Comedian Shane Gillis roasted quarterback Shedeur Sanders and his father Deion Wednesday with a joke about the controversial decision to retire Shedeur’s No. 2 at Colorado after two seasons in Boulder.
Gillis made the remarks while hosting the ESPYS in Los Angeles on Wednesday, July 16, when he made fun of many sports celebrities and topics.
“Shedeur Sanders had his jersey number retired at Colorado this year, and people are saying it’s because of nepotism, because of his father, and it’s not” Gillis said. “It’s because he went 13-12 over his career, and he almost won the Alamo Bowl. Definitely not nepotism, right?”
The joke drew a muted response from the audience, with Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson shown on ESPN looking down and smiling.
Shedeur Sanders, now with the Cleveland Browns, actually went 13-11 as starting quarterback at Colorado across the 2023 and 2024 seasons while playing for his father Deion, Colorado’s head coach. But he is considered possibly the best quarterback in school history after breaking over 100 school records and reviving a program that went 1-11 in 2022, the season before he arrived.
The decision to retire his jersey number still was controversial, partly because it came less than four months after his last college game in the Alamo Bowl against BYU, which he lost, 36-14.
The decision also seemed to overlook other all-time Colorado greats, especially former Colorado quarterback Darian Hagan, who led Colorado to the national championship in 1990 and had a 28-5-2 record as QB. By contrast, Hagan’s jersey number never was retired by Colorado.
The university said the decision to retire a player’s jersey number is at the discretion of the athletic department administration and current head coach.
In April, the university announced the decision to retire the jersey numbers of Sanders and his teammate Travis Hunter, the Heisman Trophy winner. Before them, only four jersey numbers had been retired in CU’s 135-year football history and none since 2017.
Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com