In September 2020, Deion Sanders was named head coach of the Jackson State University Tigers football team. The announcement marked his shift in public consciousness from “Prime Time” to “Coach Prime” and came as the country was reeling from the debilitating impacts of COVID-19, sustained calls for racial redress following a string of police-involved deaths, and new NIL developments in the NCAA. Turning in this essay to Sanders’s “I Believe” speech, which he gave once he was named head coach, I argue that Sanders garners the support of his audience by employing aspirational rhetoric, a form of prophetic rhetoric that constitutes the rhetor as a prophet and the audience as change agents through their simultaneous commitment to a common goal (i.e., bringing a new world to fruition). In this way, Sanders makes an important intervention in public discourse on behalf of HBCUs. I conclude by exploring ways aspirational prophecy enables and constrains social and cultural change within sport as a site of political struggle.
BurkeK. (1950). A rhetoric of motives. University of California Press.
3.
ButterworthM. (2013). The passion of Tebow: Sports media and heroic language in the tragic frame. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 30(1), 17–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2012.701010
4.
ButterworthM. (2016). Sport as a rhetorical artifact. In BillingsA. C. (Ed.), Defining sport communication. Routledge.
5.
CavaianiA. C. (2022). Rhetoric, materiality, and the disruption of meaning: The stadium as a place of protest. Communication & Sport, 8(4-5), 473–488.
FrankD. A. (2009). The prophetic voice and the face of the other in Barack Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” address, March 18, 2008. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 12(2), 167–194. https://doi.org/10.1353/rap.0.0101
11.
GordonD. B. (2003). Black identity: Rhetoric, ideology, and nineteenth-century Black nationalism. Southern Illinois University Press.
12.
GranoD. A.ButterworthM. L. (2019). Rhetoric, sport, and the political: An introduction. In GranoD. A.ButterworthM. L. (Eds.), Sport, rhetoric, and political struggle. Peter Lang.
13.
HartmanK. L. (2019). The new rhetorical space for political activism. In GranoD. A.ButterworthM. L. (Eds.), Sport, rhetoric, and political struggle. Peter Lang.
HigginbothamE. (1993). Righteous discontent: The women’s movement in the Black Baptist church, 1880-1920. Harvard University Press.
17.
Howard-PitneyD. (2005). The African American jeremiad: Appeals to justice in America (Rev ed). Temple University Press.
18.
JacksonD.TrevisanF.PullenE.SilkM. (2020). Towards a social justice disposition in communication and sport scholarship. Communication & Sport, 8(4-5), 435–451. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167479520932929
19.
JohnsonA. E. (2010). The prophetic persona of James Cone and the rhetorical theology of Black theology. Black Theology: An International Journal, 8(3), 266–285. https://doi.org/10.1558/blth.v8i3.266
20.
JohnsonA. E. (2012). The forgotten prophet: Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and the African American prophetic tradition. Lexington Books.
21.
JohnsonA. E. (2016). To make the world so damn uncomfortable’: WEB du Bois and the African American prophetic tradition. Carolinas Communication Annual, 32, 16–29.
22.
JohnsonA. E. (2020). No future in this country: The prophetic pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner. University Press of Mississippi.
23.
KendiI. (2016). Stamped from the beginning: The definitive history of racist ideas. Bold Type Books.
24.
KhanA. I. (2019). Curt Flood, confrontational rhetoric, and the radical’s constellation. In GranoD. A.ButterworthM. L. (Eds.), Sport, rhetoric, and political struggle. Peter Lang.
25.
KhanA. I. (2012). Curt Flood in the media: Baseball, race, and the demise of the activist athlete. University Press of Mississippi.
26.
KhanA. I. (2016). Sport and race: A disciplinary history and exhortation. In BillingsA. C. (Ed.), Defining sport communication. Routledge.
27.
KhanA. I. (2017). Michael Sam, Jackie Robinson, and the politics of respectability. Communication & Sport, 5(3), 331–351. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167479515616407
28.
KhanA. I. (2021). The ethos of the activist athlete. In ButterworthM. (Ed.), The handbook of communication and sport. Routledge.
LavelleK. (2019). “Change starts with us”: Intersectionality and citizenship in the 2016 WNBA. In GranoD. A.ButterworthM. L. (Eds.), Sport, rhetoric, and political struggle. Peter Lang.
31.
LeffM. C.UtleyE. A. (2004). Instrumental and constitutive rhetoric in Martin luther king Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 7(1), 37–51. https://doi.org/10.1353/rap.2004.0026
LewisT. V. (2013). Religious rhetoric in Southern college football: New uses for religious metaphors. Southern Communication Journal, 78(3), 202–214. https://doi.org/10.1080/1041794x.2013.770064
35.
MaderaJ. (2021). Early Black worldmaking: Body, compass, and text. American Literary History, 33(3), 481–497. https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajab058
MartinS.McHendryG. F.Jr. (2015). Kaepernick’s Stand: Patriotism, protest, and professional sports. Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, 6(3/4), 88–98.
38.
McClearenJ.FischerM.SheppardS. N.CloseS.HowellC. E.OverbyK. M. (2021). Maya Moore, Black lives matter, and the visibility of athlete activism. The Velvet Light Trap, 87, 64–84. https://doi.org/10.7560/vlt8706
39.
McCuneJ. Q.Jr (2015). The queerness of Blackness. QED: A journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking.
MilfordM. (2015). Kenneth Burke’s punitive priests and the redeeming prophets: The NCAA, the college sports media, and the University of Miami Scandal. Communication Studies, 66(1), 45–62. https://doi.org/10.1080/10510974.2013.856806
43.
MuñozJ. E. (1999). Disidentifications: Queers of color and the performance of politics. University of Minnesota Press.
44.
QuashieK. (2021). Black aliveness, or a poetics of being. Duke University Press.
45.
ReidR. F. (1983). Apocalypticism and typology. Rhetorical dimensions of a symbolic reality. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 69(3), 229–248. https://doi.org/10.1080/00335638309383652
RitterK. W. (1980). American political rhetoric and the jeremiad tradition: Presidential nomination acceptance addresses, 1960-1976. Central States Speech Journal, 31(3), 153–171. https://doi.org/10.1080/10510978009368054
SpencerL. G. (2016). Bishop Leontine Turpeau current Kelly: Toward an ironic prophetic rhetoric. Western Journal of Communication, 80(5), 519–538. https://doi.org/10.1080/10570314.2016.1187763
