Wisdom, years and years of college football and Gazette writer Paul Klee, all suggest that it’s probably best to wait for the dust to settle before making any grandiose proclamations or predications about a college football team after just a single game. The results of one game, especially the first game and no matter how lopsided or convincing it was, cannot accurately predict the fortunes of a team.

I guess I’m not that wise.

CU’s win against CSU on Friday night, a 44-7 shellacking, means something. Something big.

In December of 2018 (yes, you can start marking down my bold and zany predictions from this point forward), when the Buffs are playing in the Pac-12 Championship Game, they’ll point to Friday night as the day the tide officially turned. That rout of CSU, the biggest beating the Rams have taken in this particular matchup in 60 years, will be the one that put the University of Colorado on the road back to becoming a football school.

Now, I’m not too wise but I’m also not crazy. I realize that Mike Bob’s Rams are in a state of transition. (They’re a better football team than the one we saw in Denver on Friday night. They’ll bounce back, but that’s not important for the sake of this discussion.) I realize the Rocky Mountain Showdown is not what it was 10 years ago. Neither team now is as good as they were then. Despite their dominance, I realize the Buffs are still going to have a bumpy road this year. After the game on Friday night I overheard a Buff heckling a Ram, and the Ram shot back, “Have fun in Ann Arbor” – I realize there’s truth in the sarcasm.

The victory, as sweet as it was for a program that’s had its fair share of heartache lately, will not immediately catapult CU to a national title, a Pac-12 title or to the top of the Pac-12 South standings. It won’t launch them to eight or nine wins, but it will be one of the six that takes them bowling – this season.

Sometimes a win is bigger than the score or that lone mark on the “good side” of the standings. This was one such win. More than a win, it was a blowout, a shot in the arm like CU has never needed before. A team that’s lost so many close games in recent years, the Buffs needed one that showed them – not anyone else – that they could dominate.

Will the Buffs become good on the shoulders of their senior quarterback, a good thing for any college football team? Will they learn to win – finally – because this year’s team returns more “starters” than any team in CU football history? Will the team speed on defense – the speed that made CSU look like it was stuck in mud – be what finally turns those “moral victories” into real victories?

Or will this be the year because Mike MacIntyre is a good college football coach who needed some real time to clean up the mess left by Dan Hawkins and Jon Embree? His pregame speech heading into the CSU game had his team hitting on all cylinders, ready to run through a brick wall. Many believe it’s do or die for MacIntyre; well, he came out swinging like a man who’s been backed into a corner.

Forty-four to seven is the kind of confidence booster that allows a team to beat up on Idaho State like they should, or go into Michigan with a belief that they’ve got a shot. You think anyone thought Appalachian State could hang with Tennessee in Knoxville? Do I think CU will pull off The Miracle 2? No. But at 2-0, I’ll be watching.

With some of the finest facilities and one of the prettiest campuses in all the land, there are no more excuses in Boulder. But it takes more than brick and mortar and emotional pregame talks.

It takes a signature win.

One day, 44-7 will be viewed as such.