FORT COLLINS – The CSU Rams messed around with Travis Hunter and found out.

While the jury’s still out on whether Deion Sanders can coach, the verdict on the best player in college football has been rendered.

It’s Hunter. He is a one-man band of ESPN top-10 plays.

As Hunter caught two touchdown passes as well as an are-you-kidding-me interception in the Buffaloes’ 28-9 victory Saturday against their instate rivals, the whole country saw what we in the Rocky Mountains understood a long time ago.

Hunter might well be the best wide receiver and cornerback in the college ranks.

If he can stay healthy while playing more than 100 snaps per game, the only thing that could deny Hunter the Heisman Trophy would be Colorado’s inability to win enough games to earn voters’ complete and undivided attention.

“There is no ceiling,” CU quarterback Shedeur Sanders said, after watching Hunter compile one of the most versatile stat lines in the history of two-platoon football: 13 catches for 100 yards, four tackles, one pass broken up and a pick against loudmouth CSU quarterback Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi.

Don’t mess with Hunter.

But the Rams were not smart enough to follow that simple piece of advice.

Late in the first half, with Colorado already ahead by 11 points on the scoreboard, Fowler-Nicolosi scrambled from trouble in the pocket for a short gain.

He bounced out of bounds near the CU bench, encountering Hunter on the sideline after the whistle. Fowler-Nicolosi got in the face of the CU cornerback, jawing at Hunter, before pushing his left palm toward the ground, as if to tell the best player in college football he was too small.

Clown move, bro.

“How stupid is that?” Coach Prime said, after I reminded him about Fowler-Nicolosi’s disrespectful shenanigans with CU’s two-way superstar. “This is Travis Hunter. This is Travis Hunter. This is Travis Hunter! Who does that?”

I get why Fowler-Nicolosi might be jealous of Hunter’s endorsement deals and his Instagram followers.

But why poke the bear that is Hunter and provoke him to embarrass you and your CSU teammates?

“That ain’t no bear,” Neon Deion said. “He’s a dog.”

With a rock-solid defense, the Buffs improved their record to 2-1 and got their quest for a bowl bid back on track after a disheartening loss to Nebraska.

The Rams? They played like the seventh-place team in the Six-PAC Conference.

Colorado State seemed afraid to throw the first punch. Walking into Canvas Stadium two hours before kickoff, I saw a better fight between two drunk dudes in the street.

The CSU offensive game plan appeared to be taken straight out of mothballs from the 1960s. Worse than bad and boring, it was timid. Being conservative is one thing, but antiquated and unimaginative will give the crowd of 40,099 little reason to come back.

Rather than utilizing Fowler-Nicolosi to challenge the CU defense, Rams coach Jay Norvell kept his quarterback under wraps until the Buffs took a 14-3 lead late in the second quarter. Almost too head-scratching to believe: During Colorado State’s opening five possessions, he threw only six passes.

An underdog should never go out with a whimper.

If Fowler-Nicolosi is going to be a passenger in this stuck-in-neutral CSU bandwagon, he should’ve taken that $600,000 in NIL money and gotten the heck out of Fort Fun when the getting was good.

Instead, Fowler-Nicolosi went viral in the days prior to the Rocky Mountain Showdown with bulletin board material from an August interview with a local television station in which he warned the Buffs: “We’ll see how far Instagram followers gets them.”

After scoring only 10 points in a lopsided loss to Nebraska, give Sanders credit for making adjustments that made a difference against CSU.

Coach Prime reshuffled his O-line, most notably by moving reserve left tackle Phillip Houston into the starting lineup on the right side. The task of carrying the rock was given to freshman Micah Welch and sophomore Isaiah Augustave, who combined to run a modest 15 times, but averaged a robust 6.4 yards between them.

It proved a measure of redemption for CU blockers who were called soft (and worse). “It meant everything for us to go out and prove the world wrong,” Buffs guard Tyler Brown said.

After shutting up the Rams, Shedeur Sanders sought out Fowler-Nicolosi on the field to tell him: “You can’t (mess) with me.”

Then the CU quarterback raised the Centennial Cup awarded to the winner of this bitter rivalry.

“It’s better,” Sanders said, “than Instagram followers.”