Just as the Colorado balloon was filling up with current success and future possibilities, Kansas popped it on Saturday at Arrowhead Stadium.
After the 37-21 loss by the No. 16 Buffaloes to the unranked Jayhawks, coach Deion Sanders blamed the stumble on his team’s reaction to the praise it has received.
“We started smelling ourselves a little bit,” Sanders said after the game, via Max Olson of ESPN.com. “That’s what I just told our team. We got intoxicated with the success. We got intoxicated with the multitude of articles and the assumption that we’re this and the assumption that we’re that. And we did not play CU football. Therefore, we got our butts kicked. It is what it is.”
Along the way, Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders seemed to shove an official. He wasn’t penalized for the gesture.
Kansas dominated the game, holding the ball for more than 40 minutes, outrushing Colorado 331 to 42, and not punting once.
Colorado had won four games in a row. The loss complicates their path to the Big 12 championship. For Kansas, which started 1-5, it was the third straight win against teams in the top 25.
The outcome from Sanders’s team caps a week in which two-way star Travis Hunter said he’ll be leaving for the draft and Deion’s prospects at the next level had been generating plenty of attention.