Always business, never personal seems to be the motto for Jackson State head coach Deion Sanders. After navigating some choppy waters with Alabama head coach Nick Saban this spring, the two are back together filming another campaign for insurance company Aflac.
You may recall back in May that Saban made an unbased claim that Jackson State paid a recruit money in an unscrupulous manner. The unnamed player was widely believed to be Travis Hunter, who signed with JSU as the No. 1 high school prospect in the country.
“Jackson State paid a guy a million dollars last year that was a really good Division I player to come to school. It was in the paper. They bragged about it. Nobody did anything about it,” Saban said at a speech.
Sanders and Hunter immediately responded to the accusations with swift denials. Saban would soon apologize for his remarks at the speech, but most of the media attention circled around the accusations he also threw at Texas A&M and Jimbo Fisher.
Sanders said at the time he didn’t return Saban’s calls because he needed a public apology not a private one. The Sanders and Saban storyline eventually disappeared from the headlines…until now.
All goats, no beef
Deion Sanders posted a video of he and Saban on the commerical set in Los Angeles to his Instagram account on Tuesday.
The short video was labeled, “2 Goats, 1 Duck, No Beef.” In it both Sanders and Saban were laughing and cordial with one another.
“We’re in Los Angeles, California back on the Aflac set with the goat,” said Sanders.
“And the duck,” Saban quipped.
“I was talking about you, so you calling me a duck,” Sanders responded as they both laughed.
Sanders told Thee Pregame Show even before the shoot that there were no hard feelings on his side for the Alabama head coach.
“Not at all. Coach Saban didn’t stress me, he blessed me. He said what he said and since he said it we’ve (Jackson State) been enhanced. He’s the summa cum laude of coaching. His words didn’t stress me, his words blessed me,” Sanders said.
Deion Sanders will probably talk more about his relationship with Nick Saban and other topics at next week’s SWAC Media Day. Sanders along with his son Shedeur and teammate Travis Hunter will appear at the event in Birmingham, AL.