Jason Whitlock did what most sports media will not do. He traced Coach Prime’s religion back to TD Jakes. On Fearless, Whitlock tore into Deion Sanders’s interview with Tim Ross. Sanders did not flinch when Ross compared him to a neighborhood drug dealer who got old, went legal, and kept the same hunger. Sanders said Ross had painted the picture he wanted painted: chains, drapes, flash, and an illegal corner with a cleaner product. Whitlock’s calls out what’s obvious. You cannot be the successful neighborhood dope boy and a model of Jesus Christ in the same testimony. One of those men needs a Savior. The other thinks he is what people should buy.
Going above and beyond, Whitlock named the tree. Ross calls himself a preacher. He came up in The Potter’s House in Dallas. He and Sanders met in that church more than 25 years ago. Whitlock said nothing in the Coach Prime era has infuriated him more than watching two alleged Christians sit down and establish the dope dealer as the brand. That is not a football complaint. That is a theological one.
TD Jakes is the man who built that house. Evangelical Dark Web has already called him a Category 5 false teacher. By some metrics, he has been the most watched pastor in America. In 2021, eight of the ten most watched sermons on YouTube were his. He has since transferred leadership in an effort to semi-retire. Radio, television, and the internet made him the Black Pope of American megachurchianity. The reach is not the defense. The reach is the damage.
What Whitlock Heard
Sanders is not running a football operation. He is selling a feeling. Whitlock’s point was that Colorado does not need fans to believe the Buffaloes will beat anybody. The product is standing near Prime and feeling like you already won. That is Prosperity Gospel in a headset.
Jakes has spent decades teaching that obedience means you will never be broke another day in your life. He told people to rebuke debt the way they rebuke cancer. He treated stadium crowds as proof of anointing. He produced Heaven tourism. The Potter’s House statement of faith still speaks of Father, Son, and Spirit as “manifestations,” the Oneness language that never became Trinitarian no matter how many times Mark Driscoll tried to clean it up on camera. Jakes handed the pulpit to his daughter. He treated homosexual churches as an agree-to-disagree option. Prosperity, modalism, female pastors, and compromise on sodomy. That is the ministry. Ross came out of it. Sanders still talks like it.
The rest of the interview is the same religion with different merch. Must Be the Money. Jewelry that never comes off. Sunglasses that stay on. A wall quote that says, “Don’t allow my confidence to offend your insecurity.” Last year’s 3-9 treated as blasphemy if anyone brings it up. Ross covering and anointing. Then an hour of follow me.
Scripture is a long record of God reducing men who thought they were gods. Prime’s testimony runs the other direction. He told Ross he felt like a Hall of Famer while he was still playing. He wants the lake. He was always him. That is not confidence in God. That is a man who cannot survive being ordinary, so ordinary has to be treated as a lie.
After bladder cancer, the comeback line was that he got his aura back. You cannot intercept an aura. A losing season cannot kill it. If the feeling cannot be falsified, the record does not matter. Outcomes that flatter the celebrity get called God. Outcomes that expose him get called hatred, especially when a Black man is the one saying it.
The Potter’s House Product
Ross is not a random podcast guest. Whitlock put the biography on the table because it explains the hour. They met at Potter’s House. The covering language, the anointing talk, the refusal to let anyone touch the golden calf, all of it comes from that room.
The drug is self-confidence. The customers are young Black men who already treat Prime as the way, the truth, and the life. Ross is the priest. Deion is the product. Football is how the high walks into a press conference.
Whitlock’s panel did not even have to stretch to make the football case. Charles Arbuckle said swagger dies the moment you line up across from a man who knocks you backwards all day. Colorado’s linemen look like boys against men, completely undersized. Nobody is buying the football. Fewer people are buying the swagger. Braden Fukumoto said Christianity cannot be used as insulation from accountability. Ticket sales falling after a 9-4 year is not what “God planned.” It is a bad coach. You do not get to erase 3-9 because the aura is still alive.
Player Prime had receipts. Super Bowls. Two sports. Tape you could put on a projector. Coach Prime wants the same worship with a 16-21 record in Boulder. Colorado hired a phenomenon instead of a coach. Jackson State to a Power program with no coordinator résumé. The 9-4 year was the outlier. The 4-8 and 3-9 are the program.
The football argument is still secondary. False gods need a congregation more than they need a scoreboard. Jakes built the congregation. Ross kept the liturgy. Sanders sells the feeling.
God does not share glory with a gold chain. The woman in the Gospels reached for Christ’s garment because the power was in Him. This crowd reaches for Coach Prime’s clasp because they think the power is in the shine. Whitlock called that idolatry. He was right.
The American church already had the Jakes file. Time put him on a cover and asked if he was the next Billy Graham. He was never that. He was a modalist motivational speaker with a camera, a daughter in the pulpit, and a gospel that cannot survive a losing season. Whitlock just showed the sports page what that gospel looks like when you hand it a whistle and a stadium.
Deion Sanders does not need better play calling. He needs to repent of the religion TD Jakes taught him to call Christianity. Until then, Colorado is not a football program. It is another Potter’s House franchise, this one with pads.
