Colorado football coach Deion Sanders has landed amid a religious-freedom squabble as he comes under pressure to stop praying in the locker room with his players.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation sent a letter to the University of Colorado demanding Coach Prime “cease infusing the football program with Christianity,” citing the appearance of a pastor who delivered a team prayer in the locker room last month after the Baylor game.
The pastor, E. Dewey Smith from the House of Hope in Atlanta, “seems to be acting as the football team’s chaplain,” said the foundation, noting that he has attended previous team events.
“The University of Colorado must again take action to protect its student athletes’ First Amendment rights,” said Samantha Lawrence, foundation staff attorney, in the Sept. 24 letter. “Coach Sanders needs to understand that he was hired to coach football, not to force student athletes to engage in his preferred religious practices.”
Playing defense for Sanders is the First Liberty Institute, which fired off a letter to the university insisting that the coach is well within his rights to engage in public prayer and bring in a team chaplain.
“FFRF fumbled the law,” said Keisha Russell, First Liberty Institute senior counsel, in a Wednesday statement. “The United States has a robust and widely recognized tradition of both public prayer and chaplain programs dating back to the Continental Congress in 1776.”
She said Sanders joins “the long-standing American tradition that welcomes the participation of chaplains within a variety of America’s public spaces — or, as the case may be, even a locker room.”
“Coach Sanders and the University of Colorado should ignore FFRF’s Hail Mary,” said Russell.
Deion Sanders may not be the best play-caller in the country, but there’s no doubt he’s one of the best, if not the best LEADER.
— NFL Rookie Watch (@NFLRookieWatxh) November 18, 2023
After every game, whether it be a win or loss, Sanders has the team say a prayer.
“Dear father, we thank you for this day. Thank you for our… pic.twitter.com/ax1rJ9w0OV
This isn’t the first time that Sanders and the foundation have tangled over public expressions of his Christian faith.
Last year, the university’s Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance met with him “to provide guidance … on the boundaries in which players and coaches may or may not engage in religious expression” following a complaint from the foundation about the coach’s public prayer and worship.
“Coach Sanders was very receptive to this training and came away from it with a better understanding of the University of Colorado’s policies and the requirements of the Establishment Clause,” said the university in a Jan. 31, 2023, letter to the foundation.
Said Lawrence: “It appears that Coach Sanders was not as receptive to the training as the university may have initially thought.”
She filed an open-records request with Executive Vice Chancellor Patrick O’Rourke for records of Pastor Smith’s involvement with the team, including itineraries and financial records, payments made to Pastor Smith and religion-related training materials provided to the coach.
“Sanders is showing his brazen disregard for not only the Constitution, but also the rights of all his players when he decides to force his religion upon them,” said foundation Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Students undoubtedly feel extra pressure to abide by his will at a collegiate sporting level.”
The letter cited a July pregame video that referred to Pastor Smith as the “spiritual adviser” to Sanders and the “chaplain for the Colorado Buffs.”
“In that video, Pastor Smith discussed the upcoming football season and team dynamics in a sermonlike manner, intertwining lessons from biblical scripture with his remarks about the team,” said Lawrence in her Tuesday letter.
The foundation argued that the Supreme Court has “continually struck down school-sponsored proselytizing in public schools,” while Russell countered that college students are “old enough to appreciate a chaplain’s prayer without being coerced by it.”
She cited the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, which upheld assistant football coach Joe Kennedy’s right to pray on the 50-yard line after games.
“In Kennedy, the court rejected the notion that secondary students are especially susceptible to coercion,” Russell said, adding that “FFRF fails to acknowledge these facts in its letter.”
The Washington Times has reached out to the university for comment.
The foundation, billed as “the nation’s largest free-thought association,” has a membership of about 40,000 “atheists, agnostics and skeptics of any pedigree.”
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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