Ed Werder and Deion Sanders have known each other for quite some time, going back to Werder’s days covering the Dallas Cowboys.
Last season, following Sanders’ opening week win over TCU in his first game as Colorado’s head coach, the two had an awkward encounter in a postgame media scrum.
Sanders recognized Werner among the group and asked “Do you believe?” to which the veteran reporter asked “Believe in what?” Sanders then followed it up by saying that Werder “doesn’t believe.”
During an appearance on OutKick’s “Don’t @ Me with Dan Dakich” Wednesday, Werder addressed the exchange with Sanders, who he said he had “an interesting relationship” with when he covered the NFL.
“The thing that happened last year after the TCU game when I tried to ask him question in his press conference, and he said ‘whoa whoa whoa, do you believe?’ and I just kept to trying to ask him the question, and he said ‘I’ve read all that bulljunk you’ve written’ or whatever, and I wasn’t even a writer,” Werder said, via Fox News.
Looking back, Werder says he wishes he responded differently to Sanders’ unusual question.
“I didn’t write, I didn’t cover college football, so I thought he invented all of this in his own mind and was now using it trying to show me up in a professional situation where if Deion knew me at all he would know I would never take an oath or an allegiance to anybody in a situation like that,” Werded explained. “Even if I was a Colorado man, I’m not going to say, ‘Oh yeah Deion, I believe.’
“In fact, ultimately, what I’ve told people my reaction was: believe in what? Which I thought was very fair and professional and down the line which is the way I like to be. In retrospect and in sort of a humorous way, I wish I had said when he said do you believe, ‘No, and neither should you.’ But I tried to maintain some level of professionalism in the room.”
That would have made for some fireworks. It’s probably better that Werder did not go that route though, for professional reasons as he said.
After that resounding Week 1 win a year ago, Colorado went just 2-8 the rest of the way. This season, they are 1-1 with a win over North Dakota State and a blowout loss at Nebraska.
The Buffaloes will face in-state rival Colorado State this Saturday.
Related: Colin Cowherd Calls Deion Sanders ‘The Fake ID Of College Football’