“Be humble. Sit down.” —Kendrick Lamar
“I deserve it all.”—Kendrick Lamar
“We never seen anything like this.”—Stephen A. Smith
A dreams-come-true affair, aka the NFL draft. Shedeur Sanders, projected first-round pick, forsook traveling to Green Bay, where the festivities occurred, in favor of hosting his ballyhooed big day at his crib in Canton, Texas. As would be a young man nurtured by Deion Sanders and a college career reported to have earned him upwards of six milli in NIL deals, Shedeur was driptastic. A black leather bomber embroidered with the logo for his brand—Legendary. Deion’s youngest son also flaunting his logo as a huge custom diamond-encrusted medallion, one effulgent enough to double as stadium lights. His special draft room was branded everywhere with Legendary. And featured ample seating and big-screen TVs; plus mics and gear to host a Twitch stream with his brother Shilo. And hella conspicuous, a shelf filled with hats for all 32 Teams, one of whom Shedeur held faith would make him a high first-round pick.
Then the shock. The precipitous falling, falling, falling down the draft board.
Shedeur Deion Sanders: a player touted during the last college football season as a high first-round pick if not the first overall, who was the Big 12 offensive player of the year, who threw a Colorado-record 37 touchdowns, who led the FBS in completion percentage (74), who was fourth in FBS passing yards (4,134); a star who had no major off-the-field scandals, who carried himself with poise despite the glare of constant scrutiny. How did a player with such a stellar résumé fall out of the first round? The second round? The third round? The fourth round?
News flash: Shedeur didn’t fall. He was knocked down, pushed down, held down. But why?
The seeds of the answer lay in draft day 1989. Shedeur’s Jheri-curled dad beaming on a couch after the Atlanta Falcons chose him with the sixth pick of the first round. “Looks like you’re wearing your signing bonus here,” said the interviewer. Deion bedecked in chains to rival Mr. T, three-finger rings on both hands, and a custom track jacket stitched with the logo of his brand—Prime Time—which is also his preferred nickname. “I thought Detroit was gone take me,” said Deion. “I woulda asked for so much money that they would’ve had to put me on layaway.”
Shedeur didn’t fall. He was knocked down, pushed down, held down. But why?
What’s evident in that brief clip from the drafting of a Future NFL Hall of Famer was that Deion was assured to the point of arrogance, that he favored ostentation, that he was brave enough to try dictating the terms of his career. Deion was so much about his scratch that he later recorded a rap song called “Must Be the Money.” The interviewer’s snipe also made clear that certain white people weren’t keen on Deion’s aplomb.
Deion’s been the same dude all these decades in the limelight. And he seems to have instilled the qualities that made him a success—including his vocal religious faith—in his sons. There are beaucoup advantages to being a football-playing son of Deion Sanders. However, a disadvantage is that the Sanderses’ cast of cocky confidence also risks rubbing no few folks the wrong way, not in the least people who count humility, even if it’s false, as a prerequisite for the persona of prosperous Black men. Some of whom would find ways to chasten those who they deem lacking in modesty.
Under Deion’s guidance last year, Shedeur helped double ticket sales and fuel a huge increase in merchandise revenue. The team was featured on national TV several times. Plus, its games were hot tickets for celebrities and constant fodder for sports talk.
The team that drafted Shedeur, which the Browns did in the fifth round (144th overall pick), had to know they stood to gain not only a good player who’d never had off-the-field troubles but a sure boost to ticket and jersey sales and media buzz, and maybe even a few national TV games. All to say, adding Shedeur would’ve been a lucrative business decision for any team. The fact that all 32 passed on Shedeur once, twice, thrice, four times was telltale that the rationale was something beyond football business.
Last year’s number-one pick, Caleb Williams, negotiated his four-year, $39.5-million contract without a traditional agent. This year’s number-one pick, Cam Ward, also hasn’t hired an agent. Shedeur represented himself with Deion as his advisor. All three players are anomalies—per the NFLPA, only 29 of the 2,000-plus NFL players negotiate contracts without a traditional agent. Since it’s almost assured that players without agents are a threat to the ecosystem of pro sports, you can bet there are people in and around the league who are working overtime to keep that decision from becoming the norm. What better way to discourage players from representing themselves than to crash their value? (Shedeur lost out on $40 million over four years by being drafted in the fifth round rather than the first.)
The night after the first round, opinions abounded about his descent:
—“You’re never bigger than the program.” —Chad Ochocinco Johnson
—“His confidence exceeded his perceived ability.” —Emmanuel Acho
—“I’m gone keep it on the field.…Teams decided that they didn’t believe that the evaluation was worthy of a first-round pick. Nor the projection of what he would be was worthy of a first-round pick.”—Dan Orlovsky
But no one’s take struck me as more revelatory than Colin Cowherd. On his Fox Sports show, The Herd, Cowherd decried Shedeur’s lack of humility as his ultimate undoing. “It didn’t really bother me when they retired Shedeur Sanders’ number. But he’s a .500 quarterback who couldn’t get drafted in the first round,” sniped Cowherd, who also took special umbrage with Shedeur adorning his draft viewing room with his Legendary brand.
A charitable read of Cowherd’s comments (he also criticized Shedeur for wearing New York Giants cleats in one of his games; the Giants owned the third pick, once considered the floor of Shedeur’s draft prospects) is that he believed Shedeur thought too high of himself and was also entitled. (Granted, he later added, “I like Shedeur Sanders. I think he’s good…I would have drafted him if I needed a quarterback.”) Touché, humility is a virtue, but I also allow that there’s hazy distance between confidence and cocky; between cocky and arrogance; and furthermore, that a young man embarking on an NFL career should have the chance to tune his self-image without the heap of outside sabotage.
