Jemele Hill Finds ‘Coded’ Racial Commentary Following Deion Sanders’ First Win with Colorado

Jemele Hill
SXSW/Getty Images
Warner Todd Huston

Deion Sanders won his first game as head coach with the Colorado Buffaloes, and while most are celebrating the win, ex-ESPN personality Jemele Hill found “racism” at the heart of it all.

As many celebrated the Buffaloes’ win over TCU, Hill claimed she saw a “lot of coded stuff” in the discussions.

“Really interesting listening to some of the commentary around this Colorado-TCU game,” Hill wrote on X. “Lot of coded stuff.”

Though she didn’t exactly say, Hill seems to be remarking about the criticism that Sanders sustained ahead of the win.

Some felt that the media cast too much doubt on Sanders’ abilities as head coach.

But even Hill said that Sanders had made some comments that maybe he shouldn’t have.

One X user, for instance, wrote, “I mean, let’s be real though Prime been getting smoke from everybody from folks who’re treating him like an amateur to folks who hated that he left JSU…”

“Him leaving JSU was inevitable, but sometimes it’s about how you do things,” Hill wrote. “Think he made some comments that rubbed folks the wrong way. Understand this: Colorado doesn’t happen without JSU. They gave him an opportunity that not a single Power 5 school was willing to give him, and he proved he knew what he was doing. His path to success happened because of a HBCU and that can’t get lost in his story.”

She also took a swipe at an X user who wondered why we can’t “just be happy for the Black man.”

“Don’t be so sensitive. It was some comments he made that i felt like shouldn’t have been publicly made. In terms of the narrative, that part was directed at the media, not Deion,” she wrote.

Sanders himself addressed the critics after the game.

“When you see a confident Black man, sitting up here talking his talk, walking his walk, coaching 75% of African Americans in the locker room, that’s kind of threatening,” Sanders said at a press conference. “Oh, they don’t like that! But guess what? We’re gonna consistently do what we do because I’m here and ain’t going nowhere. And I’m about to get comfortable in a minute.”

Hill said that Sanders was 100 percent right.

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