The Leadership Style of Football Legend Deion Sanders

BRIAN KENNY: The expression “nothing succeeds like success” is attributed to French playwright and author Alexander Dumas, who struggled for years before breaking through with back-to-back hits The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. Described as a larger-than-life character, Dumas was a central figure in French literary circles and high society. English playwright Watts Phillips said of Dumas, “His tongue was like a windmill; once set in motion, he would never know when he would stop, especially if the theme was himself.”

Which brings us to the protagonist of today’s case, Deion Lewin Sanders—AKA “Primetime.” Sensational professional athlete, savvy brand manager, brash sports commentator, and controversial coach who is succeeding on the sidelines the way he did on the field of play. And did I mention that he likes to talk? Coach Prime’s media sessions have been likened to Sunday sermons where he talks more about discipline and character than wins and losses, but if winning is the best measure of success his approach seems to be working. Today on Cold Call we welcome Professor Hise Gibson to discuss his case, “Deion Sanders, The Prime Effect.” I’m your host, Brian Kenny, and you’re listening to Cold Call on the HBR Podcast Network.

HISE GIBSON is a senior lecturer whose research focuses on topics related to innovation and technology, operations management, human capital development, inclusive leadership, and leading organizations through crisis, which is perfectly appropriate for today’s conversation. Hise, welcome back.

HISE GIBSON: Oh, thanks a lot. I really appreciate it.

BRIAN KENNY: I feel like we just had you on the show not long ago, but that was a fun one. We did one on Uncle Nearest bourbon for those of you who want to go back in the catalog and seek that one out. That was a great conversation. Today’s is totally different, we’re going to be talking about somebody that most people know, Primetime Sanders, Coach Prime. He’s been a figure in the American sports scene for decades at this point, and he is having a bit of a resurgence if you’re paying attention. He has moved from the commentator’s booth to the sidelines where he’s coaching this year of last couple of years at University of Colorado, and before that at Jackson State, and we’re going to talk about all of that.

I really enjoyed reading the case, and one of his players, Travis Hunter, won the Heisman Trophy Award, that’s an amazing achievement. The biggest award in college sports and Coach Prime was there.

HISE GIBSON: He definitely was there and an amazing achievement by not only an amazing athlete, but a really good person, and so that’s something I think we see all the marvels of performance on the field, but Travis Hunter’s also an academic All American.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, it is, and we’re going to talk about that character, and discipline and all the things that coach Deion is preaching to his players, and he’s going about things in a way that not everybody agrees with, so there’s some controversy here too. Like any good HBS case, there’s some tension there so why don’t we get started. I’m going to ask you by telling me what motivated you to write the case about Deion Sanders and his transition to the University of Colorado.

HISE GIBSON: I think what motivated me to write the case was, 1, having been a football player myself and only a few years behind Coach Prime, I’ve been watching him my entire life, and just so happened around the time that I was thinking about this is when coach Prime was at Jackson State, and fortunately I have a younger brother who also played football in college at a historically Black college who’s also a NCA referee, and so he and I were, have been talking over years about, “Hey, you should really do a case on, you should really think about.” And I’m thinking, that will be really cool. I don’t know this person. And it just so happened that we reached out to him as he was transitioning, so it wasn’t even planned to meet him during the transition.

It just lucked up that way, and so it really allowed us to really think about can what he did at a historically Black college, work in a Power 5? At the time of meeting him we didn’t know. We had no idea, and it was really like pulling this all together real time, so it was an amazing opportunity to see something at the very beginning.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. How do you start the case in class? What’s your cold call?

HISE GIBSON: My cold call is, is he a transformational leader first? And so it really depends on how you think about transformational, and it really starts to pull at an idea on, well, is he just a coach, is he just a marketing person. For US-based audiences, it’s more of how they feel about what they’ve seen on TV. For international audiences, you’d be surprised at how many people outside the US actually know who he is. I’ve been very pleasantly surprised, although you still need to explain a lot about football, the US variant. But as far as the person, he’s well known globally.

