Can college basketball find its version of Coach Prime? – 247Sports

Deion Sanders has single-handedly and almost miraculously revived Colorado’s football program from the dead. Colorado was arguably the worst Power 5 football team a year ago. Sanders flipped Colorado’s roster on its head using the transfer portal to overhaul over 80% of the roster — an unfathomable amount of change. It goes against everything college football rebuilds are supposed to be, and yet, it’s working. Colorado is 2-0 and ranked No. 18 in the nation ahead of a Week 3 showdown against Colorado State. The buzz in Boulder has reached an all-time high. Colorado football is the story of sports and Sanders’ million-dollar smile is the face of it all.
Sanders’ “Extreme Makeover: Transfer Edition” was a slap in the face of the ethos of college football roster construction. In college football, you’re supposed to stack recruiting classes and spend a few years developing that doughy, 18-year-old, 305-pound offensive lineman into a 325-pound road-grading redshirt sophomore.
Sanders’ transfer portal game plan is stunning in college football but it’s actually commonplace in college basketball. Jerome Tang brought in 11 new players, kept two returners and led Kansas State from the Big 12 basement to the Elite Eight in his first season at the helm. Flip the roster, coach up the newcomers and win. Tang did it. Sanders is doing it.
Tang got Kansas State rockin’ again, but he is not Coach Prime.
But who is?
Sanders has forced athletic directors around the country to not-so-quietly ponder that same question. How can a program replicate the media impact and athletic production of a Deion Sanders? And can that be replicated on a basketball court?
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Finding the “Coach Prime of college basketball” sounds cool in theory until you realize that Sanders’ resume is so ridiculously unique.
You got all that? I compared my resume to Sanders’ and, uh, nope! I don’t check off any of those boxes. Not many coaches can, either.
To its credit, college basketball has certainly tried to hire the celebrity coach. St. John’s tabbed Hall of Famer Chris Mullin in 2015 to revive his alma mater. Three-straight losing seasons followed and Mullin was done after Year 4. Maybe that would’ve gone differently now after the explosion of the transfer portal. Georgetown tried the same thing with Patrick Ewing, but that ended in a burst of flames. At one point, the once-proud Hoyas had lost 29 straight regular-season Big East games. Woof.
It was a big deal when Michigan reeled in Juwan Howard. Vanderbilt went down the untraditional path when it hired Jerry Stackhouse in 2019. Pockets of success have followed for both Howard and Stackhouse, but both are on the verge of potential make-or-break seasons in 2023-24.
What Sanders is doing with Colorado is what some hoped Penny Hardaway would be able to accomplish at Memphis. Hardaway has won at least 20 games in each of his first five seasons. Memphis has landed some elite talents like Precious Achiuwa, James Wiseman and Jalen Duren. But Hardaway has just two Big Dance appearances to show for it. The only time Memphis has been a true national story was when Wiseman was ruled ineligible by the NCAA because his mother accepted $11,5000 from Hardaway in the summer of 2017 — a year before Hardaway took the Memphis job. Ah, the good ole days before Name, Image and Likeness.
You get the point.
What Sanders has done — albeit in just two games — is different because he is different.
Can college basketball find someone who is different? Someone who is one of the best players of their generation? Someone who is polarizing to some, beloved by others and must-watch TV for all?
Maybe it’s Stephen Curry. Sanders’ two-way brilliance changed football. Curry is doing the same thing with his barrage of shooting excellence. The Golden State Warriors superstar also hosts the Curry Camp for college and high school basketball’s rising superstars in San Francisco. Five-star prospects like Cooper Flagg, AJ Dybantsa and Dylan Harper were all in attendance last month. If Curry opted to go into coaching after his Hall of Fame career ended, he’d have built-in access and already-forged relationships with the top recruits in the country. If you’re in the transfer portal, who wouldn’t want to go play for Curry? Would Curry want to start at a more intimate setting (hello, Davidson) like Sanders did at Jackson State? Or would he leverage his star power as one of the best players ever to lean on one of the blue bloods in his beloved home state of North Carolina?
Maybe Curry is a bit of a stretch. But if not him, then why not Bradley Beal? The NBA All-Star isn’t a transcendent, generational talent like Sanders, but Beal has his own acclaimed AAU program in St. Louis dubbed Brad Beal Elite. Beal has embraced helping usher in a new era of basketball phenoms.
What about Chris Paul, Draymond Green or Russell Westbrook?
They are all generational college and professional players who will end up in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Referees would be positively thrilled to get two hours of tongue-lashings from Green or Westbrook. Postgame press conferences from Green and Westbrook or their players would be bulletin board material — like what we’ve seen from Sanders’ camp at Colorado. If their teams played like them, then Green would have one of the best defensive teams in the nation while a Westbrook-coached squad would compete from baseline to baseline for 40 minutes. It would be nothing short of entertaining basketball.
Similar to Beal, Paul has funded Team CP3 for top talent in his home state of North Carolina. Paul was on the bench coaching for Team CP3 at Peach Jam — high school basketball’s top summer tournament. A heady point guard like Paul shifting to the bench almost seems too easy. He’s one of the highest-IQ players the sport has ever seen. He also could follow in Sanders’ footsteps by gravitating towards an HBCU to start his career.
Paul has been very vocal about his support of all HBCUs, but especially the ones in North Carolina. In fact, when Paul decided to return to college to get his degree, he elected to continue his education at Winston-Salem State (his hometown HBCU) instead of going back to Wake Forest.
Paul’s high-IQ approach is the same reason why Rajon Rondo could also make sense as a star college coach. Even though his professional career doesn’t rival that of a Westbrook, Curry or Paul, Rondo has been very active in the youth basketball scene and is building quite the resume to be a coach.
JJ Redick could also be a dark horse coaching candidate. Redick was one of the most recognizable college basketball faces during his star-studded run at Duke. Like Rondo, Redick was a good pro, but not a superstar. But he’s taken a page out of Sanders’ book by shifting into the media space after his playing days were over where he has quickly skyrocketed into one of the NBA’s top voices. Despite this, coaching is still on the table. Redick was, reportedly, a candidate for the Toronto Raptors coaching gig. Would he give college basketball a shot if the right opportunity came calling?
And then there’s LeBron James.
The King sparked a frenzy when he grabbed a whiteboard at Peach Jam and started dialing up plays left and right for his son Bryce and his Strive For Greatness 16U squad. LeBron James as a college basketball coach would be a national story from day one. But, if we’re being realistic, James pursuing a coaching career seems more like a pipe dream than a legitimate reality at this point. James seems to be eyeing bigger things like owning an NBA expansion team. 
These are the conversations college athletics decision-makers are having right now because of Sanders. Yet, the reality of the matter is there’s only one Coach Prime. No one can rival his resume. But Colorado is proof of what can happen when an administration empowers a legend to be himself and gets out of the way.
College basketball should be takin’ notes.
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