"Prime Time" Personality
Deion Sanders became memorable for sporting a "do-rag or bandana" and for his "High-Stepping" into the end zone followed by his touchdown dance celebrations. He was also one of the most visible and outspoken football players to ever take the field due to his alter-ego, Prime Time. A marketing ploy as much as an alternate personality, it was given to him by a friend and high school teammate, Florida Gators defensive back Richard Fain. The two played pickup basketball games together during the prime time television hour, and Sanders' athletic display during those games won him that title. Once in the NFL, Sanders felt he deserved to be paid as much as NFL quarterbacks and in 1995 he used the "Prime Time" strategy to sign a seven-year, $35 million contract with the Dallas Cowboys (the contract was essentially five years, but was given a seven-year length for an easier cap hit and the signing bonus was $12,999,999.99, one cent under $13 million due to a superstition of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones). At one point, he was the highest paid defensive player in the league and set the benchmark price-tag for future "shut-down corners". Prime Time was upset that he was placed #34 on the list of Top 100 NFL players and said that he should at least be in the top 10.
At the end of his Hall of Fame speech, he put a bandana on his bust.
Read more about this topic: Deion Sanders
Famous quotes containing the words prime, time and/or personality:
“Faith in reason as a prime motor is no longer the criterion of the sound mind, any more than faith in the Bible is the criterion of righteous intention.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“I waited alone, in the company of orchids, roses and violets who—like people waiting beside you, but to whom you are unknown—maintained a silence which their individuality of living things rendered more imposing and in their chilly manner received the heat from an incandescent coal fire, preciously placed behind a crystal glass, in a white marble tub where it dropped, from time to time, its dangerous rubies.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Ethics and religion differ herein; that the one is the system of human duties commencing from man; the other, from God. Religion includes the personality of God; Ethics does not.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)