For the final time of the 2022 season, Mike Sanford stepped up to a lonely and vulnerable place behind a microphone and in front of cameras, there to dissect another lopsided loss his Colorado team had suffered, this time against Utah, 63-21, Saturday at Folsom Field.

In his opening statement, the Buffs’ interim head coach talked about the game, but then shifted into a broader discussion of his team and one of the most oft-repeated themes of his nearly two-month tenure leading the program – joy.

“I told the team this – this group of players made football fun for me again,” Sanford said. “As hard as that probably is to understand on the outside looking in, this profession is really hard. There's a lot of challenges with it.”

From there, his words trailed off. A visibly emotional Sanford took seven seconds to collect himself, apologized and continued.

“To have a group of players do what they did and continue to fight, I'll never forget this,” he said. “I'm so grateful to this group of players. It really has been the most enjoyable season in my life. I told them before the game one of my favorite scriptures is ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race and I've kept the faith.’ And I don't think there's anything that could define this group of players, coaches and everybody inside of these walls more than that.”

The situation in which Sanford and his players found themselves for the season’s final seven games was one they would have never selected if given the choice. Colorado’s players had all been drawn to Boulder by other head coaches, some of whom have been gone for several years, whether they were fired or left. In his first year with the program, Sanford came to spark an offense that could help lead the Buffs out of the Pac-12’s basement.

Of course, it didn’t exactly work out that way. After losing its first five games by an average of nearly 30 points per contest, Colorado coach Karl Dorrell was fired and replaced on an interim basis by Sanford.

It was a temporary arrangement by design, but both the players and their coach did what they set out to do – they made the most out of it.

On paper, it’s a dubious claim. While Colorado managed to earn its lone win of the season – a 20-13 overtime victory on Oct. 15 against Cal – under Sanford’s watch, it went just 1-6 under its interim coach, only slightly better than the 0-5 mark that preceded it. Granted, those seven games included the Buffs’ hardest stretch of the schedule, including four games in the final month against teams currently ranked in the top 15 nationally, but in those matchups, they were outscored by an average of 41.5 points per game.

It was beyond those figures, though, where Sanford made his biggest impact, the one that will stick with Colorado’s players the longest.

Most viscerally, it was found in moments like one Sanford shared with offensive lineman Noah Fenske late in Saturday’s loss. The sophomore, who had transferred into the program from Iowa, approached Sanford, gave him a hug and told his coach that he had made football fun for him for the first time in his life.

“That meant more to me than I think probably anything that could have ever happened,” Sanford said.

It wasn’t just Fenske, either.

Sanford’s engaging personality contrasted significantly with Dorrell’s more stoic and reserved temperament. Throughout Sanford’s time as interim coach, players regularly praised him for re-engaging them after they appeared and felt sluggish for so much of the first five weeks of the season. Practices and workouts had an energy and enthusiasm that they once didn’t. Competition was baked into their daily routines, like how the offense would have to run if the defense got three takeaways over the course of a practice. Music regularly blared. Sanford said his fondest memory from his time as interim coach might have come late in the preparation for Utah, when at the end of practice – and embodying the spirit of the ongoing World Cup – strength and conditioning coach Shannon Turley stopped a penalty kick and celebrated by doing the Griddy, sending the entire team into hysterics.

They were even able to salvage some joy late in the loss to Utah, when 300-pound offensive lineman Frank Fillip caught a one-yard touchdown pass late in the fourth quarter, prompting most of his teammates on the sideline to rush toward the end zone.

“I learned a lot from him for sure, but I think one of the coolest things to me was so much of what he preached is what I believed, but he found a way to instill that into the team,” tight end Brady Russell said. “That was probably the coolest thing I saw about Coach Sanford – that he could bring joy into chaos and peace and contentment when you shouldn't have any. It's been pretty miserable. But for whatever reason, we were able to thrive the way we were and fight the way we were. Most teams would have folded, but I don't think that's the case here.”