BRIAN KENNY: Well, he’s done a great job managing the Prime brand, that’s part of the story here too, and it’s a much better story that he’s having the success he is at Colorado State than it would’ve been otherwise, so we’ll talk about that too. Can you tell us a little bit about his upbringing, his past, like who his influences were?

HISE GIBSON: It’s interesting. He grew up in Florida and I think with a mother who worked amazingly hard, his stepfather who was kind of one of those figures in the house that he saw go to work, so watching someone go to work every day. But then there was a separate coach who kind of pulled him under his wing early, and so it’s one of these interesting stories of someone saw something in him separately, and really invested in him early, and then he allowed his athleticism to take him through, so there was a pivotal moment early in his life where he looked at his mother and said to her, “I’m going to be rich and you will never have to work again.” Almost like a declaration. That this is what I’m going to do, I’m going to put it on my back and do it.

If we think about it, at the time, athletics, if you’re in a socioeconomic status that is a little bit lower, athletics has always been a way to get out, to break away, and he was narrowly focused at figuring out how to do that, and fortunately at Florida State was able to play multiple sports and excel at all of them. But I think that is where he started to really understand marketing without knowing what marketing was. Here’s an example, in the late 80s who was getting paid the most in football by position? Still quarterbacks and running backs, no one cared about defensive backs at all. Which means, how do I create a persona that people want, that’s unpredictable and that’s cool, and if we even unpack it more, back in the 1900s we didn’t have the internet. You had the paper and the news, so what’s going to be on the 6 o’clock and 10 o’clock news? That’s kind of how he was able to figure out and create a persona that became Primetime. Which was masterful and has evolved over the last 30, 40 years.

BRIAN KENNY: I was surprised to read that in the case. because he says, he says, “This is not me. What you’re seeing is a character that I’ve created, and people who know me know that that’s not what I act like on a day-to-day basis.” But that’s all we’ve ever seen of him, so it’s hard to wrap your brain around that.

HISE GIBSON: What’s interesting is that when you actually are in the space around him–regular guy, engaged, thoughtful, deeply thoughtful, and really understands people and listens, so again, based on what we see on TV, the individual who runs an organization are two very different things, and I really think that individuals who are listening to him talk aren’t actually listening, because he’s telling you who he is every time there’s a mic in front of him. You just have to get over your persona, what you think he is or how you feel from the 49ers or the Atlanta Falcons or the Cincinnati Reds, and realize this is a person who is not only himself a winner, but is able to influence others and bring them up in ways they wouldn’t think they could.

BRIAN KENNY: He is not afraid to do it differently than others have done it. I want to talk about his time at Jackson State because he came into a pretty disastrous situation there from a football perspective. Can you describe what he was able to do there?

HISE GIBSON: Well, when we think about Jackson State, a historically Black college that has produced amazing athletes, amazing scholars, who have impacted the US and that region of the US…Walter Peyton came through Jackson State, and so it used to be an amazing program that had just fallen on tough times. And so when we think about coaches, what would cause a place like Jackson State to hire someone who has never coached college football? Well, there’s something about marketing and persona that maybe we bring this person here, not only can he help the program, but maybe drive revenue in other ways that helps the university.

That’s the idea. Now, when we consider that Jackson State at the time did not have the same facilities that Mississippi State has. There’s a water crisis in Jackson. There’s not enough good housing in Jackson for students, so he is dealing with a lot of barriers, and funding and resourcing which means as the coach, he invested his salary into the program. That’s unusual.

BRIAN KENNY: Yes. It is.

