Deion Sanders has been called many things over the decades, but he’s never been accused of treating everyday folks with anything less than the utmost respect. On May 8th, Bucky Jr., the eldest son of Coach Prime, revealed a never-before-heard story of his pops’ random act of kindness to a stranger, and how it came in full circle and changed the trajectory of his life forever.

“Another lesson. You gotta be cautious and be careful how you treat people,” Bucky preached some advice before he went on a Deion Sanders kindness bit. “You gotta have a good name, because you never know who’s who. And you never know who works for whom and what. You never know who’s gonna be what, you know. So, you gotta treat a janitor like a king. You gotta treat a janitor like a queen.”

“You gotta treat the lowest like the highest and the highs like the lows. You got to treat everybody equal always, because you know that janitor could be the CEO of the company tomorrow. So you gotta treat everybody right, because you just never know who’s who. That’s a blessing. You treat people right,” he added.

Jr. calls it “planting good seeds,” where being a good person now can end up being a blessing for you a couple of years down the line. The story gets real when he talks about his move to SMU.

Bucky was leaving prep school and committed to Southern Methodist University after Coach Phillips offered him a scholarship on his very first visit. He had his whole plan mapped out. He just needed to play one more season, and then he’d head off to college in December to get a head start. However, when SMU checked his status with the NCAA Clearinghouse, they found he was “flagged” for a grade discrepancy.

Apparently, one of his classes showed a grade jump from an F to a B, which looked suspicious to the recruiters. He didn’t cheat; typical high school athlete stuff, locking in after goofing off. However, Bucky did admit that he indeed skipped a bunch of assignments and was failing his classes.

But he spent the last week of the semester grinding through a mountain of makeup work to save his GPA, which the NCAA originally didn’t buy because it was a bit on the spectrum of too good to be true. Because of that flag, the officials told him he was stuck and couldn’t enroll in January. That meant he’d have to sit out and wait all the way until the summer to start his life at SMU.

But then, destiny stepped in at an airport.

Coach Prime was traveling, and even though he usually keeps his head down because being a global superstar for 30 years makes you tired of the constant pictures and interviews, he happened to be in a rare, great mood that day. He stopped to talk to a Black man who approached him.

The man told Deion, “You probably don’t remember this, but you paid for my dinner years ago when I was struggling, and I just wanted to say I appreciate you.” When Deion asked what the guy did for a living, it turned out he was the head of the exact department at the NCAA Clearinghouse that was blocking Bucky from playing. The guy told him, “That’s the department I run.”

Deion explained the nightmare Bucky was going through with his transcripts, and the man told him right then and there that he could get it handled personally. Mind you, he didn’t break the rules. But he went the extra mile to dig through the paperwork and found a way to clear the transcript issues that everyone else had missed.

Bucky was blown away by the timing, wondering why a single, small act of kindness from a decade ago would suddenly reappear to save his career years later.

“That miracle broke me. Stuff like that… God is really amazing. How, why would these two… why would this one action from years and years and years ago affect something years and years later? An action that a person forgot they even did?” Bucky said.

Think of life like farming. Deion planted a simple seed by buying a hungry stranger a meal. Years later, when his son’s college dreams were blocked by strict authorities, that same stranger, now a top official, cleared the path. One plate of food became a life-changing miracle, proving that kindness always finds its way back, changing the entire trajectory of Bucky’s social and professional circle.

Deion Sanders’ son’s life ever since that act of kindness from the stranger

After he enrolled, Bucky ended up rooming with guys like Adam W (the massive Instagram star), Miles Crosby (related to Max Crosby), and Isaiah, who is close friends with boxing champion Ryan Garcia. Bucky notes that if he hadn’t gotten that grade issue cleared early, he never would have met that specific group of roommates or built the network he has today.

From there, once his playing days were over, Bucky started to crave his own path in the media industry with his ‘Well Off Media’ as an independent.

Instead of waiting for a bigger network like ESPN or on a similar caliber to show a three-minute highlight, he’s giving fans an “unfiltered” daily look at what’s actually happening inside the programs on his YouTube channel. In a way, it somewhat acts like a personal “Hard Knocks” for Colorado. The constant stream of content has helped Colorado’s social media following explode by 500%.

End of the day, it’s a full-circle moment that proves how a random act of generosity by his dad ended up opening the doors for Bucky’s entire future in both sports and media.