There were lessons of resiliency, as well. They were certainly needed, not just because of what Colorado endured before Sanford took over, but because of what awaited all of them after he assumed his interim post.

They knew the challenges that faced them and even though they were only able to overcome one of them – at least measured by whether they won or lost – they continued to show up. Though it could be easily dismissed as putting up points against backups, Sanford was impressed with how the Buffs were able to play evenly with Utah in the second half, tying them in points, 21-21, in the game’s final 30 minutes.

Sometimes, the concepts of joy and overcoming adversity were linked.

“Even though there's gonna be adversity in your life, you have to find joy in everything you do,” cornerback Nikko Reed said. “Even if you might have lost a couple coaches, you still have to find joy and still be able to wake up and play football. He just allowed us to open our minds up and remind ourselves that it’s not just a game. It's actually like learning lessons. We learned a lot from Coach and found out there's joy in everything.”

Before the Buffs’ final game, Sanford was able to see how that resonated among his players. In a meeting between him and the team’s seniors, defensive lineman Terrance Lang opened up about what he took away from his stay at the school, particularly in his final season.

“He said that from my time here at CU, not only have I grown, but I’ve become a man that can look adversity straight in the face. Then he said I'm gonna go punch it in the bleep bleep mouth,” Sanford said. “The fact that he, at 23 years old, can recognize that and understand that no matter what comes his way in football and in life…that's a legacy. They finished well. They didn't finish with a win, they didn't finish with the conference championship, but they finished together at the place that they started – on the field, fighting to the very bitter, bitter end. There’s no adversity that’s going to be able to get in the way of these guys. I believe that.”

Sanford wasn’t just teaching his players how to find joy in the game. He, too, was experiencing it once again.

The past four years had been trying for Sanford. In 2018, he was fired after just two seasons as the head coach at Western Kentucky, where his teams went just 9-16 after going 23-5 in the two seasons before his hiring. From there, he was let go after two seasons as Minnesota’s offensive coordinator before arriving at Colorado last December in search of a new opportunity.

He lamented the state of college coaching Saturday, saying the profession isn’t as tied to building relationships with players as it once was. Even in an interim capacity, he hoped to do that with the Buffs, something he said when he was introduced as the interim head coach in early October. This wasn’t going to be about him, he insisted. It was about the players. Those statements helped strengthen his bond with a group of young men who had only known him for so long. It developed into a strong, indelible connection, one that surprisingly made the end of the season more somber than soothing.

“The feeling that I got in that locker room after tonight's game is that there's nobody who's glad the season's over,” Sanford said. “That's testament to everybody that was inside of these walls working their tails off – players, coaches, support staff, trainers, strength staff, everybody. Nobody’s like, whew, let’s get out of here. That’s why I'm late up here. Everybody's sticking around and just didn't really want it to end. I'm just proud that there's no relief. There might be a relief to fans, but not to us. We love being together every day.”

What’s next for Sanford isn’t clear at this moment. Colorado is in the final stages of its search for a new head coach, one that will end with Deion Sanders, Bronco Mendenhall, Ryan Walters, Nick Saban, Bill Belichick, the ghost of Vince Lombardi or a coach who is someone other than the man who guided it during the second half of a 1-11 season. He’ll be a footnote, a historical oddity that preceded whatever coach Colorado hopes can lead it back to something resembling glory.

In the meantime, though, he’ll still be around. He plans to meet with players individually over the course of next week and be there to help them with whatever they might need as they approach the next phase of their lives and careers. To many of those players, he’ll be more than a placeholder.

“I just want to be here for them to just love them up, reassure them that everything's gonna be OK,” Sanford said. “Ultimately, I just want to continue to serve this group of players as long as they'll have me. I think it's important for me just to be that presence for them and not do it in a selfish manner. Do it in a way that truly does show them that I care about them no matter what and that I love them no matter what and I'm here for no matter what.”