He once was Atlanta’s, but Deion Sanders now basks in Boulder’s adoration
BOULDER, Colo. — Miss Peggy, the University of Colorado’s beloved centenarian diehard fan, calls it like she sees it.
Last season, Buffaloes coach Deion Sanders achieved his goal of taking Peggy Coppom to a bowl game, leading Colorado to its first postseason appearance since 2020.
That’s as far as it got, however.
“We played BYU in the bowl game and our team, I’m sorry to say, they didn’t act like they’d ever seen a football before,” Coppom told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Wednesday.
Coppom is a gem and a blessing to all who know her. The petite grandmother of six and great-grandmother of five turns 101 in November. She continues to attend Mass six days a week at Sacred Heart of Jesus Church. Her mind is sharp. After a luncheon for female Colorado supporters, she showed hospitality to a visitor from Atlanta, introducing him to her friends and asking about family and background. And she loves the Buffaloes, against whom Georgia Tech opens its season here Friday night.
“Well, I hope you enjoy (Boulder),” she said to the aforementioned Atlantan, “even though you’re gonna lose.”
Given her commitment to candor, then, we can reasonably trust her public appraisal of Sanders is not dressed up in politeness.
“I like him,” Coppom said of Sanders, with whom she has struck up a charming friendship. “He’s a very honorable man. I use that word for him because he is.”
An unlikely connection has developed in this affluent, bicycle-loving college town northwest of Denver.
Sanders is a Black man from the South (Fort Myers, Florida) who is public about his Christian faith, flashes a big persona and has no obvious ties to the West, outside of one NFL season with the San Francisco 49ers.
For those reasons, he is seemingly ideal for Atlanta, where he once gloried. In the 1990s, he gained an unrivaled place in Atlanta sports lore by starting his Pro Football Hall of Fame career with the Falcons while also playing for the Braves. He vibrated with a confident aura perhaps unlike anyone in American sports history. More than 30 years after his last snap for the Falcons, it’s not difficult to find fans wearing his No. 21 jersey at home games at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Meanwhile, a Gallup poll once found Boulder to be the second-least religious city in the U.S. It is 1.1% Black, according to U.S. Census data.
But he has worked magic here. Just ask Miss Peggy.
“He put us on the map,” she said.
The adoration for Sanders speaks to his magnetism, people’s capacity to embrace differences and the popularity that comes with being a successful football coach.
It isn’t only that Colorado went from 1-11 in the season before he was hired to 4-8 in 2023 and then 9-4 last season — the Buffaloes’ first winning season (outside of the 2020 COVID-19 season) since 2016 — and that Collins Hill High grad Travis Hunter won the Heisman Trophy last year. Even in Sanders’ first season, Colorado sold out all its games at 50,183-seat Folsom Field for the first time in school history.
“There’s always been a lot of energy on game days, but it’s extra these days,” Boulder mayor Aaron Brockett told the AJC. “We get a lot more people coming in from out of town even just to hang out, kind of enjoy the scene.”
Last academic year, admissions applications to the university increased 20% from the previous year, including an 18% increase among out-of-state applicants.
Sanders, who was not available for an interview for this story, has “absolutely” had an impact on Colorado and Boulder, said Shanna Henkel, a Colorado alumna who owns the Village Coffee Shop near campus with her husband, Ryan. It isn’t just because the sellouts have packed their establishment on game days, when Buffaloes fans serenade visiting fans with the school fight song.
As Miss Peggy would attest, Sanders has not sequestered himself within the Colorado football complex, visible to the public only on game day.
Shortly after his hire, Sanders did the Henkels and other local restaurateurs the favor of stopping by to sample a meal and then endorse them in videos on his Instagram account. Their down-to-earth breakfast place was his first stop. He raved about the service and pancakes, though he lamented the lack of grits on the menu.
The Henkels responded, and now diners can order “PRIME Grits” for $3.95, a dish that passed the test when Sanders and son Deion Jr. returned. An update was posted on Instagram.
“I think we had 12,000 likes inside of an hour,” Henkel said. “That was really sweet.”
Sanders’ success and visibility have impacted the small Black community in Boulder and at the university, where last academic year, 0.7% of the student body identified as Black or African American. The total, 260, was the most in school history.
As admissions applications rose last year by 20%, they increased by 51% among students identifying as Black or African American.
“The guy is unapologetically African American, and he can show that we can be who we are,” Reiland Rabaka, the founding director of the university’s Center for African & African American Studies, told the Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder in a December 2023 article.
It has been an improbable turn in the life of the 58-year-old Sanders, becoming the face of a community and campus that, at least superficially, would not seem a logical match.
When he was high stepping for the Falcons, who could have imagined that one day he would cultivate a friendship with a 100-year-old woman from Colorado?
Coppom has met Sanders’ mother and sister. Sanders invariably takes time to greet her when he sees her at events. When it was announced that Sanders had been diagnosed with bladder cancer, Coppom confided with him that she had once been treated for it, too.
When they were first introduced, Coppom asked Sanders what she should call him. While virtually everyone in Boulder addresses him as “Coach Prime,” Sanders granted Coppom free rein.
“So I said, ‘Well, how about Good Lookin’?” she said, not unreasonably.
At that first meeting, at Coppom’s house, Sanders enjoyed the praline pecans that she had set out.
“And so every year on his birthday, I give him a big jar of praline pecans and I put on it: ‘To Good Lookin’,’” Coppom said.
He has raised a dormant program and he has the love of a Colorado college town, most notably Miss Peggy’s.
How much more could Deion Sanders want?
About the Author
Ken Sugiura is a sports columnist at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Formerly the Georgia Tech beat reporter, Sugiura started at the AJC in 1998 and has covered a variety of beats, mostly within sports.
