Kiszla: We wanted Buffs vs. Rams to be a blood feud, then were shocked when CU star Travis Hunter got hurt?

A lacerated liver for CU Buffs star Travis Hunter is the price of doing business, when doing what’s right or wrong doesn’t really matter in college football, so long as the hype machine keeps printing money.

And aren’t victories for money the bottom-line reason why Deion Sanders is here?

While responsibility for the cheap shot begins with Colorado State safety Henry Blackburn, who made himself a comic-book villain that acted too macho for his green-and-gold britches, everybody who dialed up the heat on a silly football game, including us in the media, bears some responsibility for the tackle that sent Hunter to the hospital and knocked him out of the Heisman Trophy race.

Maybe Hunter explained it best, while wearing a giraffe costume during a live video stream from his room: “It’s football. Something bad is going to happen on the field sooner or later.”

Amen, brother.

Bad stuff is collateral damage to be expected when football gets personal.

So amid all the righteous rage, ugly death threats and too-late contrition from the dirty hit that rocked the Rocky Mountain Showdown and reverberated throughout the country, let’s ask the question that gets down to real nitty gritty:

Are you not entertained?

You wouldn’t be wrong to argue CSU coach Jay Norvell started this mess by firing shots at Sanders about Coach Prime wearing a hat and sunglasses while talking to adults, as if his mother should have taught him better.

If Norvell was really serious about teaching young football players how to become respectful men of honor, the coach would’ve given Blackburn a dose of tough love and suspended his safety for a game as a reminder that even bang-bang plays can have consequences.

Of course, there was a less-than-zero chance of Norvell using a mistake by Blackburn as a teaching moment, because Colorado State’s record is 0-2 and the Rams need to take out their frustration Saturday by beating Middle Tennessee.

Laying all the blame on Blackburn and Norvell would require an act of blind faith demanded by Sanders, who has masterfully recruited everyone from journalists to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to openly cheer for his success while wearing black-and-gold attire to build the CU brand.

It was ESPN, with a Coach Prime vs Lil Bro mismatch to sell, that expertly blew a little dig by Norvell into fighting words. CU quarterback Shedeur Sanders, with his own Heisman campaign to promote, jumped on the hype train, going on television in advance of the game to brand Norvell as a fool and insist all respect was gone for the Rams.

It was a masterstroke of marketing by all involved. ESPN got exactly what it wanted and more than any network executive could’ve dreamed. Not only did Colorado State make the battle on the scoreboard far tougher than than the heavily favored Buffs could’ve expected, the action was laced with stare downs, an eye-poke and macho preening that would’ve done The Rock proud back in his pro rasslin’ days.

All the bile and unnecessary roughness football fans openly love until somebody gets hurt contributed to a jaw-dropping 9.3 million television viewers for a college game that was amped up into a football version of “Survivor.”

There was a gladiator vibe to the entire night. So why did everybody act surprised and rush to decry with righteous tongues the violence of Blackburn laying the wood on Hunter?

Sorry, my friends. That little bit of disingenuity, so clever as to be crass, doesn’t pass the smell test.

Coach Prime and Norvell both humbly shook heads in disbelief at the threats of harm to Blackburn and the antisocial behavior of fans, long after both coaches turned up the heat on a game so high it nearly guaranteed emotions would boil over.

So please forgive me for disregarding the too-little, too-late attempts at Kumbaya after the fact, while I give credit to Shilo Sanders, the son of Coach Prime and a CU safety capable of wreaking some good havoc on the field, for keeping it real when taking issue with Blackburn’s cheap shot.

“I really wanted to whoop that dude that did that to (Hunter). For real. Like after the game or something,” Sanders said. “If I see (Blackburn) just around here somewhere, he’s got to watch out.”

When football gets personal, there’s a decent chance somebody is going to get hurt, whether he deserves it or not.

Let those fighting words be a lesson to all of us.

Football doesn’t build character.

But sometimes it reveals a little bit about all of us that we would rather not see in the mirror.

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