Hey Deion, there is no generational divide on privilege

If you currently play football for Colorado, you had better use a strong black marker to write your name on the tape on your helmet. The way that Deion Sanders has the program’s spring practice set up, the players currently do not have numbers. On the field is just going to be a mass of black, white, and gold jerseys.

Sanders’ explanation for this latest attention-seeking decision is that he is old school.

“Anybody in here over 45?” Sanders asked the media. “Didn’t we have to earn every durn thing we got?”

No, your generation did not. Sanders is a member of Generation X. Just like the Millennials and Gen Z after them, that generation was too called lazy and entitled. It is a time-honored tradition for middle-aged and older people to hurl those accusations at the youth.

The truth is, for most people the world is a difficult place and to become a financial success takes a great deal of hard work and some luck. But for some people, luck had a lot more to do with their financial windfalls than work.

For Coach Prime and others who believe everyone over 45 years old had it tougher than today’s young people, here are some people that age and older who were given quite a bit.

The leader of the band JD and the Straight Shots. His father, Charles, moved from Cleveland to New York and began a cable television empire. He started Home Box Office (HBO) which he sold in the 1970s to Time Life, and Cablevision which the family sold in 2015 for $2.2 billion.

Charles handed the company over to his son 1995, and in 1997 it acquired Madison Square Garden. That included the New York Knicks. In 2015, when Cablevision was sold, here’s how the New York Times described James Dolan, who also owns the New York Rangers:

“ In 1995, Charles Dolan handed the reins of the company to James, an unabashedly brash corporate executive, occasional rock singer and avid sailor.”

Possibly the only Yale graduate to ever describe himself as an average student. That might be because Ivy League schools discard their unspectacular students like the Spartans did unsatisfactory babies in 300. He did graduate from his father’s alma mater, but his grades were not good enough to get him admitted to law school back home at the University of Texas.

He struggled scholastically when his parents sent him to the preparatory high school his father graduated from in Andover, Mass. He never made the honor roll, yet he still got into a prestigious university, and eventually became POTUS.

I enjoy Charlie Sheen’s work. Two and a Half Men reruns are great weekend afternoon viewing.

That scene in Major League when he busts out of the bullpen and Cleveland Municipal Stadium and the crowd shouts along to “Wild Thing,” that goosebump-producing energy can make you momentarily forget the racism littered throughout the movie, including in the stands at that very moment.

That being said, Sheen — born Carlos Irwin Estévez — certainly got a boost from his spectacular acie father Martin Sheen.

(The elder Sheen, born Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estévez, later admitted he regretted the name change.)

Charlie was no dummy.

After becoming an actor, he went from Carlos to Charles — to avoid confusion with an uncle of the same name — and adopted his father’s stage surname.

Let’s just not talk about everything else that’s happened since...

The man who continually keeps the people of Colorado from enjoying the Nikola Jokić experience. He did finally bring NFL football back to Los Angeles — and was appropriately splashy with the extravagant SoFi Stadium. However, he is able to pull all of that off while also settling a $790 billion lawsuit with the city of St. Louis because Kroenke has taken full advantage of the “what’s mine is yours,” aspect of marriage.

His wife is Ann Walton. Not of the basketball-playing Waltons — or the fictious TV family — but of the ones that founded Walmart. The massive complex where a person can buy pots, deodorant, televisions, ground beef, mops, and more all for some of the lowest prices in towns from sea to shining sea.

I ain’t saying he’s a …

Talk about generational wealth. This French family could buy Europe if they so choose.

Bernard Arnault is the wealthiest man in the world. He is the founder of the largest luxury brand in the world, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. How did he create a company that houses a plethora of brands that people aspire to blow money on the moment that they stop living paycheck to paycheck, and sometimes before?

He took over his father’s company. Jean Léon owned a construction company. Bernard turned it into a real estate company and then used $15 million from that to purchase Christian Dior. Two of his five children are 47 and 45 years old. Delphine was recently named CEO of Dior. Antoine is the head of LVHM’s communications, image, and environment.

One of the men in control of the firehose of money that was sprayed through politics in the previous decade — most of it at the Republican Party.

How did Koch and his late brother David amass so much wealth that they were able to hold a massive swath of influence on the American government? They took over their father’s company.

Their father made his money in refineries. They worked for him and then took over the company after his death, renamed it Koch Industries, and bought out their other two brothers.

If your criminal friend was willing to invest in you in the 1990s, not much was going to happen as long as that friend didn’t sell crack.

Jonah Hill’s Donnie Azoff from The Wolf of Wall Street is based on the real-life Daniel Porush (though Porush claims the portrayal isn’t accurate.) He and Madden were childhood friends in Long Island.

Yes, Madden’s beginnings were humble.

The company started with him selling shoes out of the trunk of his car like M.C. Hammer did albums at the beginning of his career.

Most of the people on this list got their leg up from family, Madden received his boost from his buddy who was deeply involved in Straton Oakmont’s financial crimes. The company made Madden a huge success in the early 1990s and he eventually pleaded guilty to fraud in 2001 and served 31 months in prison. Per Newsweek, he served his time at a Federal Prison in South Florida, “so he could be close to his mother.”

While no longer the CEO of Steven Madden Ltd., he is still the creative and design chief.

I’m sure his business proposal for his online bookstore was thorough. Starting that business from scratch with dial-up internet just growing in popularity at the time was a risk that he and his ex-wife helped mitigate with their hard work.

That all being said, how many of you out there can ask your parents to invest nearly $250,000 into your business idea?

(Let’s see if uses his wealth to buy the Washington Commanders.)

The optimity of unearned status and hubris. This man started life on third base, got picked off, and still became the American name so associated with wealth that he was allowed to be the country’s boss.

Trump’s force of personality and America’s lack of investment in its public school system are certainly significant reasons for his influence. But those forces of nature never collide without the massive amount of money that his father loaned him throughout the 20th century.

Living arguably the most luxurious life in the history of humanity and having to do literally nothing but exist because of lineage. I do believe these people have been handed everything.