Coach Deion Sanders’ return to Colorado lifts team spirits after his battle with bladder cancer

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — To Colorado defensive back Carter Stoutmire, Deion Sanders is more than just a coach. He’s like an uncle who’s been in his life since pretty much the day he was born.

So hearing his coach’s booming voice back in meetings and seeing his coach’s swagger at camp this week, well, it lifted his spirits. Not just for him, but the entire team in the wake of Sanders announcing news of his private battle with bladder cancer.

“Whatever hardship trials he goes through, he always makes it through,” Stoutmire said after practice Wednesday. “Seeing him back, just a breath of fresh air for the whole team.”

It’s been a few months since they’ve seen their coach after Sanders stepped away to deal with his health. He revealed Monday that doctors removed his bladder to ward off an aggressive form of cancer. He had a section of his intestine reconstructed to function as a bladder.

“Honestly, just having Coach Prime’s presence back in the building is an amazing feeling,” said safety DJ McKinney, whose team opens the season Aug. 29 against Georgia Tech at Folsom Field. “I feel like everybody just has a chip on their shoulder.”

Namely, to work as hard they can for him.

“I mean, it hit different for me, just because that’s like family to me,” Stoutmire said. “That was like real, genuine concern.”

Stoutmire’s father, Omar, played for the Dallas Cowboys with Sanders in the 1990s. His dad and Sanders have been longtime friends, which is why he considers him an uncle.

“First time I met him? I don’t remember — he was in my birth room,” Carter Stoutmire said of Sanders. “We’ve just got a whole lot of history, so it’s hard to remember the first genuine time I really met him.”

He’s had a big impact, too. So much so that Carter Stoutmire was part of Sanders’ inaugural high school recruiting class at Colorado.

Asked if his coach’s bravado was indeed back at practice, Stoutmire simply responded, “Oh yeah. Ain’t no question about that.”

Upon his return to campus, Sanders tried to pick up right where he left off. Defensive coordinator Robert Livingston said he met with Sanders last week and the first thing Sanders inquired about was Livingston’s family. He wanted to know about his son, Luke, who’s playing baseball.

Sanders, a Pro Football Hall of Famer who also played Major League Baseball, wanted to hear all about it.

“Prime’s talking about his stance and all these things, and he wants to know how that’s going,” Livingston recounted. “His leadership is one of one. He’s the Pied Piper — the world will follow him if they just listen to him.”

Livingston’s first reaction to the news?

“Scared, just like everybody,” he said. “We’re talking about a life here. This football stuff, that doesn’t really matter at the end of the day.

“He was away and we were working and just knowing that when he comes back, he’s going to hit the ground running. That first staff meeting went about like you thought it would, ‘Hey, we’re going to do this. We’re going to do that.’”

Sanders missed a series of camps in Boulder this summer due to his health. His veteran staff, which includes Pat Shurmur, Warren Sapp and Marshall Faulk, held things down.

“The conversation was never had, like ‘if, then,’” Livingston said. “We knew he’d be here day one.”

The Buffaloes are coming off a season in which they went 9-4 and played in the Alamo Bowl. They have big holes to fill with quarterback Shedeur Sanders now part of the Cleveland Browns and Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter with the Jacksonville Jaguars.

“When you’re a phenomenal leader as Coach Prime is, you establish a culture, a situation where people just go to work,” Livingston said. “And that’s what it was. It was a joy to see.”

Sanders preached checking in with a healthcare provider in his news conference Monday, something that helped him. His cancer was discovered when he went for an annual CT scan as a precaution given his history with blood clots.

It’s a message that resonated with Livingston.

“Too often in this profession, we worry about what happens inside these walls more than we worry about what happens outside in being a husband and being a father and taking care of yourself,” Livingston said. “It’s eye-opening for sure.”

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