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Sanders’ salary-cap comments contradict what he did as a player

Deion Sanders wants a salary cap in college football, but would the Pro Football Hall of Famer feel the same if he were still playing?

“I wish there was a cap,” the Colorado Buffaloes head coach said at a coaches’ roundtable at Big 12 media days Wednesday, per ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg. “Like the top-of-the-line player makes this, and if you’re not that type of guy, you know you’re not going to make that. That’s what the NFL does.

“So the problem is, you got a guy that’s not that darn good, but he could go to another school and they give him half a million dollars. You can’t compete with that and it don’t make sense.”

Sanders then explained this has created a lack of parity in the sport.

“You understand darn near why [the same teams are] in the playoffs,” Sanders said. “It’s kind of hard to compete with somebody who’s giving $25M-$30M to a freshman class. It’s crazy.”

Keep in mind, Sanders, a former defensive back/wide receiver, took advantage of free agency and found ways to circumvent the salary cap when he played in the NFL from 1989-2005.

When he left the Atlanta Falcons after the 1993 season, he embarked on a month-long free agency tour before signing a one-year, $1.13M deal with the San Francisco 49ers, two weeks into the 1994 season.

The following season, he signed a seven-year, $35M deal with the Dallas Cowboys, including a then-record $12.99M signing bonus. Teams complained to the league that Sanders’ deal and bonus sidestepped the salary cap.

The league later ruled the contract had violated salary-cap rules, and the Cowboys revised the deal to be cap-compliant after a settlement with the NFL and NFL Players Association.

“This is really about me coming here because this is the last place they wanted to have me perform because this team is so dominant already,” Sanders said of those complaints in October 1995, via the San Francisco Chronicle. “The Cowboys really are America’s Team; for them to have one more player to put them over the hump again, it’s like people feel that’s not fair to the league. And then [Jerry Jones] has taken the business to another level. To have those factors merge? It’s like it’s not fair to the league.”