Time will tell if this is a type of coronation at the dawn of a new era of Colorado football glory. Or a culmination, the pinnacle of a wildly successful massive rebuild that nonetheless is destined to recede back into mediocrity.

Either way, Deion Sanders has delivered on the promises he made when introduced as Colorado’s new football coach two years ago.

And Saturday’s appearance in the Alamo Bowl will be the crowning achievement of that vision.

It’s been a remarkable climb for the Buffaloes, who return to bowl play for the first time in a full season since 2016 and just the second time in the past 16 full seasons.When Sanders was hired two years ago, the Buffs weren’t just bad. I’ve written it before, but the 1-11 team of 2022 somehow managed to put a product on the field that was even worse than its unsightly record. If this year’s offense was explosive, the 2022 attack was corrosive. If this year’s defense was dogged and opportunistic, the 2022 bunch was sluggish and hospitable to opposing offenses.

From such doldrums it’s a challenge to sink even lower, and infusing optimism becomes challenge No. 1. Landing Hall of Famer Deion Sanders, and bringing his influence and sizeable personal fan base into Buff Nation, was like striking gold for CU athletic director Rick George.

Sanders and his raze-and-rebuild approach didn’t pay immediate dividends, as the Buffs limped to a 4-8 finish last year. This season, however, has been a validation for everything Sanders promised when he first arrived in Boulder.

The Buffaloes became the talk of college football even with that 4-8 first Prime season. This year, the wins validated the hype.

Sanders vowed to increase the Buffs’ talent. CU has a Heisman Trophy winner in Travis Hunter, another All-American in quarterback Shedeur Sanders, and several other standouts likely to hear their names in the NFL Draft beyond the duo all but certain to be picked early.

Sanders vowed the Buffs would compete for championships. Two years after losing by margins of 39, 38, 47 and 42 points in the final month of 2022, CU was in control of its own destiny for the Big 12 title game through the next-to-last regular-season game this fall. And the Buffs still had a chance to squeak into the championship game and play for a College Football Playoff berth until the final minutes of the final week of the season.

The turnaround has been as expansive as dramatic. Will it be sustainable? “The Rise” was real in 2016.

But under former coach Mike MacIntyre the Buffs pretty much returned to mediocrity even before they took the field in that year’s Alamo Bowl, when MacIntyre allowed former assistant Joe Tumpkin to lead the bowl game defense despite the sordid abuse charges swirling around Tumpkin. Avoiding a similarly swift return to mediocrity depends almost entirely on coach Sanders.

I confess I’m surprised a 9-3 regular season didn’t make Sanders a hot ticket in the post-regular season college football coaching carousel. And I’m still not convinced an NFL franchise won’t kick the tires on Sanders in the near future. Sanders has professed his desire to stay in Boulder, and while that’s a line coaches say routinely to keep their teams focused even while contract negotiations are going on with new suitors in the background, the longer Sanders repeats himself without the rumor mill kicking in, the more it rings true.

Certainly landing a quarterback of the future in five-star standout Julian Lewis, plus the recent transfer commitments, speaks to a coach preparing for the long haul. Lewis obviously believes Sanders isn’t going anywhere. Coach Sanders might still be driven to prove he can win without Shedeur and Hunter, and unlike the 2016 squad, Sanders’ magnetic personality on the recruiting trail should keep a string of NFL-caliber prospects circulating through Boulder.

Still, those are concerns for another day. The task at hand is BYU, and as long as Shedeur and Hunter follow through on their promises to play, I’ll take the Buffs against a Cougars club that struggled at times in November.

CU hasn’t won a bowl game in exactly 20 years, since topping Texas-El Paso in the Houston Bowl following the 2004 season. Expect Coach Prime to end that drought, too.