Deion Sanders spent the 1990s as a prominent two-sport athlete, which included playing for both the NFL’s Falcons and MLB’s Braves in 1992 and ’93. Apparently, he tried to arrange a similar situation later in his career, but one NFL team wasn’t interested.
On Tuesday’s episode of the Pat McAfee Show, the current Colorado football coach revealed he wanted to play for the Bengals late in his NFL career, even though the team was bad at the time, just because he enjoyed living in Cincinnati while playing baseball with the Reds.
“I wanted to build a home there and live there forever. We even asked the Bengals at the time, [who] were horrible, ‘Let me just play here; let me do the two-sport thing here,” Sanders said. “They didn’t even call us back.”
Sanders spent parts of four MLB seasons with the Reds, first from 1994-95, then again in 1997 and finally in 2001. He finished his baseball career in Cincinnati, as he didn’t play for any other team after the 1995 season.
Additionally, Sanders spent 1995-’99 on a long-term deal with the Cowboys, meaning he likely was interested in playing for the Bengals after he left Dallas. In 2000, he played football for Washington. The following year, he played baseball for the Reds and skipped the NFL season.
Presumably, that is when he contacted the Bengals about possibly playing for them. That is despite the fact that Cincinnati went a combined 19-61 between 1997 and ’02.
Sanders was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2011.
