FRISCO, Texas (AP) — Deion Sanders declined to address his health at Big 12 football media days Wednesday, which came during his extended absence from Colorado.
“I'm not here to talk about my health,” said Sanders, who is going into his third season as the Buffaloes coach. “I'm here to talk about my team.”
Since overseeing Colorado’s spring game April 19, Sanders hadn’t attended football camps in Boulder. The school had said last month, amid reports that the coach was ill, that it could not say why he was absent. Sanders did not specifically answer any questions about his health.
“I’m looking good. I’m living lovely. God has truly blessed me,” he said. “Not a care in the world. Not a want or desire in the world.”
Sanders was the last of the league's 16 coaches to appear on the main stage over two days at the headquarters of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys, which is about 75 miles from the sprawling ranch that the Pro Football Hall of Fame player has in Canton, Texas.
During his question-and-answer session that lasted nearly 17 minutes, Sanders addressed topics such as his coaching staff, quarterbacks and even Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire. Sanders then returned to the stage for a roundtable discussion with the other seven coaches in attendance Wednesday, but he didn't take part in his media breakout session scheduled for each coach at the end of the day.
It was unclear if the latest health issues are new. Sanders, a month shy of his 58th birthday, has struggled with his left foot since having two toes amputated in 2021 because of blood clot issues while at Jackson State. He missed Pac-12 media day in 2023, his first year at Colorado, after a procedure to remove a blood clot from his right leg and another to straighten toes on his left foot.
Colorado athletic director Rick George, who wouldn't elaborate on Sanders' health, said they stay in constant contact. The AD said Sanders will probably be back on campus in a week or two.
“We always talk. We text, we talk,” George said. “We have a great relationship. We trust each other.”
While commending the work of Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark in his opening remarks, Sanders said that Yormark called him daily to check to make sure he was getting better. There have also been a lot of calls from his fellow league coaches.
“I love them, they've been calling and checking on me, making sure I'm straight,” Sanders said.
This will be Sanders first season at Colorado without having one of his sons on the team. Quarterback Shedeur Sanders was a fifth-round pick by the Cleveland Browns in the NFL draft, and safety Shilo Sanders signed with Tampa Bay as an undrafted free agent.
Also gone is Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter, the two-way standout who was also like a son to Sanders. Hunter played for him at Jackson State and Colorado, and now will try to play both ways in the NFL after Jacksonville drafted him second overall.
“Now I only have to be a coach. I don't have the coach and a dad,” Sanders said during a segment with ESPN. "You've got to understand, when you're the coach and the dad ... make sure you watch the defense, make sure you watch the offense, but you want to watch your kids as well. I don't have to have that dilemma. Now I can just pour into everything I got into all of these young men.”
Sanders is 13-12 in his two seasons with the revived Buffaloes, who in their return to the Big 12 last season missed making the league championship game on a tiebreaker after being one of four teams to finish 7-2 in conference play.
He is under contract with the Buffaloes through the 2029 season after agreeing to a new $54 million, five-year deal this spring that made him the Big 12’s highest-paid coach. That replaced the final three years of the $29.5 million, five-year deal he got when he arrived from Jackson State, where he was 27-6 in three seasons.
Asked about the Sanders' time at Colorado, George responded, “Fun and exciting.”
AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/college-football
Colorado head coach Deion Sanders listens to a question during the Big 12 NCAA college football media day in Frisco, Texas, Wednesday, July 9, 2025. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
NEW YORK (AP) — Reviving a campaign pledge, President Donald Trump wants a one-year, 10% cap on credit card interest rates, a move that could save Americans tens of billions of dollars but drew immediate opposition from an industry that has been in his corner.
Trump was not clear in his social media post Friday night whether a cap might take effect through executive action or legislation, though one Republican senator said he had spoken with the president and would work on a bill with his “full support.” Trump said he hoped it would be in place Jan. 20, one year after he took office.
