All-American football player, Deion Sanders has had a number of awards on the field. During the 1989 season, he hit a major league home run and scored a touchdown in the NFL in the same week, the only player ever to do so. Sanders is also the only man to play in both a Super Bowl and a World Series. But it’s his role as a father off the field that Deion is most proud of.
In his reality show, “Deion’s Family Playbook,” became the highest rated freshman docu-series in Oprah Winfrey’s OWN history as the cameras followed Sanders, a single father, raising 10 kids with the help of his girlfriend, Edmonds Entertainment’s Tracey Edmonds and his mother, Connie.
Sanders stresses the importance of the upbringing of his children and being an example for them. To be present in their every day life, “To keep them grounded, is to show them a grounded father.”
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“I’m not perfect, but I’m present. I don’t want any of my kids saying that ‘Daddy, I had a problem and you weren’t there’. So I’ve adopted a rule: If I have to be gone for more than two days, then I have to take my kids–all 10 of them–with me. You have to let some things go and be present in your kids lives.”
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The show also features his interactions with his school, Prime Prep Academy, where is he the head football coach and founder. Sanders says, “We try to facilitate those kids, we try to instill different things inside of them. That’s the challenge, that’s the calling that we have, to help these kids get to it through college and instill values in them. When they can see me walk around the school, when no one is looking and picking up trash and doing the things that don’t get much fanfare, it allows them to understand that this life is real,” says Sanders.
Each week you see him attempt to raise his children in fear of the Lord, while he strives to be the man that God wants him to be. He has no problem admitting he is a praying man and runs his house accordingly. He is not ashamed to tell you that he belongs to his Savior and knows that God placed the responsibility of fatherhood squarely in his hands. Deion knows it’s his job to get his family to the end zone.
While his high profile divorce from Pilar Sanders, put Deion in the spotlight in a way he didn’t necessarily want, he uses it as a lesson learned and uses it to move forward.
