University of Colorado football coach Deion Sanders targeted by atheist group over team prayers

College football coach Deion Sanders is once again being targeted by an anti-religion group for encouraging his players with prayer and inspirational messages.

The University of Colorado Boulder football coach is the focus of a complaint from the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF).

The two-time Super Bowl champion, NFL Hall of Famer, and former Major League Baseball star invited an Atlanta pastor to lead the team in prayer following the Colorado Buffaloes’ victory over Baylor University on Sept. 22. 

In a locker room meeting following the victory Sanders told his players, “If you don’t believe in the Lord, you better believe in Him now.” 

Pastor Dewey Smith of House of Hope Church in Atlanta then stepped forward and prayed. 

“God, we thank you tonight for victory; thank you that you kept us relatively safe,” he said. “Thank you that in spite of our imperfections you still blessed us, Lord. And thank you for being with us to the end. Lord, some people call it Hail Mary, some people call it karma, some people call it luck. But in my faith tradition, we call it Jesus.” 

In response, the FFRF sent a four-page letter to the University of Colorado’s Executive Vice Chancellor Patrick O’Rourke, complaining: “It’s come to our attention that Coach Sanders has continued to entangle the University’s football program with religion and engage in religious exercises with students and staff.” 

The FFRF letter goes on to charge Smith with acting as the team’s de facto chaplain, noting an earlier team video from July 29 in which Smith is referred to as a “spiritual advisor” to Sanders and “Chaplain for the Colorado Buffs.” 

“In that video, Pastor Smith discussed the upcoming football season and team dynamics in a sermon-like manner, intertwining lessons from biblical scripture with his remarks about the team,” the FFRF letter notes. 

Citing several cases in which the U.S. Supreme Court “has continually struck down school-sponsored proselytizing in public schools,” the letter worries the student-athletes are coerced. “Using a coaching position to promote Christianity amounts to unconstitutional religious coercion,” it reads, before admonishing the school to act. 

This is the second time the FFRF has targeted Sanders during his tenure as the coach of the Buffaloes. In a Jan. 25, 2023 press release, the group complained that Sanders was “misusing his new position as the University of Colorado football coach to foist Christianity on the program” by allowing a staff member to lead other staffers in prayer. 

In response to the FFRF’s arguments, the non-profit legal group First Liberty has stepped forward to defend Sanders. “FFRF is wrong,” First Liberty charged in its own press release, insisting that “public prayer and chaplain programs are constitutional.” 

First Liberty noted that for the past several decades “courts have upheld government chaplaincy programs as constitutional in many different contexts including state legislatures, military chaplaincy programs, prisons, and hospitals. The Supreme Court upholds chaplaincy programs even where the government selects a single chaplain to serve as its routine prayer-giver and that chaplain prays in accordance with his particular faith.” 

First Liberty concluded that the University of Colorado “is well within its right to invite a chaplain into the locker room with its college athletes. Coach Sanders and the University should ignore FFRF’s Hail Mary.”