The world recognizes Deion Sanders today as a Hall-of-Famer who earned six First-Team All-Pro selections, took home Defensive Player of the Year honors, and won two Super Bowls. He is also known as the head coach of the Colorado Buffaloes football team.
But in the offseason, Sanders tends to have a bit of extra time on his hands. Some of which he uses to reflect.
Deion Sanders Was Never ‘Enamored’ By Drug Dealers
When Sanders isn’t busy recruiting, coaching, watching film, or attending his son Shedeur’s training camp practices with the Cleveland Browns, he can sometimes be found making appearances on TV, on the radio, or on podcasts.
Recently, he used some of his spare moments to appear on the “Scoops with Dukes” podcast, where Sanders opened up about his upbringing as a young athlete in Florida.
In essence, Sanders explained that he saw so many families that lived extravagant lifestyles that when drug dealers would flash their bling at him, it didn’t have an effect on him. He “was not enamored.”
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“They would take me to the crib on their weekends, ’cause we played on Saturdays,” Sanders explained. “And I saw long driveways. I saw swimming pools. I saw tennis courts. So I was not enamored by the dope dealers in the hood. I love chains and the flash that they had, but I was not enamored by that because I had seen so much more. So much more.
“So, I never fell prey to that. I never wanted to sell dope. I never wanted to get in the game because I had seen a way out and a way up on the other side that you weren’t going to handicap me, thinking, ‘That’s it.'”
As he himself admits and has proven over time, Sanders loves his flashy necklaces and other expensive jewelry. Yet, despite his affinity for “chains and the flash,” that wasn’t enough to lure him into a life of drug dealing.
Even at a young age, Sanders understood that there was another “way out and a way up” that wouldn’t later slow him down like a life of crime may have done.
In the end, Sanders’ mentality paid off in a big way. He trusted himself, his process, and maintained confidence that he too would find a better path, and now his family has enjoyed generational wealth that is still growing with Shedeur’s developing NFL career.