HISE GIBSON: Created a practice field. They were practicing at a high school before he showed up. Creating a football player space to operate, adjust the food. There’s a lot of things he individually did to bring the program up, and folks would assume, well, he doesn’t know how to coach football, but they discount he’s actually been coaching for 20 years. He’s been coaching his kids and others for a while. When he was a commentator, he was leaving being a commentator to go coach his kids. Now that doesn’t mean every AAU coach can go and coach college or in the pros, but maybe if you’re a Hall of Famer you might know something about technique, and coaching, and I think there’s a lot of osmosis that coach Prime has had that is not acknowledged.

He learned sports by playing football and baseball at the same time. The way football players operate and baseball players operate are drastically different, but he got to know the owners, and the GMs (general managers) and start to understand how organizations run.

BRIAN KENNY: It sounds like he was studying. Like everywhere he was, he was studying what was happening around him.

HISE GIBSON: And as he’s at Jackson State transitioning that program, he’s actually impacting the region. So for example, in 2022, the revenue for home games, four home games brought in $16.2 million. That’s up from 7.2 the year before. For the SWAC championship game that year, that one game brought in $8 million, so he brought in about I think it’s estimated $185 million to the region.

BRIAN KENNY: That’s crazy.

HISE GIBSON: Just by his presence, the ecosystem for the football team, for a handful of games brought in that much to North Mississippi.

BRIAN KENNY: None of that happens if he’s not winning, if the team’s not winning on the field.

HISE GIBSON: If the team’s not winning, and also if he’s not able to bring in players but he’s able to bring in players because he’s improved the facilities. He’s able to partner with airlines, partner with Under Armour, he’s leveraging his relationship capital that’s going to benefit his players, which then allows him to win, which then benefits the school, so all of it kind of bleeds together—which means when he picks up and moves from Jackson, Mississippi and lands in Boulder, Colorado at the University of Colorado. That’s the part at the time of the case where like you’re going from a majority minority city, to a city with less than 1% folks who identify as Black, and a socioeconomic status is drastically different. Can he be successful?

BRIAN KENNY: In reading the case I was thinking, really the only similarity between the 2 roles was that both teams were terrible when he got there, but in Colorado you’ve got probably a completely different mindset. They’ve got much nicer facilities; they’re recruiting from probably other parts of the country where they’re better off. Are they going to be as open to the way he’s doing things? And it seems like initially the answer is no. Can you talk about that?

HISE GIBSON: I think that initially the answer is no, because he’s about to be do something so different, and he’s also making history. He’s the first African American coach of a historically Black college football team to go to a power 5 school. There have been other coaches from historically Black colleges, universities to go from HBCUs to a power five or to a majority school, but both of those coaches were white coaches. So he’s the first African American to ever do that, and so he recognizes that he might have to win differently, because there’s a different kind of scrutiny that’s going to be placed on him in this environment. That’s one. Two—you’re right. No facilities issues. None of those kinds of structural challenges, but it’s expensive, and as someone who grew up in Texas, I remember when the Colorado Buffs were amazing when I was in high school, and they had got great players out of Texas and out of Louisiana and out of Florida and out of California. They haven’t been able to do that in a while. And how are you going to bring these people from Florida and Texas to Colorado? He quickly realizes, well, I don’t have facility problems, but I might have some food issues. I might need to figure out a way to ensure that the housing is affordable, and I’m bringing players up here who’ve never seen snow. So there are other nuances that are not as structural, but still need to be attended to in order to entice players to come in, and we also need to consider the transfer portal and all of a sudden name, image, and likeness (NIL). Which now causes him to be even more successful because he understands the business of sports, and that’s what the NIL and the transfer portal has created. As a coach now you have to understand the business, and that’s another part of I think Coach Prime, that was discounted by many others, but that has caused many of the most “winningest” coaches in college football to depart.

BRIAN KENNY: Right, and we should talk a little bit about the portal. I don’t want to go down a rabbit hole on it, but it factors heavily into this because it’s what allowed him to turn over 80% of the team, which is just a mind-blowing number. He’s basically creating an entirely new team and coaching staff. The portal, the rule changed the year that he came to Colorado, and let me see if I get this right. It allows a player to go in and state that they are open to offers from other schools. Is that oversimplifying it?

