SUPER BOWL XXIX : The Prime Minister : Deion Sanders Has Three Houses, Two Nicknames, One Invented Persona--and He’d Rather Be Fishing

Deion Sanders is the son of Connie Knight, who lives in a seven-bedroom, seven-bath home with “PRIME TIME” spelled in tile on the floor of her swimming pool, and Mims Sanders, who lives on the streets and needs a bath and a shampoo.

Deion Sanders’ mother sat in the Candlestick Park stands a few days before Thanksgiving and saw a Los Angeles Ram player run behind her son for a touchdown. She heard heckling and mocking of “Prime Time,” rose from her seat, left the stadium and flagged down a taxi.

Deion Sanders’ father liked to dance and was good at it. He got off drugs for a while, cleaned up his act and even became an opening act for M.C. Hammer back when the rapper still called himself by his initials. Mims Sanders was more or less M.C.’s emcee. Deion Sanders doesn’t drink, doesn’t do dope and tells teammates who drink beer, “Man, that stuff will mess you up.”

Deion Sanders is 27, drives a black Lamborghini, has houses in three states, has master bedrooms that he uses as walk-in closets and buys three of everything so he will be able to wear whichever outfit he wants, wherever he is. He plays football for the San Francisco 49ers, is unquestionably the most publicized defensive back of all time and says he doesn’t crave or require any more publicity because: “I don’t need it, man. I’m household!”

There is Prime Time Sanders and there is Deion Sanders, the same way there is Batman and Bruce Wayne. He invented the persona of Prime Time (or “Neon Deion”) when he was at Florida State. He elucidates:

“Quarterbacks made the big money. Running backs made the big money. The question was: ‘What do we got to do to build my mother her dream house?’

“ ‘Prime Time!’

“Bing!”

Deion Sanders’ mother was not home while her 7-year-old slept in Ft. Myers, Fla. No baby-sitter was. No adult was. Connie Knight arose in darkness and went to work at a hospital, serving food or stacking linens. Before she left home, Deion’s mother spread out his school clothes and fastened the front-door key to his shirt with a safety pin. Her phone call at 7 o’clock was his daily alarm. Deion dressed himself, fed himself and showed himself to the next-door neighbor to confirm that he was fine.

As a grown man, he became finer. Custom-made leather suits. Earrings in both ears. Gold cap on his tooth. Bracelets and necklaces. He made Liberace and Sammy Davis Jr. look like Amish farmers. He did it because he loved looking good. He also did it because it was an act. He admits that now, happily. He practically twinkles when he says it: “I manipulated the press. I invented a personality. I created something larger than a football player. Y’all bought it. Thank you.”

He is happy being household.

Deion’s mother got her dream house. It is in Ft. Myers and sticks out in her neighborhood like the Taj Mahal and has a three-car garage--on each side. Her son is the freshest prince of all, America’s preeminent two-sport professional, a baseball player who has been to a World Series and a football player who is about to be in a Super Bowl, the ultimate jock of two trades. He is the man who out-Bo’d Bo Jackson.

Deion knew he was different by the time he was 9. He had just heard the hoariest of chestnuts from one of his coaches.

“Coach said, ‘It’s not whether you win, it’s how you play the game.’

“Smart-mouth that I am, I said, ‘Then why in the hell do they keep score?’ ”

Nobody washed his mouth out with soap, although it only would have made him prettier. Deion’s favorite things are playing football, playing baseball and not getting his uniform dirty, not necessarily in that order. He had a game recently against the Chicago Bears that required so little of his effort, its only saving grace was that his pants didn’t show one speck of dirt. Otherwise, he says, he was bored stiff.

Deion popularized the do-rag. It is his everlasting contribution to fashion. The do-rag is a bandanna that players wear under their helmets. Merton Hanks likes his--he is Deion’s partner in the 49er secondary--because Hanks’ head is somewhere between a size-7 and a 7 1/4, so the do-rag makes his helmet nice and snug. Deion likes his do-rag because it makes him look like a pirate.

Or does he?

“You spend five minutes with me and you think you know me,” he says. “I care what my family thinks about me, what my teammates think about me, what my kids think about me. You say I’m this way, I’m that way. You don’t know me. You want to know me, you might like to go fishing with me. Anybody got a rod?”

