Deion Sanders Dodges Accountability at Press Conference; Stephen A. Takes Affirmative Action to Avoid It | Ep 1260

Jason Whitlock (0:02)

Yeah, this is gonna be another one of those awesome shows, in my opinion. It's gonna be one of those shows where I'm going to unpack something big. Some of you are not going to like it because I'm going to be talking about your idols, Deion Sanders, Stephen A. Smith, Elle Duncan, Brian Flores. You're not going to like it because it's... Well, I mean, some of you will love it. I can't speak for everybody. But I'm going to tie together a bunch of things to try to make a larger point about sports and about society and where we are. So buckle up, put your seatbelt on. If you need Kleenexes, because when I go after these idols, particularly you prime sexuals or people that think I'm jealous of Stephen A. Smith, go ahead and grab your Kleenexes, get your tissue ready, start your crying and whining, head to the comments or whatever. But stick with me today. This ride will be worth it, in my opinion. And I'm going to start somewhere where I'm a little bit concerned about where I'm going to start, because I don't want to irritate the guys in my prayer group. And I feel a little, but it's authentic, and it's real, and I'm not going to use any names. And not all of you, or not all of you, not many of you are part of our prayer group, but you're more than welcome. I would love, on Tuesdays, we get together via Zoom and talk about things going on in the world. We talk about, Anthony unpacked some scripture for us, and we pray, and then we have a conversation afterwards. And last night's conversation afterwards, it's an opportunity for people to question me. I opened myself up to passionate people about the show and Fearless and what we're doing here. And I present the opportunity for people to question and raise up concerns or whatever. And last night, I was out of nowhere.

A concern was raised about how I talked about Tony Dungy a year ago when it was we learned that Tony Dungy hadn't voted for Bill Belichick for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And I was, it was brought up to me that perhaps I was unfair to Tony Dungy and that I should have provided him some grace because he's a Christian. And my pushback was, well, hold on, I'm not, I have great reverence for Tony Dungy and talk about him in a way with a great deal of respect. I just disagreed with him as it related to Bill Belichick, First Ballot Hall of Fame and offered some mild criticism and pushback. And I'm, you know, I don't think Tony Dungy was offended. And I don't think because he's a fellow believer that I somehow shouldn't have offered that criticism. Again, guys, I'm here every Tuesday and on, you know, every other Thursday or whatever, offering myself up to other believers to be criticized, to be second guess for people to probe me about decisions I made. Surely, you know, there's no issue here as it relates to Tony Dungy. And when I got off the prayer call and just thought more about it myself, I connected it to a topic that I knew I was going to go into today. And Deion Sanders had a press conference yesterday that was absolutely ridiculous, in my opinion. And Deion's press conference was him avoiding any accountability and treating reporters like he was above reproach. And how dare you question anything that he's done? And it's like, hey, people can question Deion Sanders about football stuff. He's coaching the football team. He's paid 10 million, $12 million a year, but we want to put Deion in a protective bubble. And then I read the front office sports article piece on Brian Flores, the Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator, the former head coach of the Miami Dolphins, who has an active lawsuit going on against the National Football League, claiming racial discrimination cost him his job with the Miami Dolphins and that the NFL's hiring policies as it relates to NFL coaches are racist.

And there's some very interesting excerpts from this article by Front Offer Sports that I'm going to go into because it connected to what I thought I heard from Deion Sanders, which is, hey, you can't hold me accountable for anything. I'm Deion Sanders, and when I share with you these excerpts from this Brian Flores story, I'm like, wow, this is another example of he doesn't want to be held to a standard. His lawyers don't want him held to a standard, and there's this attack on standards. Then I watched a video of Elle Duncan talking about the WNBA.