“A Pillar of all HBCUs”: Deion Sanders, Aspirational Prophecy, and the Divine Promise of Jackson State University Football

Abstract

In September 2020, Deion Sanders was named head coach of the Jackson State University Tigers football team. The announcement marked his shift in public consciousness from “Prime Time” to “Coach Prime” and came as the country was reeling from the debilitating impacts of COVID-19, sustained calls for racial redress following a string of police-involved deaths, and new NIL developments in the NCAA. Turning in this essay to Sanders’s “I Believe” speech, which he gave once he was named head coach, I argue that Sanders garners the support of his audience by employing aspirational rhetoric, a form of prophetic rhetoric that constitutes the rhetor as a prophet and the audience as change agents through their simultaneous commitment to a common goal (i.e., bringing a new world to fruition). In this way, Sanders makes an important intervention in public discourse on behalf of HBCUs. I conclude by exploring ways aspirational prophecy enables and constrains social and cultural change within sport as a site of political struggle.