BOULDER – If the CU Buffs want the whole enchilada, they can’t afford to stumble and fumble the tortilla.

With their hearts set on a late-season run at the Big 12 Conference championship game, the Buffs play Saturday deep in the heart of Texas, and Deion Sanders will have his head on a swivel, aware that trouble awaits in Lubbock.

“We’re going to get booed,” Coach Prime said Tuesday. “I hear they throw … is it tacos?”

Not a bad guess, Prime. But wrong. Try again.

In all of college football, there are few wackier traditions than when Texas Tech fans welcome visitors to their home stadium by throwing tortillas at the opposing team.

“Tortillas,” Sanders said. “Is that legal to throw tortillas?”

While it might be a waste of food, it’s apparently not illegal to conceal and carry a tortilla into Jones AT&T Stadium.

As a matter of fact, one of the wildest shootouts in the history of college football, a 66-59 Oklahoma victory at Texas Tech back in 2016, is known for something beyond the combined 1,279 passing yards and dozen touchdowns by Baker Mayfield and Patrick Mahomes.

“I probably did a really dumb thing,” Mayfield recalled last week during an appearance on Rich Eisen’s television show. “They throw tortillas on the field and do all that. They threw one at me and I took a bite out of it.”

Makes me think that when CU phenom Travis Hunter takes a reception or interception to the end zone against the Red Raiders in their House of Tortilla, rather than striking the Heisman pose, he should do a little Salsa dance.

The Buffs, ranked 20th in the first rankings released by the committee to select the college football playoffs, have forced their way into the conversation as contenders for the conference championship and a berth into the 12-team national tournament bracket.

“Rankings are like a tease, man. Rankings can fool you. It can get you in a situation where you start thinking you are that. We don’t buy into that,” said Sanders, who makes his own noise and dismisses the outside hype.

“We know who we are … If you don’t know who you are by now, something’s wrong. If you don’t know who the players are by now, something’s wrong. We can’t be fooled by that foolishness.”

In order to turn their most ambitious goals into reality, the Buffs must hope that either Brigham Young or Iowa State takes a serious pratfall, then step over late-season chaos in the Big 12 without apology.

Along the way, Colorado cannot afford even one loss in any of the final four games on its regular-season schedule, and this test at Texas Tech is not only the first must win, but figures to be the toughest assignment.

“Daunting challenge, on the road,” Sanders said. “We love it.”

From his first day on the CU campus after getting the coaching gig in December 2022, Sanders has led the program’s revival with there-ain’t-no-stopping-us braggadocio, preaching to the Buffs that nothing is beyond their reach.

Quarterback Shedeur Sanders and an ever-changing supporting cast has never looked back with regret or allowed room for doubt, overcoming a six-game losing streak to end last season and re-establishing a sense of purpose after what could’ve been a devastating 28-10 loss to Nebraska in September.

Whether the huge television audience that tunes into Colorado games week after week thinks the Buffs are the hippest college program in America or the new team that fans love to hate, these Buffs make you look.

Two years ago, it was fair to wonder if CU football would ever again matter.

Coach Prime not only changed the narrative, he rewrote the entire book.

The next challenge for the Buffs: How will they handle success?

We’re coming has become we’re climbing. The rarefied air at the mountaintop can make heads spin and the weak quit.

So I asked Sanders if his players were ready for their close-up under the bright lights of scrutiny as a championship contender.

“That’s the toughest thing to deal with: success. It’s the toughest thing. When a player comes here, you’ve got to understand he wants attention, he wants focus, he wants the tutelage from the staff that we’ve compiled. But can he handle it? There are a tremendous amount of players and coaches that have come here and you think they can handle that light, and you find out that they can’t. Because that light shows you everything. It shows your blemishes, shows your ups, shows your downs,” Prime replied.

“I’m talking to you from a winner’s perspective. I’m talking to you from a person who had setbacks, trials and tribulations. But I don’t rest in failure. I don’t rest in complacency. I don’t rest in areas like that, because I know who I am, what I am, how I am, where I’m going and how to get there.”