The Athletic has live coverage of Colorado vs. Georgia Tech.ATLANTA — Jerry Glanville loved coaching Prime Time. When Prime Time — otherwise known as Deion Sanders — asked if he could bring MC Hammer to the sideline, or have Evander Holyfield give a pregame speech, Glanville signed off. When Atlanta Falcons management told Glanville that his star player would miss practice so he could play for the Atlanta Braves, he worked around it.And when people asked Glanville how he put up with all of Prime Time’s talk, the coach told them they had it all wrong.“He never talks. He just works,” Glanville said he replied, adding: “He never spoke unless someone turned a TV camera on.”These days, Sanders is a national lightning rod as Colorado’s head football coach, and he opens a pivotal fourth season on Thursday with a visit to Georgia Tech in Atlanta. It’s a city he knows well: Atlanta, in the early ’90s, was ground zero for the Prime Time show.“He electrified the world, truthfully, through Atlanta,” said Jamie Dukes, a teammate of Sanders both at Florida State and with the Falcons. “Atlanta has always been looking for its star, after Hank Aaron. Deion becomes a successor of that royalty for Atlanta. African-American, fashion icon, got flavor, got swag, all those things.”Glanville, who coached Sanders with the Falcons from 1990 to 1993, said there were rare times he had to rein in Sanders, like the time he picked off a Warren Moon pass, returned it for a touchdown and started doing a “Cadillac” gesture — holding his hand to his helmet — down the field.“Deion, I like that Cadillac, that’s good,” Glanville remembers saying. “But we got to wait to do that 10 yards out.”“Was that a little farther than 10, coach?” Sanders replied.“You were 50 out,” Glanville said.That summed up Sanders the player, especially in football, but also baseball: There was showboating and glitz, but he also backed it up.There were contradictions with Sanders, said Steven Hummer, then a sports writer at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Sanders could be abrasive with some media, most notably when he poured a bucket of ice on Tim McCarver, the Fox analyst who dinged Sanders for trying to play for the Falcons and Braves on the same day. Hummer called Sanders “a hard cover,” and felt he could never get Sanders to go deeper on himself than the Prime Time character.But that character, Hummer added, was well-crafted and legit.“It’s one thing if you’re just a blowhard and — back then they didn’t say this — build your brand. But he was building brands before it was cool,” Hummer said. “You had to recognize the kind of player he was. He was just a unique athlete.”Deion Sanders wears a jacket bearing his nickname during a 1991 Falcons game. (George Gojkovich / Getty Images)Sanders arrived in Atlanta the summer of 1989, after being selected fifth in the NFL Draft. During his ensuing five seasons with the Falcons, he was twice a first-team All-Pro, had 24 interceptions and scored 10 touchdowns: Three on defense, three kickoff returns, two punt returns and two receptions.“The Falcons weren’t that good. He was this supernova in this kind of blank universe,” Hummer said. “Nobody threw to that side of the field. There was no reason — you were stupid if you did. You were gonna get picked. And there were plenty of other options to victimize the Falcons.”Glanville said Sanders got so bored he would let receivers get open, then pounce on the pass. He remembered one game where he looked down the field and a receiver running a post pattern was wide open. He had a feeling of dread as the quarterback threw to the seemingly open receiver — and the next thing Glanville knew, Sanders was picking it off and running it back.“‘Deion, you can’t let him get that open,'” Glanville remembered saying on the sideline.