A couple of years ago, I wrote a piece about how college football might be vulnerable to a usurper, a new power that takes advantage of the new developments of the day — namely, allowing athletes to transfer more freely and make money off of their name, image and likeness (NIL) — to rise to or near the top of the sport.
It seemed the sport might be capable of producing a new Miami or Florida State, programs that rose to usurper prominence in a changing television environment in the 1980s.
One of the main characters in that piece was Jackson State coach Deion Sanders. As a player he was a major factor in FSU's rise, and as a coach he had recently convinced Travis Hunter, the No.
2 prospect in the country, to attend JSU. Sanders was attracting far more talent to Jackson than one would have thought conceivable.