Identity of reporter singled out by Deion Sanders has been revealed
Sep 2, 2023; Fort Worth, Texas, USA; Colorado Buffaloes head coach Deion Sanders walks on the field before the game against the TCU Horned Frogs at Amon G. Carter Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Tim Heitman-USA TODAY Sports
The identity of the reporter who was singled out by Deion Sanders on Saturday has been revealed.
Colorado beat TCU 45-42 on Saturday in Sanders’ debut as the head coach of the Buffaloes. After the game, Sanders began playing the “I told you so” card as if his team had just won a bowl game.
He targeted one reporter during his postgame media conference, asking the media member, “do you believe now?” multiple times.
“I read through that bulljunk you wrote. I read through that. I sifted through all that,” Sanders said.
Deion Sanders responds to a reporter: “Do you believe now?! I read through that bulljoke you wrote!” pic.twitter.com/52xJcQkH4b
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) September 2, 2023
It turns out that Sanders was targeting veteran ESPN TV reporter Ed Werder with that exchange.
Werder is a TV reporter who covers the NFL — and typically the Dallas Cowboys for ESPN — and hasn’t been a college football reporter, much less a writer, for nearly 30 years.
So why would Sanders pick on Werder? Not because Werder actually wrote something negative about Colorado, but because Sanders wanted to go viral for calling out “haters.”
Werder visited “The Dan Patrick Show” on Tuesday to talk about the situation.
“I do know Deion and maybe that was the reason we had the problem,” Werder wondered. “I haven’t been a writer in 30 years. I don’t cover college football. I asked him multiple times, ‘what did I write?’ And he couldn’t ever provide an example. And the reason is: no such example exists.”
Deion Sanders recognizes ESPN’s Ed Werder from his days covering the Cowboys.
“Do you believe?”
“In what?”
“🤷♂️” pic.twitter.com/OtHdYqyoyf
— Matt Fortuna (@Matt_Fortuna) September 2, 2023
If Sanders wasn’t picking on Werder for something the reporter actually wrote, then what was going on? As Dan Patrick said, it seemed like Sanders just needed a prop to get across the message the coach wanted to communicate after the game in order to go viral. Because Sanders knew and recognized Werder from when Werder was a beat writer covering the Dallas Cowboys, he likely made for a perfect prop.
Much like his team’s game against TCU, the postgame media session went exactly as Sanders planned.