The miracle turnaround of the CU Buffaloes football program is the best sports story going in Colorado right now, if not the country.

Under their flamboyant new coach, Deion Sanders, the Buffaloes went from 1-11 last year, with an average losing margin of 29 points, to beating 2022’s second-best football team, TCU, in their first game this year and longtime rival Nebraska in their second game

My question is this: Why haven’t the Broncos been able to engineer an equally miraculous turnaround? God knows they’ve been trying for seven years. They last posted a winning season in 2016, which is the same year they won the Super Bowl. It’s been downhill ever since.

Why has CU been able to do what the Broncos can’t?

I went to our ace Broncos reporter Chris Tomasson for some thoughts on that question, and he gave me four damn good reasons:

The first difference is all about the money. “Coach

Prime” has just executed the most audacious one-year overhaul of a college team in history, bringing in 87 new players on Colorado’s 115-man roster, a jaw-dropping 76% of the total. About 90 players departed either through graduation, transfer to other teams or simply left. There are 28 returning players, including 10 who were on scholarship.

In the NFL, you could never do such a wholesale dumping of players and bring in new ones, because the NFL has a salary cap. The league and players have agreed to limit each team to $224.8 million for player salaries each year so that one team won’t have a big money advantage over another. No such leveler of the playing field exists in college football.

“In the NFL, lots of players you dump would still have dead money and would count on the salary cap,” Tomasson explains. “And then you only have a certain amount of money which you can spend for your cap to bring in new players.”

A new innovation in college recruiting also aided Coach Prime in his massive makeover: the transfer portal. Before 2021, players generally were not allowed to transfer to another school without first sitting out a year of competition. The new rules allow coaches to take players from other schools and allow players to transfer without penalty. With Sanders’ encouragement, many players did just that.

University of Pittsburgh coach Pat Narduzzi, who lost some key players through the portal, complained about Sanders to 247Sports, saying, “That’s not the way (the portal) was meant to be. That’s not what the rule intended to be. It was not to overhaul your roster. … (It) looks bad on college football coaches across the country …. those kids that have moms and dads and brothers and sisters and goals in life — I don’t know how many of those 70 that left really wanted to leave or they were kicked in the butt to get out.”

To which Sanders replied, “He is not mad at me, he is mad at the situation in football now.”

Coach Prime didn’t make the new rules, he’s just exploiting them like no one has before.

And Sanders is extremely happy with how it turned out for CU.

“The roster’s really talented,” said Sanders at a recent news conference. “I love going to practice each day witnessing the battles that we have at certain positions. It’s unbelievable, man, and I love the depth that we’re displaying right now. … They’re really unified, and they know what the common goal is and that’s to win.”

Sanders’ roster overhaul also generated criticism because of the number of holdover players who were cut.

“Don’t care,” Sanders said at the news conference. “Look at me. What about me would make you think that I care about your opinion of me? Your opinion of me is not the opinion I have for myself. You ain’t make me, so you can’t break me. You didn’t build me, so you can’t kill me. God established me, so there’s nothing you can do to me.”

That attitude speaks to a second reason CU has been able to pull off what the Broncos have not yet. Coach Prime’s electric personality and colorful history as a player are attracting national attention. Sanders was a very big deal in the 1990s — a Hall of Fame cornerback for the Dallas Cowboys, as well as a professional baseball player for the Atlanta Braves.

That larger-than-life reputation, accented by bravura news conferences in his sunglasses and cowboy hat, is drawing recruits from across the country who are eager to jump on the Prime bandwagon. He is a master motivator.

“High school kids are probably more swayed by a coach than NFL players, who are more swayed by money,” notes Tomasson.

No reason why the Broncos couldn’t have hired a big personality like Sanders. But even if Sanders went to the pros and wanted to bring in tons of new players, he just wouldn’t be able to because of those salary cap restraints.

And people who know Sanders well say he has no interest in the pros, that molding young kids is his calling.

“Deion doesn’t want to coach in the NFL,” former Colorado quarterback Joel Klatt said during an appearance on “The Herd with Colin Cowherd.” “He believes that his role is more as a mentor. He loves coaching kids,” Klatt said. “He believes (coaching college football) is his ministry — to be there for kids in college, to be a father figure for kids in this moment of their life.”

His ability to mentor young kids might be the secret ingredient of the turnaround.

Two of the best players on his team he raised and brought with him from Jackson State, his two sons, Shadeur and Shilo Sanders. And Travis Hunter, the former No. 1 high school recruit who plays offense and defense for the Buffaloes, followed Coach Prime to CU from Jackson State, as well.

Coach Prime also has two players on his team from his hometown of Fort Myers, Fla.

No such package recruiting deals happen in the pros, where you bring in two guys off the same high school team, Tomasson said. And there just aren’t the same relationships in the pros as you find in college “when a college coach is tight with a high school coach and can steer a player to his school.”

Another big difference between college recruiting and the pros, of course, is the pro draft. “In college recruiting, there of course, is no draft,” observes Tomasson. “You get as many players as you can get up to your scholarship limit. In the NFL draft, if you like two players in one round and don’t pick again until the next round, then you’ve got to decide which one you want and very possibly risk losing the other one, observes Tomasson. Those tough choices don’t plague college coaches.

And the No. 1 reason CU is doing better than the Broncos right now, even though we’re getting to it last: “Deion has a much better kid at quarterback than any of [Broncos Coach Sean] Payton’s kids are at the position!” Tomasson said.

Shedeur Sanders and CU broke nine school records on his very first outing, throwing for 510 yards and four touchdowns.

So watch out, Denver. If Coach Prime and his son continue their electric, winning ways, the Buffalo might begin to supplant the Bronco as No. 1 in Colorado football fans’ hearts.