Sections

Advertisement

Nick Saban was asked how he wanted to be addressed after Deion Sanders' comments

During Tuesday’s SWAC Media Day, Football Hall of Famer and Jackson State head coach Deion Sanders walked out of an event after Clarion Ledger and USA TODAY Network reporter Nick Suss called Sanders by his first name before asking a question.

Sanders claimed that reporters would get cussed out if they addressed someone like Nick Saban by his first name, which isn’t true at all. The Alabama coach and every college football coach frequently get addressed by their first name during press conferences.

It happened eight times during Saban’s availability at SEC Media Day on Wednesday, and he was even asked specifically for his preference.

After a laugh, Saban said:

“Look, I respond to just about anything, and I’ve been called just about everything. So, not something that’s really important to me. But I think everybody should have the opportunity to create or make the way their expectation is of how they get addressed. It’s not something that’s really that significant to me.”

So while Sanders does have every right to set his preference, there’s no way he should have taken being called “Deion” as disrespect because it wasn’t. It was a basic human interaction between a reporter and coach — two adults in a professional setting.

There was certainly a better way to convey that than this video and tweet.

After all, it’s his name. And a reporter isn’t one of his players.

More College Football