Deion Sanders is a man of many talents. Even if you take football, baseball, and even the coaching element out of him, the one thing Deion Sanders still has is his god-like speed. After all, one of the biggest rumors at the NFL Draft Combine is about Deion Sanders’ mythical run. When Colorado’s dual-sport star Ernest Campbell gets a dub, it has Deion Sanders thinking about the good old Florida State track and field days.

Colorado wide receiver Ernest Campbell just set the track on fire, and honestly, everyone on his football team got stoked up for him. On February 20, the speedster ran the 60-meter dash in just 6.80 seconds in the finals of the Colorado Classic. That had Deion Sanders get up off his chair and give a standing ovation with big smiles and a compliment: “That’s my Dawg.”

What’s fascinating is that’s not even his best time at all. Earlier this month, in his big debut at the Colorado Classic, he made a historic impact by clocking a 6.76-second 60-meter dash. It’s actually the ninth-fastest ever recorded in the school’s history. No wonder seeing Campbell fly down the track reminded him of his triple-athlete Seminoles days. After the game, in his Boulder chambers, Deion Sanders talked about track days in Tallahassee in 1998.

“I just told him like from Florida State where our dorms were it was probably about half a mile to the track on campus and I wasn’t a stretcher so I used to get dressed you know have my little shorts and I had a sweat suit over and I used to run I have my track shoes around my neck you know and I used to take off from my dorm like it say that the track meet was at 1:00. I used to take off by 12:52, fell 12:53. And I used to run it and be weather up by the time I get there,” Deion said.

“By the time I turned that corner and was on the straightaway to the track, I used to see the coach under please come around that corner. Please come around, and I used to be coming and leveled it up.”

Instead of warming up like a normal human being or a track star, Deion Sanders’ warmup was just running six to seven minutes straight from his dorm to the track and field facility. Was he cutting some corners? His accolades say not really. Deion Sanders was a two-time All-American in track and field and helped his squad win the 4 x 100 relay conference championship in the Metro Conference in 1998. The word is Deion ran 100 in just 10.26 seconds.

So yeah, watching Campbell dominate now clearly brings back some big-time nostalgia for Sanders. Even if you look at their stats, it’s easy to see why Deion saw himself in Ernest Campbell. Campbell has a personal best of 10.02 seconds in the 100m, which is actually faster than Deion’s college time of 10.26 seconds. Make no mistake, Deion still holds the crown for the legendary 4.27-second 40-yard dash at the NFL Combine. Campbell is right on his heels with a 4.33-second time during his recent conditioning.

However, when it comes to football, Ernest is no scrub.

Ernest Campbell’s mission in Boulder

Before he even got to Colorado, Campbell was already a big deal. He was a state champion in Texas and an All-American at his previous school, Sacramento State. Last year, he racked up numbers on the football field with just over 755 yards and 8 touchdowns. He’s also a former Texas 2A state champion and 2024 NCAA Outdoor Championship competitor with Texas A&M. That was enough for Deion Sanders to hand him a well-deserved scholarship.

Looking ahead, Campbell isn’t slowing down at all. He’s gearing up for the Big 12 Indoor Championships in Texas at the end of this February. Fans are excited to see where this “Flash” finds himself in that receiving corps.

Ever since the Buffs lost four record-breaking receivers to last year’s draft, they’ve had a hard time replicating even half of the numbers from their 2024 season. However, for Deion Sanders, that isn’t going to cut it, so he went out and got guys like Danny Scudero (San Jose State transfer) and DeAndre Moore Jr. (Texas transfer). You can expect Campbell to be WR4 as of right now.