“‘Oh, I had him, coach,'” Sanders replied. “‘I’m not going to get work unless I let him get open.'”Sanders’ path to the Braves was a winding one. The Kansas City Royals initially drafted him in the sixth round out of high school, but he didn’t sign and played at Florida State. While it was assumed Sanders would only play football, the New York Yankees took a flyer on him in the 30th round of the 1988 draft. Sanders signed, made his major-league debut the next season, and appeared in 71 games over the 1989 and 1990 seasons. The Yankees then waived him, thinking Sanders had potential that wouldn’t be fulfilled playing two sports.That freed up Sanders to sign with the Braves, and being able to play in the same city helped. He had a big 1992, hitting .304 with a league-leading 14 triples and stealing 26 bases. And he was the Braves’ best hitter in the World Series, going 8-for-15 with two doubles.During his time with the Braves, he appeared in 292 games, with 952 plate appearances. He wasn’t just a speedy slap-hitter: He had 22 homers. Sanders worked at it. The Braves’ batting coach, Clarence Jones, said if Sanders had a bad night he’d go home and take 200 swings.“If Deion plays the whole season, he’s going to hit 20-plus home runs. He’s got the talent to lead the league in hitting one year,” Jones told the AJC during the 1992 season.Deion Sanders signs autographs at a Braves game in 1991. (Bettmann / Getty Images)Braves general manager John Schuerholz said at the time — the summer of 1992 — they’d never asked Sanders to quit football, but added: “Although we’d prefer it.”Sanders tried to do both, skipping Falcons training camp to play for the Braves, and missing practice during the season. Glanville treated it like an injured player who returned on game days, and worked the game plan around him. It also helped that other teams didn’t want to throw Sanders’ direction, anyway.“And without him, defensive backs aren’t making the money they make. He changed the financial structure of the draft and the defensive back,” Glanville said. “Every DB that signs should write him a letter and say thank you. Because without him, the DBs weren’t making any money.”The day Sanders tried to play for both teams on the same day came on Oct. 11, 1992, when the Falcons had a day game, then the Braves played in the National League Championship Series at night. Sanders played for the Falcons in a loss to the Miami Dolphins, and then flew to Pittsburgh for the playoff baseball game, but didn’t appear in the game. A week later, Sanders skipped the Falcons game (in San Francisco) so he could play in Game 2 of the World Series.The same-city experiment ended in 1994. In May, the Braves traded Sanders to Cincinnati for fellow outfielder Roberto Kelly. Schuerholz told media members it was to get a right-handed hitter. (Sanders hit left-handed.)Braves teammate Terry Pendleton was one of those not buying it, telling the AJC: “You’re not dumb, you know better than that.”“I liked Deion,” manager Bobby Cox said the night of the trade. “Yeah, I’ll miss him. He never caused this club one ounce of problems.”Sanders kept playing baseball off and on, going to the San Francisco Giants in 1995, then two more stints with the Reds (1997 and 2001).“He couldn’t be Prime Time in baseball,” Dukes said. “He could certainly be an All-Star. But baseball is about the home run hitters. But in football he saw and knew he could own it, if you would.”Sanders would indeed be a Hall of Famer in football, but his time with the Falcons ended the same year he left the Braves. In September 1994, he signed with the San Francisco 49ers. A year later, he came back to Atlanta with the Dallas Cowboys and was cheered so much that Falcons running back Craig Heyward was annoyed: “This is our house. They just leased it for today.”“Getting out of Atlanta was the best thing for him; he got out of a franchise that was stuck and won a couple Super Bowls,” Hummer said. “That wasn’t going to happen here.”Glanville, now 84 and still coaching in minor-league football, didn’t expect Sanders to become a coach. When Sanders brought a high school team to play at a Knoxville, Tenn., Glanville checked it out, not sure what to expect, and came away impressed. He also liked what he saw from Sanders early on at Colorado.“I thought in two years he would be the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys. So evidently I was wrong, he’s not there,” Glanville said. “But that’s where with my background and my knowledge I thought this was heading.”Glanville also loves that Sanders occasionally coaches wearing a cowboy hat and sunglasses – just like Glanville did with the Falcons and Houston Oilers.The Colorado experiment now heads into its fourth season, starting in Atlanta. Sanders has been back as Jackson State’s head coach, but this will be the first with the Buffaloes.“Atlanta is Deion’s city forever,” Dukes said. “He’s a prince of this city forever.”