Deion says he has three hobbies that he will indulge when he retires from his two jobs. One is fishing, another is fishing, and the third is fishing. He says he will own his own lake. He says he will be able to name every fish in his lake. He says he will say, “Look, there goes Bubba. Come back, Bubba. Let me catch you.” He says he will host a cable television show called “Fishin’ With Deion.”

He says this, he says that. Deion on a roll is a sound bite to behold.

Deion says he will sell his Super Bowl tickets for $1,000 apiece, so “meet me behind the stadium, and bring a grand.”

Deion says of a new album he has just recorded, “I can’t sing, but I can rap.”

Deion says several of his teammates have been “coming out of the closet” this season and then explains that he means emerging athletically , not sexually, so please don’t get anybody angry at him, because “when those gay folks start coming at me, it’ll be hell! So you get those quotes right!”

It ain’t easy being household.

Deion is a growing industry. He has fish in any number of pans. He recently signed a multiyear licensing deal with Sega to be spokesman for sports-related video games and related software. In charge of something Sega calls character development is Michealene Cristini Risley, who says her company is particularly excited about landing Deion “because of his attitude and his ability to back up what he says on the field.” A defensive back , mind you, starring in video games.

But oh, such a defensive back.

In the 15 games he has played since becoming a 49er, Deion’s team has returned five interceptions for touchdowns. In the team’s previous 127 games, how many interceptions were returned for touchdowns? Same number. Five.

Stan Humphries, who throws passes for the San Diego Chargers, says, “Even if you beat him, you don’t beat him. The man does unbelievable things.”

Shawn Jefferson, who catches passes for them, says, “When you face Deion, you’re facing the best in the business.”

But he did more for San Francisco than bat down balls. He made players playful. He made playing fun. On a team once led by Joe Montana, never a laugh riot, and Jerry Rice, who screamed here at a guy from CNN after being asked to participate in a harmless prank, the presence of Deion has lightened the mood considerably. Even the coach, George Seifert, a man who appears to have a permanent headache, acknowledges this.

Or you can ask Steve Young, the quarterback who is every bit as sloppy as Deion is neat, but at least impressed his new teammate with his ability to dance. Deion says, “Steve’s got soul. A surprising amount of soul. I’m pretty sure he auditioned for ‘Soul Man.’ ”

Or you can ask Gary Plummer, another teammate, who was taken dancing by Sanders and Rice a few nights ago at what Deion described as “a little ghetto place” in Miami. The only white guy in the joint, Plummer had such a fine time living life from a black man’s perspective--this also being Deion’s description--that he can’t wait to do it again.

Plummer says, “Deion and Jerry took great delight in telling me they were introducing me to the darker side.”

Everyone’s welcome in the house of Deion.

He works, plays and drives in the fast lane. He rides his motorcycle into a Cincinnati stadium, blows past security and gets busted. He hops on helicopters to go from football practice to a baseball game on the same afternoon. He charters jets. He abuses his body, night and day, so much so that Deion says he is 27 and feels 34. He would like to retire early and fish, but that wouldn’t just displease his mother. “It would crush her,” he says.

Upon returning to his native Florida and paying a visit to his mother’s mansion, Deion discovered that she had looked up his father, Mims, to make sure he could bathe and get a haircut to be in shape to see his son. Mims’ descent into drug addiction left him homeless. Deion’s father abused substances, his stepfather abused substances, and he is more concerned about his mom.

As for himself, he will keep on livin’ large. He will dance on the football field as well as in clubs. He won’t dance on a baseball field, because, he says, “If I dance after a home run, I don’t think the pitcher would appreciate it. Different game.

“In football, you’re more free to make a fool of yourself.”

In the prime time of his life, Deion Sanders puts his cap on backward and upside-down and continues playing the fool. It is still his act. Nobody plays it better.

Leaving a room, walking, more like strutting, down a hallway, Deion Sanders encounters a young child in a Super Bowl cap. The boy brightens as he sees Deion coming. Deion sees him. He reaches out without slowing down. He turns the cap on the boy’s head backward and upside-down. It is never too soon to begin inventing a new personality.