Deion Sanders was asked Tuesday about Colorado’s game script turning up in a hotel bar the night before the Texas Tech game. He did not deny it happened. He mostly made fun of the premise.
“A whole playbook? Somebody left a whole playbook, or was it a script of several plays?” Sanders said. Then: “I think if someone had left that, they left it, mistake.” And then the line that captures his whole approach to the story: “What are we going to do about it?”
He floated the possibility that it was not even real. “Was it a dummy script or was that real?” he asked. He closed with the only argument that appears to matter to him: “But we scored on the first drive, so I guess it didn’t work.”
What happened, and what nobody is alleging
A fan posting on a Texas Tech message board said they found Colorado’s game script at the bar inside the team hotel the night before the game. The fan initially declined to post photos. Images surfaced on social media before kickoff and appeared to match Colorado’s opening script.
The boundaries here matter. Nobody has accused Texas Tech of wrongdoing. A fan says they came across a document in a public bar, and there is no allegation that the Red Raiders or anyone working for them obtained it improperly. Colorado has not said who left it, or whether the staff has even determined that, and nothing indicates a conference review took place.
Sanders treating the leak as a shrug is the right read. A piece of paper left in a bar by someone in your own traveling party is self-inflicted, and his refusal to turn it into anybody else’s fault is the correct instinct.
The scoreboard problem has nothing to do with paper
Texas Tech won 29-7. Colorado’s only points came on a 75-yard, nine-play opening-drive touchdown, which by Sanders’ own telling was the stretch of the script that was supposedly out there. Everything after that opening drive is the actual story.
Colorado ranks 14th in the Big 12 in total offense and last in the conference in scoring offense. Its turnover margin of minus-6 is also last. Those numbers did not appear because of a document in Lubbock. They describe an offense that cannot sustain anything, regardless of who knows the first 15 plays.
Isaac Wilson threw for 290 yards against Texas Tech with one touchdown and three interceptions. That line is the season in miniature, enough yardage to look functional and enough giveaways to lose by 22.
Next comes unbeaten No. 11 Utah, and Wilson is a Utah transfer, which means he spends this week preparing against the one staff that has watched more of his practice reps than anybody else on the schedule. That is a harder problem than a leaked script, and it cannot be solved by locking a binder in a safe.
Sanders asked what Colorado was going to do about a script in a bar. The answer is nothing, because there is nothing to do, and because the script was never what was keeping this offense off the board. An offense last in the Big 12 in scoring does not need better secrecy. It needs a second scoring drive.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.