On Sunday, CBS’ 60 Minutes featured a profile on Deion Sanders, ending our national crisis of lack of coverage of the Colorado head coach.
Not everybody, however, was a fan of the segment, with Jackson State women’s basketball coach Tomekia Reed taking to social media to criticize the feature’s characterization of Mississippi’s capital city.
“Y’all made Jackson, MS look horrible,” Reed wrote in a post to 60 Minutes’ official account on the social media platform X. “You should be ashamed of yourselves for showing the worst house you can find in America and make it like that describes us. I’m not even sure if that abandoned house you showed is even in Jackson. #ThisisHome”
In a reply to a follower who asked what the segment was about, Reed elaborated: “It was comparing Jackson, MS to Boulder, CO. They showed very nice locations in Boulder and showed the worst they could find in Jackson, MS. We have so much more to show that wouldn’t have hurt @60Minutes to take time to spotlight.”
@60Minutes y’all made Jackson, MS look horrible. You should be ashamed of yourselves for showing the worst house you can find in America and make it like that describes us. I’m not even sure if that abandoned house you showed is even in Jackson. #ThisisHome
— Coach Tomekia Reed (@CoachTReed) September 18, 2023
It was comparing Jackson, MS to Boulder, CO. They showed very nice locations in Boulder and showed the worst they could find in Jackson, MS. We have so much more to show that wouldn’t have hurt @60Minutes to take time to spotlight.
— Coach Tomekia Reed (@CoachTReed) September 18, 2023
To Reed’s point, Jon Wertheim’s profile of Sanders paints a stark contrast between Jackson — where Sanders served as Jackson State’s head coach from 2020-2022 — and his current home in Colorado. At one point during the piece, the video cuts from a run down home in Jackson to a more picturesque view of Boulder, as Wertheim narrates: “The distance between Jackson and Boulder is a thousand miles and immeasurably further culturally. Sanders went from a city that is 83% Black to one that is 1% Black. From a place with a water crisis; to the kind of hipster college town where there’s a shop devoted to kites.”
This isn’t the first time that controversy has been attached to Sanders’ departure from Jackson, which came on the same day his Jackson State team captured Its second consecutive SWAC conference title. In particular, Coach Prime has been criticized for the perception that he used an HBCU as a stepping stone in his coaching career after previously stating — on 60 Minutes — that God called him to the job, in part to change the perception of HBCUs.
Asked by Wertheim about his polarizing departure, Sanders answered: “Opportunity called. Sooner or later in life, there will be opportunity that knocks at your door. And at this juncture in my life, I felt like the opportunity for not only me, but for my kids as well, was tremendous. Not only did we take several kids from that team, three trainers, maybe 12 to 14 staffers. So we afforded to give people a tremendous opportunity here.”
[CBS]
