Jackson State Women’s Basketball Coach Tomekia Reed did not like how the TV news program 60 Minutes talked about Jackson, Mississippi, during its unprecedented second profile in two seasons of former Jackson State Coach Deion Sanders–and she took to X, formerly Twitter, to let everyone know.
Reed made it known in a pair of tweets that her problem was not with Sanders.
“My post is not about Prime! So don’t start that,” Reed wrote, according to HBCU Sports. “I am proud of his move, his opportunity, and I cheer for them every game. He is showing that once a HBCU coach gets a chance they can make it happen! My post is about how 60 minutes could have showed a better Jackson, MS.”
Reed also questioned if an abandoned house the program showed was even located in Jackson.
The current head coach for the Jackson State Tigers, T.C. Taylor, also weighed in on 60 Minutes’ portrayal of Jackson. Taylor, who Sanders endorsed to players as his choice to take the reins at Jackson State before he left for Colorado, agreed with Reed.
“It gave a bad look on Jackson, I thought,” Taylor said during a team press day. “Jackson has plenty of bright spots. There’s some good things going on in the city with this program and Jackson State in itself. When you see things like that and how they portrayed it, you know, they’re the media, so they control the narrative. But if you’re from here, born and raised here, you know what the city of Jackson is all about and the state of Mississippi.”
60 Minutes has not yet responded to any criticism of their profile publicly.
The CBS program briefly mentioned the water crisis Jackson experienced in 2022 while Sanders was the head coach at Jackson State University, juxtaposed against the bountiful water fountains on the Boulder campus.
During the water crisis, Sanders described the situation as one born from inequality.
“When you just sit there and think about Jackson is the darn state’s capital and we dealing with this issue, we dealing with raggedy streets and I mean unpaid situations and, even at HBCU level would or overlooked and underserved it, it’s unbelievable,” Sanders told USA Today at the time.
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