You’ve got to hand it to Deion Sanders. (Although, unless you have the combined incomes of Bill Gates and Sam Walton, I’m not sure you can afford a token of admiration worthy of the wonderfulness of his Neonship.) The man does not lack for ego.

I'm being honest here. There really is something admirable about a man who thinks, because he played cornerback with the instinctive insouciance with which Mozart played the pianoforte and works on a pregame show, he can coach a professional football team.

How many of us who aren’t named Donald Trump honestly feel that confident of our skills, whether that confidence is misplaced or not? And Trump, for all his outsized opinion of himself, is a pauper in the ego department compared to Sanders; barely a grain of sand at the foot of Mount Everest.

I’d even like to see Sanders try to coach a team, and not solely because of the boundless schadenfreude that we could bathe in when he finds out that coaching a football team isn’t as easy as he thinks it is. More than that, I’d like to be listening when he admits that maybe there is something he can’t do, after all. Humility, no matter how late in life it is gained, is a good thing and a lesson to us all.

And there’s little question Sanders could not be a successful coach, at least not without a few years of apprenticeship and probably not even then. The greatest coaches in history — Vince Lombardi, Paul Brown, Tom Landry, Bill Parcells, Don Shula, Bear Bryant, Joe Paterno to name a few — had to learn their craft the only way it can be learned — by working their way up the coaching ladder.

Granted, none of those worthies could play cornerback like Deion could. But the next time someone with great talent at one phase of a game is an instant success as a coach in any sport will also be the first time.

Sanders thinks he’d be a great coach because he was a great player. Also, he’s a very intelligent man. And this is where he’s wrong.

It’s not breaking news to point out that great, intuitive players, no matter how smart they are and what great personalities they have, make lousy coaches. This isn’t an accident, but rather a product of their skills.

How, exactly, will Sanders teach cornerbacks to cover wideouts? Does he tell them just go out there, anticipate the guy’s moves, stay with him, and grab the ball out of his hands? Easy to say, but, unless you’re Sanders, not easy to do.

You may be thinking, if Ah-nold Schwarzenegger can be governor of California, why can’t Deion Sanders be a head football coach?

The answer to that is as obvious as the nose on a hippopotamus’ face: Being governor is easier. I mean, what, exactly, is a good job of being governor? If Jesse Ventura can do it, anybody can.

But not everyone can be an NFL coach. It’s not just Xs and Os on a chalkboard and watching game films. It’s managing 53 players during the regular season and more than 80 in training camp. It’s knowing every job of every player on the field. It’s knowing every technique at every position. It’s endless loops of game film. It’s being able to motivate dozens of different personality types.

Sanders said he doesn’t want to be an assistant coach because it takes up too much time. If that’s the case, it’s hard to understand why he’d want to be a head coach, which takes up all the time there is, and then some.

But logic apparently doesn’t factor into Sanders’ ambition. It never did when he was a player, because he was so good that the logic of those who argued that he couldn’t play baseball and football at the same time was lost on him. With his skills, normal logic didn’t apply.

But running a football team isn’t about being faster than a frog’s tongue and more athletic than any two other mortals. You can’t make up for mistakes with your incredible athleticism. It’s brutally hard work.

Playing two sports was easy by comparison, because it didn’t require thought; just action. I wish he’d get a job so he could discover that and explain it to us.

In fact, I wish he’d go all the way and become the first two-sport manager. I mean, why stop at just coaching football, especially as it’s so easy? For a man of Deion’s self-admitted talents, it shouldn’t be any problem to manage a baseball team while coaching football.

With modern technology, he wouldn’t even need to jet back and forth from one game to another. All he’d need is one of those cell phones with a camera in it. That way, he can keep an eye on a baseball game and phone in his hit-and-runs and pitching changes while leading the Atlanta Falcons to a procession of Super Bowls.

I’m kind of surprised his Neonship didn’t think of it himself, and I know he didn’t, because if he had, lack of modesty would have compelled him to suggest it first. It goes without saying, the only baseball team he could possibly manage is the Yankees, and, now that I think about it, I’m a little surprised George Steinbrenner hasn’t contacted Sanders already about it. Maybe he’s waiting a year until Joe Torre’s contract runs out.

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