I’m sure Jerry Jones would have liked for Deion Sanders to be a “no man” before he vouched for Dez Bryant prior to the draft. Sanders comments (also in the video above) on his now soured relationship with former protégé Dez Bryant:
I’m not losing any sleep by any means. It’s hard to talk to a person when they have millions man because there is so much noise in their life. Everybody around them is employed and they have ‘yes men.’ You gotta start hiring a ‘no man.’ Somebody who is going to tell you no and somebody who is going to tell you the truth and a lot of these guys don’t and when it comes to him with a lot of things I had to cut my umbilical cord with him because a lot of things people do not know about. I’m trying to open schools and get these kids prepared for the future and I can’t have that on my record saying that: How am I going to send my kids to your school and this is what you are turning out over here? No I am not turning that out over there.I have nothing to do with that and I had to cut that cord because you can’t keep doing the same old things that you’ve always done. You are going to get the same old things you’ve always got, so that’s why I had to separate myself. I love him. I see him from time-to-time. I pray for him, but as a unit we had to separate.”
ez Bryant got kicked out of college athletics early because of lying about being mentored by Sanders. Dez Bryant chose Eugene Parker, the same agent as Deion Sanders upon entering the draft. Dez Bryant still counted Deion Sanders as a mentor entering the 2010 NFL Draft:
INDIANAPOLIS – Dez Bryant’s career at Oklahoma State ended prematurely after he lied to NCAA investigators about his relationship with Deion Sanders.
That did not end Bryant’s relationship with the all-time great cornerback.
“Deion is my mentor,” Bryant said at the NFL combine. “He never talked to me about football, it was more of my personal life, just seeing if my mom was OK, seeing if my brother was OK, seeing if my sister was OK.
“He checked up on me every now and then. It made me feel good, just like any kid. It’s Deion Sanders. And he was telling me the right things, not the wrong things.”
Sanders details his own extensive mentoring of Bryant in this 2009 NFL Network interview (transcript courtesy WFAA):
When I first started even mentoring Dez, the first thing I did, I called his receivers coach. His receivers coach told me everything about Dez, when Dez is late to school, he calls me. When Dez is a little tardy to summer workouts, he calls me. So we have an on-going relationship. And Dez helped me throughout the summer with my youth programs, as such. Now the problem was, someone, um, they wanted to question Dez about our relationship, and Dez was nervous about — Why these NCAA people have me in this room with a closed door, questioning me? Now, had I been liar, or falsified any incident or evidence, my story would have collaberated with Dez. We talked three times a week and they didn’t, because I don’t lie, and the kid said he didn’t come to my home, and in actuality, he did.
Deion Sanders, was indeed “turning that out over there”. He just failed to turn Dez Bryant into a responsible young adult professional. Beyond that, saying that he needs a “no man” sounds like Sanders is pretending he had nothing to do with Bryant getting to this point in his career.