There are some positions in sports for which I harbor a great deal of respect. Goaltender. Middle linebacker. Director of marketing for the Expos.
I don't respect football cornerbacks. Sure, I'll acknowledge the speed, stamina, and vertical leap it takes to excel at the role. But that's more about the athlete playing the position, and not the position itself.
What is a cornerback but a player whose success depends on the failure of others? If the quarterback and the wide receiver are on the same page regarding timing and route, 95% of the time the pass will be completed no matter what the coverage is. Look at Joe Montana's 49ers — when the offense clicked, you could have had Darrell Green and Mike Haynes on the corners and Jerry Rice still finds the end zone three times.
The other 5% of the time cornerbacks actually make plays that don't rely on someone else's folly; like when a defensive back times his dive to deflect or intercept a well-thrown ball to an open receiver. But most of the time, when a cornerback intercepts a pass and takes it to the house, he does so because either the quarterback or receiver made a mistake. Professionals whose livelihoods depend on someone else screwing up should be limited to practicing law or writing political commentaries.
Is there another position in sports that requires a second position that exists solely to clean up messes the first position creates?
Why do you think they call them "safeties?"
Deion Sanders is considered by most to be one of the best cornerbacks in the history of the NFL, which I'm sure is important to anyone who doesn't consider the position to be remedial. He's a hell of an athlete, or at least was.
But now he sucks.
He sucked as a commentator on CBS, his first big broadcasting gig after retiring from the Redskins in 2001 (a team on which, as any Washingtonian will tell you, he sucked). I can recall many a pre-game show in which Deion would open his mouth, say some inane prattle about what players he likes or dislikes, close his mouth, and I'd find myself questioning my own will to live.
He sucks at fashion. He would have sucked at coaching, if the Falcons had been dumb enough to make him a coach. He even sucks as a man of faith, unless trying to get out of a car repair bill by claiming Jesus had implemented a spending cap is the "Christian" thing to do. (He's one of these guys who learned late in life that materialism couldn't replace belief. "Parties, women, buying expensive jewelry and gadgets, and nothing helped," he wrote in 1998's "Power, Money, & Sex -- How Success Almost Ruined My Life." Wonder how that bohemian grass hut and stoic chastity are doing these days...)
Sanders is back in the news this week because he wants to attempt a comeback with the Baltimore Ravens. Why? Probably because the Ravens will get to the quarterback before he can throw the ball, meaning Deion's geriatric ass won't have to do much outside of putting his uniform on the right way.
But why go back to football, Deion?
Why not follow your heart and once again fill the world with your musical gift?
In the 1990s, the line between musicians and athletes got blurred like David Wells' vision after 30 beers.
Garth Brooks wanted to be an outfielder for the San Diego Padres. Rapper Master P pursued a minor-league basketball career. Meanwhile, Shaquille O'Neal cut enough rap albums to issue a "Best Of" in 1996; former NBA player Wayman Tisdale released four blues/jazz albums; even boxer Oscar de la Hoya and soccer player Alexi Lalas dropped records by the end of the decade.
But the Abbey Road of horrific athlete-turned-musician albums came from multi-sport star "Neon" Deion "Prime Time" Sanders. His 1994 album, the cleverly titled "Prime Time," was a combination of rap and R&B, all of it in the key of tone-deaf.
The most popular track from the CD was Sanders' autobiographical lament, "Must Be the Money," in which we learned how difficult life can be for a multi-millionaire who won a World Series and a Super Bowl.
It is my intention to now share some of Mr. Sanders' prose with you, keeping in mind his delivery often slurred his lyrics to the point where it sounded like he singing through a burlap gag.
"Must Be the Money" begins with what can only be described as "porno guitar." We're in a good groove for about half a second before our crooner chimes in with this insightful lyric (Again, I will do my best to get this down word-for-word):
Well all-rye ... yeh-ya.
We have now arrived at the first stanza, which is a spoken-word essay about Deion's early days as a professional football player:
You know, ever since I turned pro in 1989/When I signed on the dotted line/It was strange/Cause things changed/For the better/And for the worse/So I called my muh-ma/And she said, ‘Bay-bee.'
At this point, I'm sure we're all thinking she said, "Make a shitty rap album, son." But, thanks to a gaggle of generic female backup singers, we discover she actually told him:
Muss be da money/(Deion: "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah")/Muss be da mon-aye/(Deion: "Iss got to be, because I got people wanna be my friend")/Muss be da money/(Deion: "People I never knew. People I never even thought about asso-she-ating with"')/Muss be da mon-aye/(Deion: "I don't know what it is. Talk to me. Check it ow.")
And with that, we're into the "singing" portion of the song. Deion actually sounded a lot like R. Kelly ... if R. Kelly had all of his teeth and his tongue removed, and was administered a powerful horse tranquilizer. I will do my best to transcribe what this marble-mouth sang:
Down and relax/With gators on my feet/I get some pretzels every day of the week/(Deion's background-singing doppelganger: "In my hair")/My hair is dark/My fingernails, too/Six packs are down'in and I don't know what to do/Muss be da mone.
"Da mone?" Vic Damone? Ah, who knows ...
Are those really the lyrics? Of course not. But I never sent in those five Ovaltine labels to get the "Prime Time Decoder Ring" in the mail.
We get through two more "Muss be da money" choruses, in which Deion boosts about the cars and the planes and the women he rides. Later, we learn how Prime Time hits Da Club:
Flashn' lights/On the dance flow/The DJ says my name as I make my intro/(Dopple-Deion: "And you know")/The place is packed/No where to find a seat/But Prime don't worry/'Cause I sits in V.I.P./Muss be da mone/(Ladies: "Muss be da money")/I got so much Jews/(Ladies: "Muss be da mon-aye")/Twenty-six with all his dues/(Ladies: "Muss yadda yadda")/To afford the way I live/(You know who: "You know what")/The Pepto Bismal's at my crib.
The above made me finally give up this futile attempt to transcribe the poetry of Deion Sanders, because his mush-mouth delivery and Seussian rhyme make it humanly impossible. Yet I stayed until the end of "Must Be the Money," and was surprised to find this positive and uplifting send-off from P.T. Sanders:
The furss thing people say is/"Prime, don't let money change ya. Don't let money change ya"/I say, "Hey -- Don't let money change you"/Because personally, iss gonna change my address/My phone number/My wardrobe/Hey, my snakeskin shoes gonna change into gators/My library card gonna change into a credit card ...
With that, the generic ladies singing backup, the porno guitar, and Prime Time himself begin to fade out after four minutes, eight seconds of auditory torture.
And all we're left to ponder is:
Deion Sanders actually had a library card?
Greg Wyshynski is also a weekly columnist for SportsFan Magazine. His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].
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