Deion Sanders takes jab at NCAA when addressing denied scrimmage with Syracuse, Fran Brown

Ahead of Colorado‘s spring game, coach Deion Sanders threw another barb at the NCAA. He’s upset his team wasn’t allowed to get creative and scrimmage against another team.

Sanders had floated the idea publicly earlier this spring. And when he did so, he instantly found a taker.

Syracuse coach Fran Brown hopped on the offer via Twitter, NCAA permitting, to take on Colorado in a game and a couple joint practices. The NCAA denied the waiver that would have been needed to allow that type of competition.

So in his pre-spring game press conference, Deion Sanders looped back around to the decision. Then he tossed a bit of a shot the NCAA’s direction.

“Spring game, tickets still available, game at 2:30 on ESPN2,” Sanders said in a flat voice. “I think we’re over 15,000 tickets. I think it hurt the ticket sales when they said we weren’t going to get that scrimmage against Syracuse. I wish we would have.

“But hopefully we get it a year from now, when somebody else think of it besides me and coach Fran Brown. Let them do it first. The ticket sales would be astronomical, in sales, not prices.”

There are at least some reasons for optimism that such a spring game could occur in the future, whether Deion Sanders is involved or not. The NCAA, in its ruling against it this year, noted that the short timeframe in which the request was made played a part in the decision.

The FBS Oversight Committee will not recommend a waiver to allow the game to take place. It argued other programs are too far into spring practice to schedule such a game, as well as academic concerns and potential recruiting advantages not available to other programs.

Sanders was the one to get the ball rolling on March 17 before Colorado’s spring practice began. He believes spring games should still occur, even as some programs across the country decided to cancel them. But Sanders threw out going head-to-head against somebody else instead of an intersquad scrimmage.

“Actually, I (would) like to play against another team in the spring,” Sanders said. “That’s what I’m trying to do right now. 

“To have a competitive (game) against your own guys kind of gets monotonous. You really can’t tell the level of your guys because, you know, it’s the same old, same way. Everybody kind of know each other. Towards the end, I would like to style it like the pros. I would like to practice against someone for a few days, then you have the spring game and I think the public will be satisfied with that tremendously. I think it’s a tremendous idea. I’ve told those personnel who should understand that it’s a tremendous idea.”

Word of Deion Sanders’ proposal got around on social media. Brown was the first power conference head coach to speak up, taking to Twitter to basically accept an invitation to Boulder. He claimed Syracuse was willing to travel out west for the event.

“[Deion Sanders] we will come to Boulder for 3 days,” Brown wrote on Twitter. Within 20 minutes of his posting, Brown’s tweet had racked up more than 400 retweets and 2,000 likes, illustrating the popularity of the idea.