Deion Sanders wants players prepared for bright lights without using thesaurus in pregame speech

As Deion Sanders continues his first season with Colorado, each week is replete with lessons to be learned. One of the lessons Sanders wanted his players to learn this week is that they don’t need him for motivation.

Sanders is more than capable of giving an excellent pregame or halftime speech, but he doesn’t want his team to have to rely on that.

“We challenged them tremendously at halftime,” Sanders said after a 48-41 loss to USC that included a tremendous comeback attempt in the second half. “Everybody say they want the light until they get in the light. Now when you get in the light, the thing about the light, it echoes your blemishes. So we challenged them to come out here.”

Sanders went on to explain that his challenge was about helping his guys understand that their belief is up to them. It isn’t dependent on results.

After a 3-0 start to the season, Colorado likely had a strong belief that it could compete with just about anyone. A 42-6 loss to Oregon likely disavowed many players of that notion.

But if that was the case, Saturday’s closer loss against a very quality USC team should be further reinforcement. If anything, it provides reinforcement precisely because it was Colorado’s belief that got them back into the game.

Not a fiery speech from Sanders.

“Like I ain’t got time to be trying to fire you up and get you the most dynamic speech that I could give, intellectual and use some true words that I have to look up in my vocabulary and the thesaurus,” Sanders said. “How do you say that word? Thesaurus. I ain’t got time for that thing.”

Colorado trailed USC 34-14 at halftime but managed to outscore the Trojans 27-14 in the second half.

The team just dug too big a hole in the first half.

Still, there are those lessons to be learned. And Deion Sanders hopes his team learned a good one today.

“I just wanted to come out there and I wanted them to lift me up, motivate me, encourage me,” Sanders said. “Not that I needed it, but I wanted to flip the script on them because I knew they had it in them. All they had to do was believe. Regardless of the color on the uniforms on the opposing team, they just had to believe. And that’s something that they’re doing, week in and week out. It’s growing.”