Is the Deion Sanders choice the dumbest ever?
Perhaps. And it’s not like he even did well; Colorado football went 4-8.
I would have thought Messi winning a World Cup, Ohtani being the $700 million man, all of that would have had a better case for Sportsperson of the Year.
Well, if it was for the World Cup, then that would have been last year, not this.
Ohtani signed the massive contract with the Dodgers on December 11th; the SI award was announced on November 30th. So, if Ohtani would have won the award, it would have been for his 2023 season (and the anticipation over who would sign him in free agency), and not that contract, unless SI had access to a time machine.
Plus, they’re probably hoping the Dodgers win the world series so they can give it to him next year
It’s a genuinely bizarre choice. The more I reflect on it the dumber it is. I mean, Sanders bringing some attention to Colorado football is an interesting story, I suppose, but it was not one of the 50 most interesting sports stories of the year. He got a little extra attention for… a second rate team in a minor league. One that blew a 29-0 lead to a third rate team. I am flabbergasted by this choice.
The joke that they had ChatGPT make the choice feels to me like it might actually be true.
SI is publicly doubling down in defense of this, saying it was an “easy choice.” Here is an actual quote:
“He reinvigorated the Colorado program on the field, he tapped into the growth of the transfer portal and NIL as a recruiting and brand building tool — in a lot of ways he’s the model for the modern college coach.”
Whoa! The coach of a second rate college team tapped into the growth of the transfer portal to go 4-8! Holy crap, THAT’S exciting! That sure is more thrilling than winning the Super Bowl or the World Cup! Excuse me while I go watch a live stream of whatever a transfer portal is!
As to his being the model for the modern college coach (again; a minor league) don’t you kinda need to wait to see if he ever wins anything? If Colorado continues sucking for a few seasons and they fire him, he won’t be a model for anything.
A lot of the attention that Sanders and Colorado got was early in the season (i.e., September); after beating rival Colorado State on September 16th, they were 3-0, and it did look like Sanders had executed a dramatic turnaround for the program.
One day after that win over Colorado State, 60 Minutes ran a segment on Sanders and the Colorado program. They were media darlings at that point, as I think someone had pointed out upthread.
The issue, of course, is that they didn’t sustain that early success; they went 1-8 for the rest of the season, and ended the season with a six-game losing streak. The other issue is that it appears that Sanders got the award primarily for his visibility, and for off-the-field things, and not for actually building a successful college football program.
What garbage. Take out “Colorado” and put in “Notre Dame”, and Marcus Freeman fits right into this, and the Irish had a decent season to go with it. Freeman is far better at working the portal than maybe anyone else in college football, and he did a number on reinvigorating the brand after the stench of Brian Kelly.
And Freeman would have been an equally terrible choice for SOY.
Even if Colorado had gone 8-4 he’d be a bad choice. That would still not be some sort of historic achievement.
The fact SI has been credibly accused of producing AI generated articles (and they absolutely have, IMHO. AI writing is very easy to spot) really lends credence to the idea they used AI to do this.
Totally agreed. The more I think about it, the more I think that the award, and just the raw amount of publicity that Sanders has generated (both at Colorado, and at Jackson State prior to that) is the product of his tremendous talent at self-promotion.
He just won Sportsperson of the Year!
…I may be doing this wrong.
Except for one small detail:
Ask the typical SI reader - or, probably better, the typical non-subscriber who buys the occasional issue off the rack - who Marcus Freeman is, and they would respond, “Who?”
Ask them who Deion Sanders is, and the words “Prime Time” or “Neon Deion” come out of their mouth.
Sanders won in no small part because non-college football followers know who he is.
Totally fair.
There are definitely big differences between “criteria SI uses to choose SOY” and “criteria SI will admit they use to choose SOY”. I’m pretty certain their top three actual criteria aren’t in the list of things they’d admit:
- Is American
- Has name recognition
- Will sell magazines
Then name Taylor Swift sportsperson of the year.
Beat you by 60 or so posts:
I’m actually reading the article in SI, and it only makes the selection even more laughable. The BEST point they make is that Sanders sparked more excitement for football in Boulder Colorado, especially among people of color. Nothing really about his coaching successes or life changing activities, or excellence in sports. It simply boils down to “he’s good as an Influencer”.
Horrible, laughable choice.
Taylor Swift brought more fans to football than Deion Sanders did, I’m on board.
It makes me want to subscribe just so I can cancel my subscription in disgust.
It’s not that they always make a good choice, but even if you don’t give them any charity at all for the extreme pro-American bias, looking at the list, this has got the be not only their worst pick ever, but the worst pick ever BY A MILE.
Failing to choose Usain Bolt in 2016, and instead choosing Lebron James for the second time, was a bad choice. But hey, James did have an amazing year, won the Finals, and was Finals MVP in a huge upset. Brett Favre was a weird choice in 2007, but I guess that was kind of a lifetime achievement award.
But this pick will result in reactions like “huh?” and “Is this a typo?” for as long as people are aware the award exists.
Yeah…with a lot of strange decisions made in the corporate boardroom, one can often sniff out a certain agenda, $$$ or motive, but this one defies even that.
Well, it’s probably generated more discussion than any previous choice. If that’s translated into selling more magazines, they’ve played it well.
Next time, they can make a more reasonable choice and ride the same wave again (people buying the magazine because it wasn’t as bad as last year’s choice).