KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The squeezably soft CU Buffaloes found out the painfully hard way. Fat, drunk and stupid with success is no way to go through life. Not if you want to win big, instead of getting the stuffing beat out of you on the football field.

“We started smelling ourselves … We got intoxicated with success,” coach Deion Sanders said Saturday, after Kansas exposed the Buffs as championship pretenders in a 37-21 thumping that left Colorado with ugly bruises and a whole lot of explaining to do.

Running roughshod for 331 yards through the heart of a defense that never made a stand, the Jayhawks were too busy kicking CU’s keister to bother punting. Not once. All day long. Eight offensive possessions by KU. Four touchdowns. Three field goals. One kneel-down to celebrate the victory.

“We got our butts kicked,” Coach Prime said. And he admitted: “It’s hard for me to flush that.”

How could CU stink up the joint with so much at stake?

Can you handle the truth?

For all the glitz and glamor of the Heisman Trophy campaign for Travis Hunter, the Buffs are still not very good at the football basics of blocking or tackling.

Kansas executed a ruthlessly simple game plan: Buffalo. It’s what’s for dinner.

And CU proved to be softer than grandma’s lime green Jello salad that scares everybody at the Thanksgiving table.

The Jayhawks pushed Colorado to the breaking point, and late in the third period, Buffaloes quarterback Shedeur Sanders lost his cool, shoving the referee in the back after the play was blown dead and game officials tried to restore order as KU defenders tried to rub a commanding nine-point lead in the his face.

“Physically, you didn’t faze me. I got sacked 50 times last year,” said Sanders, who completed 23 of 29 passes for 266 yards in a pathetically one-dimensional CU offense.

When the quarterback proves to be the most physical player wearing a CU uniform, the weak underbelly this team has hid all season long was finally laid bare for 56,470 spectators in old Arrowhead Stadium and a national television audience to see.

Here’s the dirty secret the Buffaloes were trying to hide.

They are one of the least physical football teams in the entire country.

Coming into this make-or-break moment, Colorado ranked 133rd of 134 FBS level teams with an average of 77 yards rushing per game, ahead of only Kent State, which has yet to win in 11 games this season.

After CU ran for a meager 52 yards against Kansas, there’s no other way to say it. The Buffaloes are lightweights. They look real fine in the bright lights of the SPN highlights. But the ugly truth is revealed in the down-and-dirty trenches, where championships are won.

When I asked Coach Prime if he saw the warning signs of a team intoxicated with its own success, he bristled.

“I didn’t say me,” replied Sanders, making certain I understood it wasn’t him, but his players that failed to handle the hullabaloo.

This isn’t about you, Coach.

It’s about players that haven’t learned what it takes for a team to win a championship. Big, overconfident heads make for big, inviting targets.

We all know Prime has transformed Colorado from a black hole on the college football map into must-see television within the span of less than two years.

But if we give Sanders the glory, he also must take responsibility for building a team rich in the diamonds and gold of brilliant skill at receiver and cornerback, undermined by the weak brick and mortar pieces in the offensive and defensive lines.

If pride goeth before the fall, did Prime see this splat coming by the Buffs?

“Yes sir, we tried to handle it in the meetings,” he replied.

“Some folks you can’t put behind microphones, you can’t give them podcasts, because they get intoxicated with the success. You try your best to eliminate that. But they can’t stop reading the stuff … Attention is intoxicating. We’ve got to fix that.”

Well, maybe here’s one way to start fixing the problem. Athletes should not be coddled.

Not a single CU defender was made available to the media after the loss.

After getting run over by the Jayhawks, running and hiding from responsibility is not only unbecoming, but no way to grow.

In an era where college football players are paid professionals, it should not be too much to expect that they can stand up and speak for themselves.

After falling to 6-2 in league play, Colorado has not been mathematically eliminated from championship and playoff contention. But the Buffaloes have been reduced to begging for help and praying for mercy.

“We controlled our own destiny,” Coach Prime said. “We fumbled it.”