Colorado football coach Deion Sanders addressed one of the biggest controversies of his team’s last game earlier this month, when fans of Texas Tech apparently found part of Colorado’s playbook at Colorado’s team hotel before Tech beat Colorado 29-7 on Oct. 3.
Sanders didn’t deny it happened and instead downplayed it as inconsequential. The plays in the playbook were shared on the internet, but Tech coach Joey McGuire said he didn’t see it beforehand. Colorado still scored on its first possession of the game and took a 7-0 lead despite its script apparently being posted online.
“That happens sometimes,” Sanders said at his weekly news conference Oct. 13. “I’ve seen that, heard of that on the pro level as well as the collegiate level. But I think
we scored on that first drive, so I guess it didn’t work.”
This was the first time Sanders addressed the issue publicly. His team didn’t play last weekend and now faces No. 11 Utah at home Saturday night. The Buffaloes are 2-3 and have lost three consecutive games under two different starting quarterbacks.
Sanders also dismissed concerns that a playbook left behind at the hotel suggested carelessness by his team.
“I think if someone had left that, they left it,” Sanders said. “Mistake. What are we gonna do about it? It is over. Let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go, Like, we could have the opposing team’s first 10 or 15 plays (known in advance). We still gotta stop it. So … when you get something like that, do you really trust it as a coach?”
He said if had gotten another team’s playbook in advance he might suspect it would be a “dummy script” or a fake intended to fool his team into thinking the other team was going to run certain plays that they were not in fact going to run.
Sanders also dismissed the notion that a “whole playbook” was found, as opposed to some of it or a “script.”
‘I don’t even think we have a whole playbook,” Sanders said. “I think week to week, they get script.”
Asked if he looked into it further, Sanders said, “Why would we? It’s over. The game’s over. Why would we do that? We probably know a lot more than you think we do.”
He dismissed it as a non-issue.
“I don’t major in the minors, man,” Sanders said. "I try to major in the majors.”
Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Deion Sanders explains why Colorado playbook was found before Texas Tech game
