How to explain the Buffs success to your ignorant family at Thanksgiving

2016 has been wild in many different ways: The Chicago Cubs won the World Series, The Golden State Warriors blew a 3-1 lead and J. Cole’s “2014 Forest Hills Drive” was the first record in over 25 years to go double-platinum with no features.

Above all that you, yes you, the Colorado Buffaloes football fan, has seen your team rise from the ashes to become one of the best in the country. While many households will see cliche arguments over politics at Thanksgiving, all you will want to talk about is your Buffs.

But who at your Thanksgiving Dinner will understand what you’ve just seen with your own two eyes? How can you explain to your ignorant family that the Buffs are great and you can’t get over it?

I’m here to help.

To start, you need to let them know how proud of the Buffs you are. Also, be sure to check if there are other Buffs fans at the event, you don’t need to fight with your fellow diehard.

1. Wear your Buffs gear to dinner – You might as well represent the thing you’re going to be talking about with your twice removed fourth cousin.
2. Make overt random references to make sure they don’t get it – Work in the word “rise” and maybe say “welcome to the fight” when the meal is served. You can also drop a “don’t blink” when the third course comes around.
3. Don’t get off topic – Family watching the Cowboys game? Say that Dak Prescott reminds you of Sefo Liufau. Have a one-handed catch in your families’ touch football affair? Let them know it was the best of its kind since Bryce Bobo’s single hander in Oregon. Your uncle eat way too much at Thanksgiving? Say you haven’t seen a performance which included that much eating since Phil Lindsay suited up last Saturday.

Now that your family thinks you’re a nut job and you’ve created several conflicts across the gathering, it’s time for them to be let in on the story. You have to take them back, but remember you won’t have Mike MacIntyre’s prescribed 20 hours to tell the story.

To start, you’re going to have to relive the last ten years a little bit because that’s probably the last time any of them had paid attention to the happenings of Boulder. To describe the last ten years of Colorado Football. Use stuff like “train wreck,” “heartbreak,” “questions of if it’s worth being a fan.”

In short, pain, it was painful. If you’re a diehard, watching Fresno State or Stanford or Oregon or (insert team name) beat down the Buffs to the level that they did was equal to some of the worst pain in your life.

And that, that is why you look at the No. 9 ranking with the glee that you do. Yet that’s far from the story.

To start the year, it was thought that there could be another new coach leading the Buffaloes by the end of the year. It was said that the team would be lucky to go to a bowl. It was asked why anything would be different. And despite your greatest hopes, you probably subscribed or at least acknowledged the fact that the dark years of Colorado Football would still be active when 2017 begun.

In your wildest dreams, you never imagined the slightest ambitions of College Football Playoff in 2016. And for that, you need to share with your loved ones what that experience has been like.

Here are some tips to convey Colorado Football’s magical season to your family:

1. Talk about faith – Whatever you believe in religiously is up to you, but the faith that Colorado has had in each other is inspiring. Not only a life lesson to those who are in the locker room but anyone who had a stake in this program. No, don’t argue religion at dinner, that will end poorly, but if you make MacIntyre out to be your demigod, I don’t think you can be faulted.
2. Discuss determination – Whether it’s Liufau or Lindsay, or anyone else on the Buffs, it’s rudimentary to show people why this team is easy to love. You’re probably one of a few that has always had Liufau’s back, and you probably doubted that at times, but your undying support is prefect microcosm for the team. There were reasons to give up on the team and that quarterback, and you didn’t.
3. Speak in regard to love – You don’t just love the CU Buffs because they’re great again, you loved them when they were bad. No matter the reason, if it’s Ralphie, the Flatirons, your found memories on Norlin Quad or everything about the University. You love the Colorado. You love the Buffaloes. You love Boulder. Through bad times you stuck through and now the good times are here. We’ve all loved something in life that was in a bad place, now that thing that you love is in a great place and you’re pleased, that is something everyone has dealt with.

Maybe those three key principles—likely key to your family—will help explain why the Buffs feel like your family and why you can’t stop from talking about them or being proud all Thanksgiving long.