ORLANDO, Fla. _ As a member of the media, I say HALLELUJAH to the breaking, er, broken news coming from the NFL Network Friday that former Florida State All-American Deion Sanders has emerged as a head-coaching candidate at his alma mater.
Can you imagine the colorful and candid quotes and comments we'd get from the trash-talking "Prime Time" prior to the big games against Florida, Miami and Clemson? I've loved Deion ever since his college days when the Seminoles were about to play Auburn and its All-SEC receiver Lawyer Tillman in the Sugar Bowl. That's when Prime Time gathered the media around him and said, "You go tell the Lawyer that Perry Mason is coming to town and I've never lost a case."
No doubt about it, Deion being FSU's head coach would be a reporter's dream, but, sadly, this FSU coaching search is turning into a reporting nightmare. We've already had separate media reports that Bob Stoops was potentially going to be hired by the end of this week and that FSU has targeted Urban Meyer as the top candidate to replace Willie Taggart. And then came the tweet late Thursday night from Ian Rapaport _ the NFL Network's top "information" guy _ about Sanders.
Tweeted Rapaport: "NFL Network analyst and Hall of Famer Deion Sanders has emerged as a candidate for the Florida St. head coaching job, sources tell me and @MikeGarafolo. A fascinating situation that could unfold."
With all due respect to Rapaport, this is not a fascinating situation; it's a fictional one. FSU is simply not going to hire Sanders, whose limited football coaching experience included a stint a few years ago at a shady charter school in Texas that he co-founded and was later fired from after he was accused of assaulting a school staffer _ a claim he denied.
It's unclear where Rapaport's information came from, but it sure sounds like it emanated from Deion himself _ or, more likely, from Deion's alter ego.
As longtime FSU insider Ira Schoffel, managing editor of Warchant.com, tweeted on Friday: "When Deion made people think he was considering a return to FSU as an assistant coach two years ago, I asked (former FSU defensive coordinator) Mickey Andrews what he thought. Mickey (smiling): "Did Prime say that? Or did Deion say that?"
It sure seems like Rapoport was talking to Prime and thought he was talking to Deion. Then again, it's not really surprising this is being reported as fact. Coaching searches are the silly season of sports reporting. FSU's search is not even a week old and we've already had some outlandish whoppers being tossed out there from different reporters citing different sources.
I don't know who these sources are, but I suspect their names are "Eenie, Meenie, Miney and Moe."
