Now the head coach of the Colorado Buffaloes football team, Deion Sanders' days in the New York Yankees‘ organization are far behind him.
But Coach Prime gave an interesting, modern look at his time in pinstripes, calling himself the first NIL athlete as a Florida State Seminole in an appearance on Jason and Travis Kelce's New Heights podcast on Monday.
“I think I was actually the first NIL deal because my junior year I didn't play baseball at Florida State, but I got drafted by the Yankees,” he explained. “So, I accepted professional cash, which allowed me to be a walk-on coming back my senior year of football.”
“So, I went and played the whole summer six weeks,” he continued. “I played rookie league for two weeks in Sarasota. I played single A for two weeks in Fort Lauderdale. Then I went to Triple A for two weeks in Columbus. Then I came back in August to get ready for camp. Then still played my senior year of football.”
If you think that sounds like something the NCAA wouldn't allow, you'd be right. But Florida State — and the Yankees — had a solution in mind.
“So since I accepted money from pros, I was a walk-on,” Sanders said. “The Yankees paid my scholarship, but you couldn't tell me nothing on campus. I got a neck full of gold. Like I've got Louis bags like you know that's when the prime stuff really jumped off because I had justification.”
Sanders broke into the majors in 1989 with the Yankees, who selected him in the 30th round of the 1988 MLB Draft. That same year, he made his NFL debut with the Atlanta Falcons.
The only athletes to appear in both a Super Bowl and a World Series, Sanders reached the Fall Classic in 1992 with the Atlanta Braves. Three years later in 1995, he won his first of back-to-back Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys.