HISE GIBSON: That’s not oversimplifying, that’s exactly true. Prior to the portal opening, what would occur is that players could say, “I’m leaving.” But they have to be approved by the AD (athletic director), and their AD could not approve it, which means the players eating up eligibility.

BRIAN KENNY: Right, the athletic director at the school. Yeah.

HISE GIBSON: Whereas coaches can move about the world with no issues, players couldn’t. Now with the portal players can up and leave, which means they don’t take up a space on a roster, so once you say you’re gone, you’re gone, you’ve now opened a space for scholarship.

BRIAN KENNY: That’s for scholarship, right?

HISE GIBSON: For someone else.

BRIAN KENNY: Right, and so coach Prime comes in and he says, “This is how I’m going to run this program.” And I want you to describe what that is in a second. “If you don’t like how I’m going to do it, then you should use the portal. Jump on that portal, let people know that you’re available because I don’t want you here if you don’t want to be here.”

HISE GIBSON: Yeah, and I think it’s also about what is not understood is that people believe that they just kick people off the team. That’s actually not what happened. You have to now compete, and when you come into in an environment where you have a team that was just 1 in 11, one win 11 losses, and they’re the worst team in college football, do you really have a lot of folks on that team that want to compete? Possibly not. Which meant that they elected to leave, which created space for Coach Prime and his staff to pull in a whole bunch of amazing players to come under his system.

BRIAN KENNY: What were some of the things that he asked of his players? What was his approach?

HISE GIBSON: Well, I think a lot of his approach, which is also something that motivated me to do the case, he has what I would call an old school coaching style on new school players. And when I say old school coaching style, to unpack it: for US football coaches in the 90s, a lot of those football coaches were actually products of the Vietnam era. They were in the military, they were coaches. They had fathers and grandparents who were in World War II and Korea, and they were a negative reinforcement kind of coaching style, and they would be physical when necessary to motivate in a certain way to get things done. Now that’s not happening, the physical part, but holding kids accountable is also part of that old school way of operating.

Understanding you’re a great athlete, but those stars don’t matter when you come to a football program, meaning the rating scale, and so he holds kids accountable and he expects them to follow his core values of being smart, tough, disciplined. And the character piece is really important because they’re operating in college, and because we have the internet and anything they do becomes a viral moment. They have to be able to comport themselves in a way that doesn’t embarrass them, the university, and the program. That’s a lot to put on a kid who has been amazing his entire life, and now has put on a team with other amazing athletes.

BRIAN KENNY: And these kids are also watching professional athletes who are all about being out and brash with their own brand, and maybe doing things that are challenging authority, and so that that could be their role model, so this is a different way of thinking about things. He also took it a step further I thought, he had them dressing in a particular way. Wearing a particular color sock to the gym. It felt to me like maybe he was testing the limits of what he could do with these players.

HISE GIBSON: I think what he was doing was because he wanted people to be fast, tough, smart, disciplined, and have character, part of this is to create a level of uniformity and also to help them think through that’s what’s going to happen as a professional athlete. There’s a uniformity that’s required by the National Football League, and you get fined if you have things outside of uniform codes, and it’s almost very militaristic, and there’s a great reality check that occurred to one player who showed up to a weightlifting session in white socks versus black socks, and he kicked him out.

BRIAN KENNY: Kicked him out.

HISE GIBSON: Just immediately, like you’re different. What are you doing? But getting people in the right mindset so that they can be aligned and then focus on the work. So stripping things away that are distractions to focus on the work. Even daily, the very first team meeting every day, Coach Prime would come in and give some kind of motivational thing, and we saw that real time when we visited before the Texas Christian University game, the first game of the season, in ‘23 and sitting there with him just thinking about, “Hey, I got this thing I want to talk about.” He pulled a coach over. “Hey, I want you to talk about this,” literally real time. They hadn’t talked about it before and watching it go down, I’m like, “Wow.”

