A letter to you, the sad CU fan

Hey, you, the CU fan getting bent out of shape about the Pac-12 Championship Game.

Stop it.

Yes, the Buffs lost. No, it wasn’t pretty.

But take a deep breath and allow me to remind you of a few things.

First off, the Colorado Buffaloes are 10-3.

Travel back in time to September 1^st and tell your past self that the Buffs would be 10-3 and that you would be sad. Now imagine your past self laughing in your face and calling you a loser, because that’s what they would do.

Entering this season, could you have possibly dreamt up a situation where the Buffs would lose only three games all season? Can you imagine how you would have reacted upon hearing that they had achieved the first ten-win season since 2001? It wouldn’t have been the way you feel right now, that’s for sure.

Secondly, the only reason the Buffs are 10-3 is because they were so good this season that they won the Pac-12 South and earned the right to compete in the conference championship game. They still have another game left. The fourth 11-win season in school history is still a very real possibility. Reaching the 10^th win in a bowl game would have been a monumental feat for this program, but they did it in regulation with an 8-1 conference record.

Entering 2016, the Buffs had not beaten a top 25 team since 2009, played in a bowl game since 2007, had a winning season since 2005, or been ranked in the top 10 since 2002. Those dubious marks have all been wiped clean. You did not think that was going to happen. If someone had told you before the season that the Buffs would go 6-6 and play in the Las Vegas Bowl, you would have been ecstatic. Admit it. This is more than you could have ever hoped for.

I’m not saying that you aren’t allowed to be disappointed by a loss, because losing will always hurt and, yeah, this was a pretty bad loss, but don’t let it take away from what you saw over the last three months. You just witnessed the greatest single-season turnaround in the history of the Pac-12 conference. The Buffs went from 1-8 to the 8-1, the Pac-12 Championship game and a No. 8 ranking in one season.

It would be easy to lament that real life doesn’t work out like the movies after tonight, but look at this and tell me that it doesn’t look like the final scene of the best sports movie you ever saw. This year was a fairy-tale, and last Saturday was its perfect climax.

The Colorado Buffaloes, picked last in the Pac-12 south, actually won the damn thing. They did it with a group of seniors that struggled through three seasons in which the team went 10-27, only to go 10-2 in their final regular season. That’s the stuff of dreams. Hopefully, that will sink in for you as December goes along; just as it starts to sink in that the Buffs will be playing a game after Christmas for the first time in nine years.

I hope the players on the team, who will undoubtedly be disappointed about not reaching their goal of a Pac-12 championship, will, in time, come to realize just how remarkable their accomplishments this season were. The best part of all is that their story isn’t over yet. They still have a chance to go out with a bang by winning a bowl game to put this season alongside 1989, 1990 and 1994 as the only 11-win seasons in CU history. Pretty hard to be bent out of shape about that, isn’t it?