After a recent practice, Colorado head football coach Deion Sanders went on a walk, as he often does, with a couple of assistants.

They walked together most of the way, but Sanders admitted, “I’m gonna turn it on the last few steps. You know I had to win.”

There is no shortage of attention on Coach Prime and his CU program, and there are a wide variety of opinions about him and the Buffs. But at his core, Coach Prime is a competitor, and that drive to compete and win is what fuels him and his team as they prepare to kick off the 2024 season on Thursday night against North Dakota State.

“I’m a competitive natured person, not only with sports but with life,” said Sanders, a Hall of Fame player who is the only man to play in a Super Bowl and a World Series. “I want to win in life.”

Through all the attention CU has received this offseason, the focus in the building has been on one main objective, and that’s to win.

Asked this summer what he expects this year, safety Shilo Sanders said, bluntly, “Wins.”

Last week, punter Mark Vassett was asked what he is most looking forward to this season and responded, “Winning a lot of games, definitely. I know this group will. We all have a common goal and that’s to win and win now. And I believe we’re going to.”

In Coach Prime’s first season at CU, in 2023, the Buffs went 4-8 and stumbled to the finish, losing their last six games. Five of the eight losses came by seven points or less, so the Buffs were close but not close enough — and Coach Prime spent the offseason working to fix it.

There are 65 new players, including 50 scholarship newcomers. Seven of the 10 primary assistants are new in their positions, including four who weren’t with the program at all last year.

Newcomers, as well as those who returned from last year, have talked all month about intense competition on a daily basis. And several players from the 2023 squad have said it’s a much different energy around the team this season.

“I feel like we just all more like-minded now,” Shilo Sanders said. “There’s a lot of guys that know they got the ability to go to the (NFL) and they have something to prove, like myself, (quarterback Shedeur Sanders), a lot of guys on the team. That’s just our mindset, and we got more guys with that mindset now. So we’re just ready to display that, basically.”

How many wins can the Buffs get? Coach Prime won’t put a number on that. But, he knows the objective every single day in practice and every time the Buffs get on the field for game day.

“Even in my career, when I played, I never talked about what I was going to do, contrary to what you all believe,” he said. “I want to win, certainly. You gotta be an idiot if you don’t want to win in life, or you don’t want to win as a coach. That’s just stupidity if you don’t want to do that.

“But I expect to do some amazing things (this season). We got several players that I expect the world from, and I expect to count on them in so many different avenues and facets of life.”

That starts Thursday against one of the best teams in the FCS. The Buffs are favored but certainly not overlooking the Bison.

“I’ve got the utmost respect for (NDSU head coach Tim Polasek) and his program and what he’s accomplished through his coaching career,” Coach Prime said. “This team will be well prepared, and they will be disciplined, and they will come to play.”

So will Coach Prime and his players, because as competitors, this is what they’ve been waiting for — and the new-look Buffs are ready to get rolling.

“Everybody wants to beat us, and we want to beat everybody,” Coach Prime said. “(The players) know they’re on national television. They know the world is watching. (There are NFL) scouts out there every day, watching practices. They see that kind of stuff. So regardless of who you place on the schedule, these guys want it. They want to go out there and dominate.”