A more critical read of Cowherd’s comments (along with the gestures and tone that animated them) is that Shedeur was cocky if not arrogant (descriptors which have also been lobbed at Deion) and thus deserved penalty. Or, in other words, Shedeur needed to be put in his place.
What the NFL did to Shedeur is an example of “know-your-place aggression,” a term coined by Boston University professor Dr. Koritha Mitchell. A prime target of know-your-place aggression are Black people maligned as uppity. Uppity comes from the British uppish, which means “arrogantly self-assertive,” but how I see it, an uppity Black person is one who’s proven their excellence and reaped rewards for it and/or who spreads good news about themselves and/or who refuses to genuflect to the people in power and/or to show inordinate gratitude and/or who stands on their beliefs no matter the opposition.
“Oh, they think they somebody,” has went the rub. As if believing oneself an unworthy nobody is the only proper self-conception.
In the world where white people dominate, the rightful place for an uppity Black person resides somewhere along the continuum of humbled, humiliated, and ruined. Putting Black people in their place has sounded like “Shut up and dribble,” has looked like The Greatest having his belts stripped for deigning to oppose the Vietnam War, like the post-Olympic crucibles of Tommie Smith and John Carlos, like the NBA exiling Mahmoud Adbul-Rauf for his religious faith. Fordamnsure, putting an uppity Black man in his place has looked like the NFL conspiring Colin Kaepernick out of its ranks for taking a knee against the systemic killing of Black people by the law. While I grant that there are key differences between the collusion allegations the NFL settled with Kaepernick and Shedeur’s draft woes, last week’s saga seems much too blatant to be happenstance.
Matterfact, it was a happening that could’ve broke the young man’s spirit. Which ain’t at all a novel intent. Back when my people were the capital and not citizens able to take part in capitalism, the attempt to break our spirit included flogging, sometimes with a cat-o’-nine-tails; included vicing our fingers with a thumbscrew; involved chopping off of our hand or arm or leg or castrating us; or else involved the evil of a speculum oris wedging our mouth wide. Among many aims, the tortures were meant as stern warnings for any Black somebody with even of a drop of recalcitrant blood.
And yet, there were the Sanderses—Deion, Shedeur, and Shilo—on the day after the first round, chatting with each other in their yard.
“I trust God,” said Deion.
“This ain’t God,” said Shedeur.
“This the devil,” said Shilo, which drew an insouciant laugh from all of them. “It wasn’t cute after 21. That was the final straw.”
“But you could explain it,” said Shedeur. “This is just unexplainable now.”
“This to the point now where you like, Hey man. Aight. Ya’ll gotta stop now. It’s too obvious,” said Deion.
Be clear: The obviousness of which Deion spoke was elemental to putting Shedeur and his family in their place. Which was not at all surprising given the current sociopolitical climate.
Bear in mind that there is still not a single Black majority owner of a team. That earlier this year a Black quarterback beat the great hope of middle America in the Super Bowl. A game during which Kendrick, an incontestable symbol of Black excellence, turned its halftime into a spectacle of Black consciousness. Bear in mind that, while the Sanderses have made no overt political statements on behalf of the whole Black diaspora (maybe no clearer sign of how apolitical they’ve been on racial justice than the fact the 45/47 advocated for Shedeur to be drafted), Deion did go on Tamron Hall’s national talk show and proclaim, “It’s not who I would like for him [Shedeur] to play for. It’s a couple teams that I will not allow him to play for.” (It’s damn near a parody that the team that drafted Shedeur has never been to the Super Bowl and, in 2022, gave a $230 million guaranteed contract to a quarterback who had several pending sexual-assault accusations. Though that quarterback has been steadfast in his denials.)
Bear in mind that this year’s draft occurred during a time when corporate America (and the multi-million/billionaires who run it) is kowtowing to a regime machinating returning Black people to as close as possible to Jim Crow if not full-on reenslavement: by forcing the abandonment of diversity, equity, and inclusion; by firing EEOC commissioners in an effort to thwart redress for workplace discrimination; by erasing Black people from historic sites and registries (going so far as to disappear Harriet Tubman from the government website chronicling the Underground Railroad); by targeting for defunding the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture; by jailing and deporting scores of brown and Black people without due process.
And making sure all those injustices are as in-your-face-and-what-the-fuck-you-gone-do-about-it evident as possible. We are living in a season (let’s pray it’s just a season) where people in power could give good gotdamn what the rest of us say or do or feel about their words and deeds. Which is to say, the micro aggressions of yore have gone boldly, flagrantly MACRO!
What to do in the face of such stark hostility? The Sanderses are model in how they’ve presented themselves as unflappable if not indomitable, in how they have handled the crucible of the last few days with style and grace and mirth. One example is the video clip of Shedeur and Shilo dancing in a room full of cheering people—elation that didn’t seem contrived—when the Browns announced him as their fifth-round pick. “Thank you for the fans. Thank you for everybody. Thank you for the Browns organization for giving me a chance,” said Shedeur, while at last donning the cap of his NFL team. “That’s all I need.”
Mitchell S Jackson is a contributing writer for Esquire. He is the winner of a Pulitzer Prize and a National Magazine Award as well as the acclaimed author of the memoir Survival Math, and the award-winning novel The Residue Years. He is the John O. Whiteman Dean’s Distinguished Professor of English at Arizona State University.
