BOULDER — The late-summer sun shined on a blowout win at Folsom Field as Deion Sanders lit into his Colorado sideline.

It didn’t matter that the Buffaloes were leading by 31 points late in the fourth quarter of the home opener against Weber State. When Coach Prime perceived a lack of concentration caused his team to be short a man on the field ahead of a field-goal attempt, he was irate, yelling at whoever was in earshot to let them know it was not acceptable.

“It was a little bit of everything,” Sanders said after the 52-21 win. “I think everybody chipped in on some of the nonsense. That bothers me. The multiple penalties on special teams bothers me. We gotta do a better job.”

There was another play shortly after the field-goal personnel snafu that made Sanders even more irate.

Walk-on running back Titus Bautista, in his third in the program, broke free for a long touchdown run late, but it was called back for a holding penalty.

“It’s hard to even look the kid in the eye because he’s been busting his butt at practice,” Coach Prime said. “He finally got his opportunity, he hit like he was supposed to and he outlasted the guy scoring a touchdown and he gets it called back because someone wants to hold on the particular play because they weren’t getting their feet where they need to be to do the job.”

Whatever goodwill CU had built up with a dominant first half, one that ended 42-14 on the scoreboard, was gone by the end of the game.

All Sanders could say about his quarterback Julian Lewis, who finished with a career-best 366 yards and four touchdowns while completing 74% of his passes, was, “I’m happy.”

But even that was undercut by Sanders pointing to the two catches for 14 yards that prized San Jose State transfer Danny Scudero had in the game. 

“He was open,” Sanders said. “We gotta get it to him. That’s one of our guys that we feature.”

The Buffs are 2-0 for just the second time in the Coach Prime era and for the first time since 2023.

“Our goal for the season isn’t to win two games,” veteran linebacker Tyler Martinez said. “We want to win the whole thing and you can’t win the whole thing with some of the stuff that we had going on today. We just gotta get that fixed. It’s hard to win in college football, so we’re excited about the win, but we gotta flip the page and get some of these things corrected.”

The schedule is about to get much more difficult, and in a hurry. 

CU doesn’t return to Folsom Field until it hosts Big 12-favorite Texas Tech on the first Saturday in October.

“We’re trying to win a championship,” Sanders said. “We’re not just trying to win a game. I’m a bona-fide winner. I’ve always won and I want to win. That (performance) don’t sit well with me.”

A defense allowing eight more points at home to an FCS team than it did a week prior on the road against a Power 4 team is a reason for that. So are continued special teams miscues. So are the 13 penalties for 112 yards. 

The Buffs will likely hear about that all week in the lead-up to next week’s game.

“It’s not good at all. That kinda happens when you get up and you get lackadaisical. We’re gonna take care of that. The message has been sent,” Coach Prime said. “We can’t win consistently with those kinds of penalties and they’re mindless penalties. We’re much better than that.”

What the Buffs coach is looking for isn’t complicated. 

“I expect my team to play dominant football,” Sanders said.