BOULDER — Kenan Thompson? Genius.
Punchlines? Explosive.
Accuracy? Trying.
“It was good,” Shelomi Sanders, daughter of CU Buffs football coach Deion Sanders, told me Tuesday at the Events Center after I played her that “Saturday Night Live” sketch, the one featuring Thompson playing Coach Prime, for the first time.
“But then it’s like, ‘OK, they’re kind of getting him wrong.’”
In what way?
“Because the way that they were saying stuff is kind of like, all he cares about is ‘the show’, and stuff like that,” said the younger Sanders, a guard on the Buffs’ women’s basketball team. “That’s not him, though. It just comes (off) like that. That’s just what draws people in. But that’s not him.
“Yeah, it was funny, though. But they were good. They were good.”
Shelomi Sanders had heard about the Coach Prime bit, which was part of SNL’s “Weekend Update” segment, from friends ever since it aired last weekend.
But she hadn’t pulled it up until we watched it together Tuesday during CU’s winter sports media day.
“I don’t really watch TV like that,” the younger Sanders shrugged. “I’m not really tuned into those kind of things, (so) I didn’t see it. But it was funny, though. Really funny.”
Coach Prime’s youngest daughter, whom he lovingly refers to as “Bossy,” hasn’t had time for late-night comedy shows. The 20th-ranked Buffs’ preseason camp has kept her busy enough in advance of CU’s exhibition debut against Adams State on Oct. 28. A prime-time, nationally televised season opener Nov. 6 in Vegas against No. 1 LSU on TNT isn’t far behind.
“I don’t think the outside noise really bothers us,” the younger Sanders said of the Buffs, whom she joined last winter as a transfer from Jackson State. “I feel like we have a goal, all together, as a team. And we’re going to do anything to achieve that goal.”
While Dad and older brothers Shedeur and Shilo have been working to rebuild CU football (4-3, 1-3 Pac-12) on the fly, Shelomi jumped onto a locomotive moving at about 170 miles per hour.
The Buffs’ 25 wins last winter were the most in a decade, as CU reached the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2003. This year’s squad has cracked both major preseason polls — 20th in AP, 18th on the coaches’ ballots — for the first time since 2013.
“So it was very fast-paced,” the younger Sanders said of her transition to CU hoops. “It was definitely a change. It was definitely like, ‘Whoa, everything is fast-paced.’
“It’s just different in this squad. Yeah, we were great last year. We’re even better this year. We just keep on going up.”
I suggested she might want to ask her brothers what it’s like playing football at a women’s basketball school. She laughed.
“I should, I really should,” Shelomi said. “It’s so underrated (here). We don’t even get the love that we deserve.”
Speaking of love, you should’ve seen Shelomi’s eyes light up when “Weekend Update” played that short clip of her Dad — a young Prime — singing and dancing to his song “Must Be The Money,” from that episode of “SNL” he’d hosted back in 1995.
“I love that song,” she said.
“I used to watch that music video. That’s my favorite song.”
Shelomi’s met some A-listers through her dad over the years, but not Thompson. We’ve got to get them together, now, don’t we? If not on “SNL,” then surely at Folsom Field.
The only thing better than one Coach Prime? Two of them, riffing off one another!
“That would be funny,” the younger Sanders chuckled. “That would be cool. That would definitely be cool.”
You think your Dad’s cool with Thompson’s take on him?
“I think he would laugh,” she replied. “I think he would think that was funny.”
And Shedeur? Shilo?
“I think they would laugh, too.”
Hey, the Sanders kids have taken some cracks at impersonating Coach Prime themselves. As for the honor of the best Deion impression in the family, well, that goes to …
“Shilo,” Shelomi Sanders said of her brother, one of the Buffs’ starting safeties.
“He’s just funny. Even without him trying to be funny, he’s funny. And he just gets it spot-on with the fingers and the hands — just everything is spot-on.”
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