He’s Living in a Deion-ized World

Deion Sanders was in Dallas Thursday, house hunting. He probably asked to see something in a nice center-hall colonial with its roof on sideways. Remember, don’t show Deion anything above $12.75 million. That’s all the money he’s made this week. For Neon Deion, house hunting’s not so tough. He can just buy a whole neighborhood, then be more selective once he joins the Cowboys.

Prime Time will be rejoining the San Francisco Giants--not that anyone cares whether a .271 hitter with no power is in the lineup. Sanders missed the Giants game Wednesday with “a bruise.” Deion would then bring his consecutive-games streak up to 1.

Quick, roll down a banner. Call Joe DiMaggio.

Last week was a busy week for The Neon One. He signed a five-year, $25 million contract with the Cowboys, including a $12.75 million signing bonus. Other players, including star quarterback Troy Aikman, had to restructure their contracts to accommodate him.

Then Sanders dropped the other shoe. He’ll undergo arthroscopic surgery on his right ankle as soon as his baseball season with the San Francisco Giants is finished, possibly delaying his Cowboys debut by three or four weeks.

“I’ve seen guys undergo arthroscopic surgery and they’re playing the next week,” said Deion, reassuringly. “Not that I want to rush myself.”

No, don’t rush yourself.

You can almost hear the Cowboy complex reverberate with screams of, “He’s going to do what? He’ll report when?”

Look at it Deion’s way. The Cowboys don’t play his ex-teammates--the world champion 49ers--until Nov. 12. Why should a superstar play in all those little games beforehand? Why tackle a Seahawk? You could get a bruise.

Once, athletes were lionized. Now, they’re deionized. Sanders confines his egotism to the playing field or the locker room; others, with less talent, see the attention Sanders gets on the field because of his talent and showmanship, then think that they, even though less talented, can escape with the same behavior off the field.

They don’t understand that the kind of “I Am The Greatest” egotism that is tolerable or even entertaining in a truly gifted Babe Ruth, Joe Namath, Muhammad Ali or Sanders is utterly ridiculous if you are, for example, Brian Shaw.

In case you missed it, Shaw, Jason Kidd and Gary Payton were kicked out of a Waffle House in Orlando after police arrived to break up an argument at 4:30 a.m. on Sunday between the three NBA players--all making millions of dollars a year--and some waitresses. Shaw says a waitress became “nervous because we were all black,” the group was laughing loudly and she told them to “shut up.” Imagine! You can’t say that to a rich jock!

This is what happens when you date Madonna. First, Dennis Rodman. Now, Brian Shaw. Your brain rots.

In recent years, pro sports seems to have divided up between the idiots and everybody else. As this week’s vote over decertification of the NBA union demonstrated, the two groups are of roughly equal size.

Increasingly, it seems the job of the modern fan is to observe the scene closely to identify which rich athletes and owners still retain minimal contact with normal civil society and which have completely lost their minds. You get some surprises. Shaquille O’Neal was the voice of reason in recent weeks, telling NBA players they should put the good of their sport ahead of a full-scale war to get the last dollar from the owners.

“Haven’t we learned from the baseball strike?” said Shaq, who could’ve mentioned the NHL’s sins, too.

Who’d have dreamed that Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing, under the thrall of their agent, David Falk, would try to blow up their own union?

Just to make sure they played their appointed part in our tragicomedy, baseball owners held three days of meetings this week to discuss the state of The Game That Nobody Watches. To summarize briefly, here’s what they accomplished: Nothing. They’re just going to stagger along blindly with Bud Selig as commissioner, trying to see if the sport can fall into disgrace utterly.

Of all the characters in our comedy, one has established himself as the leading buffoon. No, not Deion, who’s now with his third NFL and third major-league team. Prime Time gets under people’s skin. Sanders’ crass exodus from the 49ers even prompted elegant, dignified Jerry Rice to break into an off-color diatribe about how “it takes a team effort to get to the Super Bowl.”

In the face of historically high levels of competition, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has finally crawled to the absolute bottom of the pile.

Like George Steinbrenner in the ‘80s with the Yankees, Jones is drawing a self-portrait by the type of men he hires. As Steinbrenner resurrected Billy Martin when nobody else would touch him, Jones picked long-forgotten Barry Switzer as his coach. Now, he’s added Deion to his Egos ‘R Us.

Despite the jillions he’s spent on players, Steinbrenner’s Yankees haven’t been to the playoffs since 1981. To this day, no matter how many David Cones and Ruben Sierras arrive each year, the soulless Yankees are frustrated, angry and mediocre to the bone. The Man’s hand is always on their neck.

That’s the kind of future that Jerry Jones is bringing to the Cowboys, too. The same disgust that baseball owners felt toward Steinbrenner’s buy-the-pot tactics is now exactly how NFL owners feel toward Mr. Pepsi Cola.

Don’t be mad at Deion Sanders. Be sad for him. Underneath everything, he’s just a bumptious greedy innocent who’s signed aboard a bad ship, headed for desolate places. Like all those Yankees free agents who wished they’d never signed a pact with George, Deion will get what’s coming to him. If not more.