When Coach Prime isn’t busy working on a game plan or leading Colorado’s team meetings or practice, he is focused on being a father to his five children: Deiondra, 32, and Deion Jr., 30, who he shares with his first wife, Carolyn Chambers; Shilo, 24; Shedeur, 22; and daughter Shelomi, 20, who he shares with his second wife, Pilar Biggers-Sanders.
In a video posted to Instagram on April 9, Shilo and his famous father had a heart-to-heart about dating.
“You looking to breed,” Deion Sanders asked his son.
Shilo tells his father that breeding isn’t on the agenda at the moment but then breaks down what he looks for in a young lady.
“No, if I’m dating right now… I’m looking for a woman that…. that’s athletic, you know, I gotta see if she can jump, if she can run,” Shilo replied amid laughs from his father, former NFL player, and current Colorado graduate assistant coach Warren Sapp, and others in the Buffaloes football facility.
“Well, let’s just call it what it is… call it what it is, call it what it is,” Sapp interjected.
“That’s breeding! That’s a breeder! You’re looking for someone who is a good breeder,” Coach Prime added.
“I’m being smart, Dad,” Shilo countered.
“You can’t get with a girl who is 4-11 and think you’re going to have a guard in the NBA,” the Colorado head coach noted.
Several people in the Instagram comments drew comparisons to Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson, who famously said that the reason he fathered eight children was to breed athletes.
“When I was younger, I wanted athletic children right, so therefore, I dated those who had an athletic background,” Johnson said on a February 2023 episode of Club Shay Shay. “I need to see what did you do in high school? Did you play volleyball? Did you run track? Did you do anything athletic? Do you have footage or anything?”
Ochocinco’s methods seemed to have paid off. His 18-year-old daughter, Cha’iel Johnson, recently announced her decision to run track at the University of Kentucky after being a star athlete throughout her childhood. His son, Chad Johnson Jr, is a wide receiver at Arizona State.
Along with Coach Prime’s sons, whom he coached at Jackson State and Colorado, his daughter Shelomi was also blessed with athletic genes. She played basketball last season at Colorado but has decided to enter the transfer portal — a decision that did not appear to sit well with her dad.
“(It) was stupid,” Sanders told DNVR when asked about his youngest daughter’s decision to leave Colorado. “You don’t enter the portal. You get a team before you enter the portal. You kinda get a team before you enter the portal. You know, that’s what I would advise a child. And I know, ‘Well it’s illegal…’ C’mon, man.”
Primce’s eldest daughter, Deiondra, announced in March that she was expecting her first child with singer Jacquees. In a social media post, she explained that the pregnancy was unexpected.
Even though this was not planned or expected, this is still something God allowed to happen. I’m not having my baby to keep a man. I am having my baby for all the times I was told I wouldn’t be able to. I’m having my baby for the four myomectomy surgeries I have had. I am having my baby for all the years I stayed on birth control even though it gave me breast tumors,” Deiondra wrote.
Coach Prime shared his feelings on the pregnancy during an interview with People, joking that there was not “not one thing” that excited him about the idea of becoming a grandparent.
“I haven’t digested that whole thing yet,” Sanders told the publication.
But he also said he was proud of his daughter. “I’m proud of my baby, that she’s at least waited until her 30s to give me this gift of life. I’m happy about that, but I want to make sure she’s straight emotionally and psychologically as well.”