Strong opposition is certain from Wall Street in addition to the credit card companies, which donated heavily to his 2024 campaign and have supported Trump's second-term agenda. Banks are making the argument that such a plan would most hurt poor people, at a time of economic concern, by curtailing or eliminating credit lines, driving them to high-cost alternatives like payday loans or pawnshops.
“We will no longer let the American Public be ripped off by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Researchers who studied Trump’s campaign pledge after it was first announced found that Americans would save roughly $100 billion in interest a year if credit card rates were capped at 10%. The same researchers found that while the credit card industry would take a major hit, it would still be profitable, although credit card rewards and other perks might be scaled back.
About 195 million people in the United States had credit cards in 2024 and were assessed $160 billion in interest charges, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says. Americans are now carrying more credit card debt than ever, to the tune of about $1.23 trillion, according to figures from the New York Federal Reserve for the third quarter last year.
Further, Americans are paying, on average, between 19.65% and 21.5% in interest on credit cards according to the Federal Reserve and other industry tracking sources. That has come down in the past year as the central bank lowered benchmark rates, but is near the highs since federal regulators started tracking credit card rates in the mid-1990s. That’s significantly higher than a decade ago, when the average credit card interest rate was roughly 12%.
The Republican administration has proved particularly friendly until now to the credit card industry.
Capital One got little resistance from the White House when it finalized its purchase and merger with Discover Financial in early 2025, a deal that created the nation’s largest credit card company. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is largely tasked with going after credit card companies for alleged wrongdoing, has been largely nonfunctional since Trump took office.
In a joint statement, the banking industry was opposed to Trump's proposal.
“If enacted, this cap would only drive consumers toward less regulated, more costly alternatives," the American Bankers Association and allied groups said.
Bank lobbyists have long argued that lowering interest rates on their credit card products would require the banks to lend less to high-risk borrowers. When Congress enacted a cap on the fee that stores pay large banks when customers use a debit card, banks responded by removing all rewards and perks from those cards. Debit card rewards only recently have trickled back into consumers' hands. For example, United Airlines now has a debit card that gives miles with purchases.
The U.S. already places interest rate caps on some financial products and for some demographics. The Military Lending Act makes it illegal to charge active-duty service members more than 36% for any financial product. The national regulator for credit unions has capped interest rates on credit union credit cards at 18%.
Credit card companies earn three streams of revenue from their products: fees charged to merchants, fees charged to customers and the interest charged on balances. The argument from some researchers and left-leaning policymakers is that the banks earn enough revenue from merchants to keep them profitable if interest rates were capped.
"A 10% credit card interest cap would save Americans $100 billion a year without causing massive account closures, as banks claim. That’s because the few large banks that dominate the credit card market are making absolutely massive profits on customers at all income levels," said Brian Shearer, director of competition and regulatory policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, who wrote the research on the industry's impact of Trump's proposal last year.
There are some historic examples that interest rate caps do cut off the less creditworthy to financial products because banks are not able to price risk correctly. Arkansas has a strictly enforced interest rate cap of 17% and evidence points to the poor and less creditworthy being cut out of consumer credit markets in the state. Shearer's research showed that an interest rate cap of 10% would likely result in banks lending less to those with credit scores below 600.
The White House did not respond to questions about how the president seeks to cap the rate or whether he has spoken with credit card companies about the idea.
Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., who said he talked with Trump on Friday night, said the effort is meant to “lower costs for American families and to reign in greedy credit card companies who have been ripping off hardworking Americans for too long."
Legislation in both the House and the Senate would do what Trump is seeking.
Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., released a plan in February that would immediately cap interest rates at 10% for five years, hoping to use Trump’s campaign promise to build momentum for their measure.
Hours before Trump's post, Sanders said that the president, rather than working to cap interest rates, had taken steps to deregulate big banks that allowed them to charge much higher credit card fees.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., have proposed similar legislation. Ocasio-Cortez is a frequent political target of Trump, while Luna is a close ally of the president.
Seung Min Kim reported from West Palm Beach, Fla.
President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, Friday, Jan. 9, 2025, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
FILE - Visa and Mastercard credit cards are shown in Buffalo Grove, Ill., Feb. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)
