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Last year, we won one game out of 12. We lost to Minnesota by 42 points. Most schools could start the faculty against Minnesota and not lose by 42 points.

But now? Now? It’s a miracle, a dream, Eddie the Eagle winning the gold.

We went from the nuclear winter of college football to the epicenter of it, all thanks to an irresistible football god named Deion “Coach Prime” Sanders, the Hall of Famer who dumped almost our entire sad 2022 roster, lured dozens of vastly better players, and told the world how amazing the Buffs were going to be.

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“We comin’,” he kept saying.

I nearly sprained my eyes, rolling them.

Look, I was born in Boulder, been a fan since I was 5, graduated from Colorado University (’81). I’ve seen coaches “comin’” and then “goin’” for nearly seven decades. We’ve had 11 coaches in just the past 18 years. The problem is we are a beautiful town, but we’re sooooo White — 89.5 percent White and 1.3 percent Black, in fact. We are whiter than Tucker Carlson eating a Wonder Bread mayonnaise sandwich at Cracker Barrel. Black players come here with Rocky Mountain high hopes, look around, see nobody that looks like them, and get out.

So here came Neon Deion, spouting promises, telling us he was going to bring players from HBCUs to Boulder, of all places. Here came a son of the South, born in Florida, coached in Mississippi and played in Atlanta, telling us he was going to make hippie-happy Boulder his new home. He even talked the local breakfast joint into adding grits to the menu. They call it PRIME Grits.

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This was all going to work … how?

So, when it came to facing No. 17 TCU on the road in the first game of the season last Saturday, I gave the Buffs the chances of a skydiving blowfish. And it wasn’t just me. Before the game, analyst Tom Luginbill said Colorado might have “the worst roster in college football.” Oddsmakers made CU 21-point dogs.

Well … Prime shut our mouths and opened our eyes. In one of the most astonishing coaching debuts in college football history, his Buffs — with 510 passing yards from his own son, QB Shedeur Sanders — stunned TCU 45-42. Not only did Young Prime vault himself into the Heisman Trophy race, but so did human Swiss Army Knife Travis Hunter, a two-way........

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