. Scott is a critic at large for the Book Review. Aliza Aufrichtig is a visual journalist.

Jan. 16, 2026

Not every poem about love is a love poem. This one, from William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and of Experience,” first published in 1794, is more analytical than romantic. Instead of roses and violets, it offers us dirt and rocks.

William Blake (1757-1827), obscure in his own time and a hero to later generations of poets and spiritual seekers, made his living as an engraver and illustrator. He conceived and executed many of his poetic projects as works of visual as well as literary art, etching his verses and images onto copper plates and printing them in vivid color — a style designed to blur the boundary between word and picture.

From a 1795 copy of William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and of Experience.”

The Trustees of the British Museum

“The Clod & the Pebble” is set in a rustic tableau populated by wild and domesticated animals. In the print, we can’t quite see the main characters, who are presumably somewhere beneath the hooves and the ripples. But the cows and sheep, the frogs and the duck, are nonetheless connected to the poem’s meaning.

The two sections of “Songs of Innocence and of Experience” are meant to illustrate “the contrary states of the human soul” — the purity and wonder associated with early childhood and the harder knowledge that inevitably follows.

“The Clod & the Pebble” recapitulates this fall from sweetness into disillusionment, and the plate suggests it in contrasting ways. The wild animals down below symbolize a natural condition of innocence, while the livestock above live in confinement, bound to another’s use. At the same time, though, the cows and sheep are peaceful ruminants, while the frogs and the duck are predators.

In the poem, the Clod is an avatar of innocence. As it happens, this is a recurring character in the Blakean poetic universe. In “The Book of Thel,” a fantastical meditation composed a few years before the publication of “Songs of Innocence and of Experience,” the Clod appears as a maternal figure selflessly nursing a baby worm:

The Clod of Clay heard the Worms voice, & raisd her pitying head;

She bow’d over the weeping infant, and her life exhal’d

In milky fondness

“We live not for ourselves,” she tells the poem’s heroine, a young girl named Thel. But in Blake’s system self-sacrifice can never be the last word. There is no innocence without the fall into experience, and no experience without the memory of innocence. Giving gives way to wanting.

Want to learn this poem by heart? We’ll help.

Get to know the poem better by filling in the missing words below.

Question 1/6

First, the Clod’s perspective.

Love seeketh not Itself to please,

Nor for itself hath any care;

Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.

Culture

Try This Quiz on Myths and Stories That Inspired Recent Books

Published

2 weeks ago

January 12, 2026

Press Room

Try This Quiz on Myths and Stories That Inspired Recent Books

Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about books, authors and literary culture. This week’s challenge tests your memory of 21st-century books that were inspired by ancient myths, legends and folk tales. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.