Colorado football HC Deion Sanders 'petty and self-absorbed' while engaging in 'silliness' on social media

USA Today's Blake Toppmeyer shared harsh words on Deion Sanders' recent X spat with a random fan and Jaheim Ward, the Austin Peay teammate of former Colorado football safety Xavier Smith, as well as his entire tenure thus far in Boulder -- calling the social media happening silliness, and claiming that Coach Prime is "petty and self-absorbed" in everything he has done while in charge of the Buffs.

"Although Sanders’ tweets didn’t amount to anything overly acerbic, I wondered: Shouldn’t he have something better to do as he ostensibly tries to rebuild a program that’s two winning seasons in the past 18 years? By engaging in this silliness, Sanders came off petty and self-absorbed, which is unsurprising if you’ve monitored his tenure," Toppmeyer wrote.

Sanders, for his credit, did atone for his social media behavior, explaining it away as the behavior of a bored individual.

“I gotta do better on that and not ride with it, but I was bored,” Sanders said on Thee Pregame Show (h/t USA Today). “I was bored, and I didn’t say nothing hurtful. I don’t attack people.

“I try my best to refrain, but like when you posted like stats, I said, 'Lawd Jesus,’ like dang, he really went at him, like he really shot him. That’s really what I meant, and I think that was taken wrong. I think that was taken sideways or something else.”

Deion Sanders' social media antics overblown, and his Colorado football tenure is underrated

Sanders saying "Lawd Jesus" to a quote tweet of an FCS player's stats just isn't the diabolical action many are trying to make it out to be. It was a careless mistake that Coach Prime has owned up to in writing it off as boredom.

As for the rest of his tenure, while certain aspects of his time can be written off as self-absorbed, like hiring his friend Warren Sapp as a GA despite it going against CU's domestic violence policy and allowing his kids to skip a team meeting in January for a fashion show, he's still moved the needle forward for the University of Colorado. He's making good on his $5 million annual salary and improving the team from where it was.

He does things differently and is one of the more unorthodox figures in the sport, but he isn't doing anything destructive to a program that is better than where it was before he got there.