BRIAN KENNY: That is a cold call right there.

HISE GIBSON: I asked him, “You do this every day?” Now I’m used to coaches in college a saying of the week. Every other week, but to be able to inspire every single day, that’s a different kind of stamina, and no phones. Everyone’s sitting up, don’t come in my meeting late.

BRIAN KENNY: What time does the 7 o’clock meeting start?

HISE GIBSON: At ten minutes prior.

BRIAN KENNY: If you’re not there fifteen minutes prior, he says he won’t let you into the meeting.

HISE GIBSON: One of the coolest things I observed, and as a person who used to lead people, is that he wasn’t sitting with his son, the quarterback. He wasn’t sitting with Travis Hunter, his amazing two-sport athlete. He was sitting with a couple of the trainers. Couple of the kickers. And he knew exactly who they were. He knew that the kid whose parents were, Colorado Buff alums and legacy, knew whose dad was doing what and whose mom was doing what. He was operating similar to how I was brought up as a military leader. He was engaging his people in that way, which I thought was ridiculously thoughtful and amazing, and he has no one in close proximity to him who was ever in the military but operates like many of the leaders I grew up with over 25 years. Without question, he is one of those types.

BRIAN KENNY: Very interesting, so I’m wondering if this approach, would work in another setting. Can you imagine for instance, having these kinds of expectations for a team who’s working in a private firm somewhere? It’s in the military. We know that’s a hierarchical set up to begin with. Sports is kind of similar to that in some ways, but you get into the workplace, and it feels very different. Any thoughts on whether or not Coach Prime’s approach would work outside of that setting?

HISE GIBSON: I think it would work, and I think it would work in this way, and I’ve thought through around like ten different ways in which it will work, and I’ll share a couple. Because all he is doing is he deeply knows his people and pulls people around him. Pretty normal organizational leadership stuff. He trusts his people, and doesn’t micromanage, so someone who lays out uniforms before a game and picks out the helmets and stuff, you think he’s really meticulous because he is, but he trusts his people to do what they’re supposed to do, but then he also holds them accountable when they deviate, so he is clear about his own intent, and they understand they’re going to be held accountable.

He understands that discipline produces results, and all that is how people behave. What kind of patterns can people recognize? What kind of space do you put people in to have the behavior you want? And he recognizes that he is the organization and he sets the tone. He sets the tone and sends the right messages. Positive but also negative—meaning if you’re doing great I’m going to hug you, but when you need to be talked to, talked at, he’s going to do that too, and all of his coaches understand that as well, so he’s really clear and so those are just a handful of tenants that I observed, that directly can be relatable to anyone running an organization that has people in it.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, and I think another one also is the traits that he looks for in the players that he recruits, could also be the traits that you look for in the people that you’re going to bring into your organization. Right?

HISE GIBSON: Because a lot of times when we hear fast, tough, smart, disciplined with character, you’re thinking physical kinds of things, but in actuality discipline is just one of the things you do on a routine basis. Smart is not necessarily intellectual, it’s do you make good decisions? Tough, are you resilient? So it definitely applies to general everyday all of us who are in organizations trying to get positive results. It just can be applied on the field but they actually care more about all of these tenants he cares the most, what are you doing off the field? Do you leave the party? Do you get yourself out of a certain situation? Do you get up at five o’clock on time? So very interesting things to help with life with the players and those who work in the program.

BRIAN KENNY: When he talks about preparing his students to go on to the next level, he’s not thinking they’re all going to go into pro sports, because the percentage of student athletes that go on to become professional athletes is really small, but he is preparing them to take the next step in life, where you have to have a lot of the same discipline to be able to succeed.

HISE GIBSON: He’s very unapologetic with acknowledging about 95% of you will not play professional football. But you need to be a good citizen and you need to leave here, the university, Jackson State or University of Colorado with a degree so you can go and do something, support your families, and be amazing individuals. He understands that.

