Boomer Esiason recalls TV pitch for him and Colorado football HC Deion Sanders to be next Skip and Stephen A.

Boomer Esiason revealed on WFAN that he and Colorado football head coach Deion Sanders nearly co-hosted a show that would've positioned them to be the next Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith.

“Once a friend of mine who was a producer in TV, brought up an idea to me, way back when and I presented it to Deion Sanders when we were working together at CBS,” Esiason said on June 26. “I think we still liked each other at that point. Actually, it might have been at a point where we didn’t like each other, I don’t know. And the concept was ‘in black and white.’ We would have our discussions based on the way we saw life because he and I obviously see most things a little bit different just because of the way we were brought up.”

Hat-tip to Awful Announcing's Brandon Contes, who made the connection between the former NFL quarterback and his cornerback enemy and the real-life disagreeable ESPN duo of Skip and Stephen A.

Colorado football head coach Deion Sanders went TV network analyst route before becoming Coach Prime

Before he was "Coach Prime," Sanders was an NFL Network analyst who flashed personality but kept things more neutral and even-toned than he does now and did during his playing career.

Public opinion on him was far less divisive than it is now.

Sanders understands the entertainment and content game far more intimately now, though. He goes on a select number of podcasts and keeps interviews rare. It has worked to give him the most mystique of any coach in the game without a championship to his name.

He almost became a professional wrestling-esque character on the airwaves, but as fate would have it, it'd be during the most challenging transition of his career, coaching at the Power 5/4 level, that brought out the most from Sanders' personality.