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Deion Sanders has rubbed plenty of people the wrong way since taking over at the University of Colorado, and while he recently drew the ire of the head coach of the football team at the Pueblo branch of Colorado State over a tampering accusation, someone failed to do their due diligence before pointing the finger.
College football coaches currently have to deal with an unprecedented amount of turnover thanks to headaches stemming from the evolution of the transfer portal in the NIL Era, which has fostered an environment where tampering has become increasingly widespread thanks to programs looking to poach talent from other teams.
There aren’t many people in college football who’ve relied on transfers more than Deion Sanders since he arrived in Boulder to take the reins for the Colorado Buffaloes. Earlier this year, the university self-reported 11 instances where Coach Prime may have improperly tampered with players, and while he recently found himself facing some related allegations, it seems like the accuser jumped the gun.
On Wednesday, Philip Vigil—who is gearing up for his second season as the head coach of the Colorado State University-Pueblo ThunderWolves (a Division II program)—tagged Sanders and the Buffs in a Twitter post featuring text messages an unnamed committed recruit received from someone who claimed to be Devin Rispress, who currently serves as the Assistant Director Of Player Personnel And High School Relations at Colorado.
Hey @NCAA and @Big12Conference, is this considered tampering, or is @Coach2Bless and @CUBuffsFootball able to recruit our current players like this? 🤔🤷♂️#ToTheTop pic.twitter.com/PV7dN1yko1
— Coach Vigil (@PhilipVigil) May 29, 2024
However, there was one major problem: the person who sent the text was simply posing as Rispress, with plenty of people noting it was very unlikely anyone affiliated with Sanders and the Buffaloes would refer to the school as “Colorado University.”
The real, actual Rispress called out Vigil for failing to do his due diligence in his response to the tweet, saying, “Nice try, yall been catfished, wrong guy brother. You could’ve hit me up before tweeting this and embarrassing your program.”
Take a lap, Coach Vigil.