Deion Sanders was known for many things in his playing days, including his charisma and pizazz to go along with his crazy athleticism.
One of the only two sport stars we’ve ever seen, he once hit a home run and scored a touchdown in the same week.
Everything he did during games and on television is obvious and accounted for, but it’s his stories from his younger days that were never recorded that raise more eyebrows. Luckily due to his role as an analyst on NFL Network, these stories keep pouring in and boy are they good.
The legend of Deion Sanders grew when he was a player at Florida State and was testing for the NFL Draft at the NFL Combine. Sports Illustrated described it here:
“One of the greatest early combine stories came courtesy of Florida State’s Deion Sanders in 1989. There was talk pre-combine that Sanders wouldn’t run the 40 at all; he later said he would take his medicals, run his 40 and go home.
‘Deion gets up to the line and runs his first 40 and everyone has him at 4.3. We figured he was done. He gets up and runs another one, and he runs even faster,’ said Gettleman, then a scout for the Bills. ‘Some people had him at 4.25 [officially a 4.27]. And the funniest damn thing about it was he finishes the 40, continues to run, waves to everybody, goes right through the tunnel and we don’t see him again. We all got up and gave him a standing ovation because so many of those guys wouldn’t run.'”
And Deion insists he once ran a blazing 40 yard dash time in street shoes and without stretching, per CBS:
“Sanders long encouraged an urban legend that he rode up to the 1989 combine in a limo, jumped out and ran the 40 in 4.2-something seconds — in street shoes. He insisted it was faster than Johnson.
‘I don’t even believe I stretched, you wanna know why? Because I never seen a Cheetah stretch before he go get his prey,’ he said. ‘And I ran, I ran so fast I felt like I was floatin’…I felt like I was kinda coming off the ground…and as I hit the finish line I could remember…everybody was in disbelief. I just wanted the first person to say 4.2-something because I know 4.3 was not even in the factor.'”
Another NFL Combine story came recently from Sanders himself as he was in Indianapolis last week to cover the Combine as an analyst. Teams are notorious for putting players through rigorous tests throughout the Combine week, but Sanders wasn’t having it at his combine testing in 1989:
“It happened to be the Giants’ room. They set me down and gave me a thick book. This thing was thicker than a phone book,” he said on NFL Network during the last day of 2017’s combine. “I said, ‘What’s this?’ They said, ‘This is our test that we give all the players.’ I said, ‘Excuse me, what pick do you have in the draft?’ They said, ‘10th.’ I said, ‘I’ll be gone before then. I’ll see y’all later.’ That’s a true story.”
Sanders was right, he got picked 5th overall that draft.
Sanders never lacked confidence, that’s for sure, and he showed it numerous times on the field.
While none of the above stories are on tape, the stories seem to be believed by many. There’s even a rumor that he ran a blazing 40-yard dash…backwards.
Looks like the Primetime nickname was well deserved.
And let’s not forget that he was one of the only people to get Marshawn Lynch to say something on camera besides, “I’m just here so I don’t get fined.”
