CSU-Pueblo Coach Falsely Accuses Deion Sanders, Colorado Of Tampering After His Player Got Catfished

Published|Updated

If you're going to publicly call out (arguably) the most famous coach in college football, you'd better be right. And Philip Vigil is learning that the hard way after wrongly accusing Deion Sanders and the Colorado Buffaloes of tampering.

Vigil — head coach of the CSU-Pueblo ThunderWolves (a Division II program) — tagged Coach Prime in a Twitter/X post on Wednesday, accusing the Colorado program of some funny business. The post featured screenshots of text messages that an unnamed committed recruit received from someone who claimed to be Devin Rispress. Rispress currently serves as the Assistant Director Of Player Personnel And High School Relations at Colorado.

Hey @NCAA and @Big12Conference, is this considered tampering, or is @Coach2Bless and @CUBuffsFootball able to recruit our current players like this? #ToTheTop"

A since-deleted tweet from CSU-Pueblo coach Philip Vigil.

(X: @PhilipVigil)

But there's just one very big problem: Rispress didn't send those texts. The recruit was catfished.

The real Devin Rispress responded quickly to Vigil's post: "nice try yall been catfished wrong guy brother. You could’ve hit me up before tweeting this and embarrassing your program."

Big yikes.

Of course, D-II coaches are facing unprecedented pressure and turnover thanks to the new era of NIL and the transfer portal. But you can't just go tossing around unfounded allegations at other coaches — especially since those texts looked incredibly inauthentic to start with.

Virgil deleted the accusatory post and followed up with a non-apology. 

"College athletics are changing rapidly, and it is my job to support my players and our program," he wrote. "I have removed my social media post to allow the NCAA to address this situation and similar behaviors in college athletics."

Philip Vigil is entering his second season as the head coach at CSU-Pueblo. Last season, the ThunderWolves went 8-3 and finished third in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference.