Leave it to Deion Sanders to come up with an idea for the College Football Playoff that nobody has really mentioned yet: Pay the players for making the tournament, and pay them more when their teams win.
If they do that, then «now it's equality, now it's even and every player is making the same amount of money,» the Colorado coach said.
Sanders and former Alabama coach Nick Saban talked to The Associated Press as part of their unveiling of a new Aflac commercial that rolls out this week with a storyboard ripped from today's headlines: It opens with Sanders complaining: «This game has gotten out of control. All the money. All the unpredictability.»
He is talking about health insurance, of course, and the commissioner he wants to see run it isn't Saban, but that kooky duck who wears the same powder-blue sportscoat as the two football legends.
It's an endorsement that Sanders says hits home some two years after his diagnosis with bladder cancer, from which he says he is fully recovered.
«I've been walking with my coaches over a mile» after practice, he said ahead of Friday night's season opener against Georgia Tech. «Exercising, lifting.»
Saban will be back on the set with ESPN in his second year of «retirement» after leaving the Crimson Tide, where he won six national titles. He insists he wants to help college sports find its footing, but not via a commissioner job that was floated last year with his name coming up as the ideal fit.
«I don't want to be in that briar patch of being a commissioner, but I do want to do everything I can to make it right,» he said.
He and Sanders agreed that there needs to be more structure around deals players sign. Since July 1, schools have been able to start paying up to $20.5 million each
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