Before even entering the media conference room, the voice of Deion Sanders boomed from the hallway inside the bowels of TCU’s football stadium.
Deion arrived with receipts, he said. All of them. Receipts for miles. He keeps them all, and he's got 'em all. He won't forget 'em, either.
Not literal receipts, of course. Coach Prime isn’t carrying around those thin, white slips that cashiers distribute. The receipts he carries are from the doubters.
And, whoa boy, before his Colorado Buffaloes marched into Fort Worth and stunned No. 17 TCU 45-42, there were doubters. Lots of them.
“I keep receipts,” he snapped after the win Saturday. He saw what you wrote, he snarled at one writer before moving on to the next question.
Oh, he said to another, you want to ask him about his son, quarterback Shedeur Sanders, and his record-breaking 510 yards passing?
“Shedeur Sanders? From the HBCU?” he interrupted, glaring from beneath his white hat, a gold chain slung around his white hoodie.
“The one that played at Jackson last year? The one that you asked me why I’d give him the starting job? Wasn’t that you?”
When he spoke about Colorado’s receivers this offseason, none of us believed him, he said. What’d they do? Four of them had 100 yards — another school record.
None of us believed in his team, he said, a group that entered this game as a three-touchdown underdog.
Of course we didn’t believe. Why would we? Colorado had won one game in its past 12, hadn’t claimed a top-20 road victory since 2002
and was led by a first-year FBS coach who spent the offseason orchestrating the most unprecedented overhaul in college football history: 70 new scholarship players, nine scholarship returners.
So, no, we didn’t believe. “I’ve been talking about it and talking about it, and you didn’t believe me,” he said. “We got a couple guys that should be front-runners for the Heisman right now.”
Oh, he’s certainly right about that. Shedeur Sanders, Deion’s son, threw four touchdowns on the way to his school-record yardage in a 38-for-47 outing of masterful precision.
Travis Hunter, the former No. 1 recruit whom Deion flipped from Florida State two years ago, played 129 snaps in a two-way spectacle of a performance in 90-degree heat.
At cornerback, Hunter had an interception at the goal line and a fourth-quarter pass breakup. At receiver, he caught 11 passes for 119 yards.