BRIAN KENNY: How does he respond to the critics? He has a lot of critics; we should point out. A lot of people have criticized the way that he handled things when he first got to University of Colorado, and he’s been criticized off and on throughout his career for maybe talking too much in the wrong situation or saying things that are controversial. How does he respond to that?

HISE GIBSON: I think he’s very comfortable in who he is. He knows who he is, and a lot of times he’s just saying the quiet part out loud in a way that we all know is true, we might not feel comfortable with hearing it out loud. And so I think he doesn’t respond to the critics in ways that others would, because he is able to manage the marketing, manage himself, in a way that isn’t going to take you all the way to the left. The bad things are only a blip. The good things are somewhat repetitive, and the funny part is, we’ve been talking about Coach Prime for five years on ESPN, watching a spring football game in Colorado in the wintertime. Creating the highest ticket sales ever for every game. Colorado’s in it for the past two years. Not only home games but away games are winning, he’s brought in 113 plus million dollars to the Boulder region the first season, and that number’s going up for this season. That’s a heck of an impact for one person who came into a 1 in 11 team and now is turning it around.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, they are 9 in 2 I think this year. So nothing succeeds like success, going back to the teaser in the beginning. Let’s talk a little bit about his personal branding too, because it is a huge part of why everybody knows who he is and why he remains relevant, and compelling as a figure. He’s got a pretty big social media following.

HISE GIBSON: Oh, huge, and I think what’s interesting about that is he’s an amazing father, and when you start to break down his kids, two are on the football team, his amazing daughter was on the basketball team at Colorado and now is doing great at Alabama A & M, but the one you don’t talk about the most is Deion Junior who is the social media guy, who has a YouTube channel who records everything, so he understands it and with his kids who understand the technology, are able to make sure their father is placed the right light. You can’t stop talking about him because he’s on all the socials, and then he’ll respond himself and that’s very powerful.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, so you said your cold call to start the discussion is: Is he a transformational leader? It sounds to me like he would fall into that category. What do you think?

HISE GIBSON: I definitely think he is, and because he’s able to create a vision, follow through with that vision and be present for the duration, operationalize for others and then also empower others. That’s the basic definition of a transformational leader, and he hits all of those outside the mark, and I think even what’s most compelling is that he understands his own blind spots, and brings on the right people to fill those blind spots so that he creates space for himself to focus on the big stuff, so he is able to focus on all the big things, has the right people dealing with some of the tactical things, and drills down when necessary.

That’s a very different way of operating than most people who tried to be everywhere and everything. So there’s a lot of amazing people that he’s surrounded himself with that make this engine go, and that most people will never see.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, Hise, this has been a great conversation. If there’s one thing you want our listeners to remember about the coach Prime case, what would it be?

HISE GIBSON: I think the most impactful thing is that really try to understand what your core values are and are you actually communicating your values so that others can be better. That is something that he’s been able to do and has gained the buy-in of everyone around him, and he is unflappable in those core values, and a lot of times leaders like to be liked, and they fall into “likership versus leadership.” Leadership is a contact sport, and I think no one does it better than Deion Sanders.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, and he is winning again.

HISE GIBSON: He’s definitely winning.

BRIAN KENNY: Hise Gibson, thanks for joining me on Cold Call.

HISE GIBSON: Thanks a lot.

BRIAN KENNY: If you enjoy Cold Call, you might like our other podcasts: After Hours, Climate Rising, Deep Purpose, IdeaCast, Managing the Future of Work, Skydeck, Think Big, Buy Small, and Women at Work. Find them on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And if you could take a minute to rate and review us, we’d be grateful. If you have any suggestions or just want to say hello, we want to hear from you, email us at coldcall@hbs.edu. Thanks again for joining us, I’m your host Brian Kenny, and you’ve been listening to Cold Call, an official podcast of Harvard Business School and part of the HBR Podcast Network.