MORGANTOWN — In their own way, they are legends in the game of football, but they have taken circuitous routes to Saturday’s meeting on Mountaineer Field as coaches of the visiting Colorado football team and the homestanding West Virginia Mountaineers.

Both were defensive backs, Deion Sanders at Florida State and on his way to the NFL Hall of Fame and Rich Rodriguez at WVU, where his true fame came through his legacy as a coach. But their paths seldom crossed, yet Sanders had a huge impact upon not only Rodriguez’s career, but on one of his greatest players, Noel Devine.

They have met only once before, that being this year at Big 12 Media Day, but it was through Sanders’ relationship with Devine as a high school prodigy that the two were drawn into the same sphere of influence.

“He was kind of Noel’s mentor a little bit,” Rodriguez said the other day during his media session. “I had one conversation with Deion because they didn’t think Noel was going to pass the SAT test and be eligible and everybody in the country was after him.

“I was convinced he would pass it. Deion thought he might have to go to a prep school, one of those military schools. There was one in Connecticut.”

Rodriguez felt otherwise.

“I told Noel, ‘Do you know how cold it is in Connecticut? I think you can pass the test,’ he said.

Devine was a 5-star recruit with a high school highlight tape that nearly matched the one that would come later with Tavon Austin at WVU.

Devine had committed to the Mountaineers.

“He didn’t sign on signing day. He signed the last day you could sign in the signing period. He said, ‘OK, coach, I’m going to sign with you,'” Rodriguez explained.

“Well, the letter of intent we had sent him had expired. I guess it expires in like 30 days and I was ready to fire the whole staff. It’s like 11:30 at night and Noel said, ‘What are we going to do?'”

Rodriguez told him to find a Kinko’s or something like that in the neighborhood, which he did and we faxed him a new letter of intent, he signed it and sent it back at about 11:45 p.m.

“A couple of months later he passed the SAT, was in as a freshman and had a great career here,” Rodriguez said. “Now he’s on the staff and his son is on the team. Isn’t it great, but when I start getting grandsons, I’m quitting.”

Devine had starred at North Fort Myers High School in Florida, which was Sanders’ school before he went off to Florida and then to the NFL with a side career as major league baseball player.

Sanders became known with the nickname “Prime Time” because he represented the glitz and glitter of athletic dominance.

Devine had risen to fame ever with his first carry as a high school football player, an 82-yard touchdown run, but he faced danger of things going sour as he was raised in a tough neighborhood.

Devine’s father, Moel, had died from AIDS at age 32 just three months after Noel was born and his mother died when he was 11. He saw a best friend shot to death when he was a sophomore in high school.

Sanders didn’t see a photo of his father until he found one in a high school yearbook, noting that he was a top sprinter, which explained his own speed.

“I still don’t really know anything about my father,” Devine said in a 2022 article in the Fort Myers newspaper. “I figure my life is like a puzzle. I piece all the pieces together and eventually I will learn more.”

His grandmother, Lee Bertha Thomas, had raised him but he became rebellious and moved in with a white family. His grades had slipped, however, and it was decided that he would move to Dallas to play at Prosper High School and be under Sanders’ guardianship.

According to a story on FanBuzz.com, just before he left for Dallas there was a call to police reporting an abduction/kidnapping of Devine by Sanders, leading to a highly publicized police raid before it was shown to be a hoax report.

At the time, Devine told reporters from the Fort Myers newspaper that Sanders was like a father to him. “Deion will help me get into college,” he was quoted as saying. “He knows things that I don’t know. He’s going to get me some extra help.”

“He’s one of the best kids you’d ever want to meet,” Sanders said of Devine at the time. “I was proud to call him my son. He and my 11-year-old son were like two amigos, getting ready for their seasons. He was a great kid.”

But the narrative would change as Devine didn’t show for his first practice, having driven to the airport and flown back homesick to Florida.

At the time, he already had a daughter Desirae, who was just 5 months old, and a son, Andre, was about to be born.

“Me not having a father in my life I wanted to be there for them,” he said in the Fort Myers article. “Any other kid would be like, ‘Yeah, I want to live in this house; I want to have this room; Oh yeah, it’s Deion.

“But that’s not where my love was. My love was at home.”

So, he left and doesn’t regret not telling Deion Sanders he was leaving.

“I would change the way I did it; the way I just left,” he said. “I wish I would have approached him differently as a young adult and let him know that was my decision and that was what I wanted to do.”

Turmoil would follow Devine. An older brother, Antonio Thomas, admitted to a crime spree that included murder, but Devine used that to help inspire him to remain on his path toward leading a positive life.

The rest, as they say, is history. He wound up in Morgantown, matured under Rodriguez, became a star and now has his life on a coaching path while raising his family and remaining friendly with Sanders.