Bling to wins: Deion Sanders has struck fear into the college football establishment

The NFL hall of famer's overpowering charisma has entrenched the once ailing Colorado at the heart of sports and culture in the US

Bulletin board material is not something you should give Deion Sanders, whose habit of taking the scoring attempts against him and returning them with interest is what made him perhaps the best two-way player in NFL history. Now the coach at the University of Colorado, Sanders makes a spectacular show of making footstools from the legion of critics who considered him too green and too dumb for such a dynamic leadership post.

But Jay Norvell couldn't hold his tongue. Before his Colorado State team faced Colorado last Saturday, Norvell attacked Sanders for wearing gold chains, sunglasses and cowboy hats in interviews - a look Norvell considered unprofessional. I sat down with ESPN [this week]," Norvell said on his weekly podcast. I took my hat off, and I took my glasses off. And I said: When I talk to grownups, I take my hat and glasses off.' That's what my mother taught me.'"