The Colorado Buffaloes don’t have a prayer. And the University doesn’t want them to have one, either.

On this Good Friday, let’s look at the intersection of faith, the First Amendment and big-time college football.

A year ago, the University of Colorado football team didn’t have a prayer of a winning season. In fact, the program was recognized as one of the worst in the country.

But a lot of fans’ prayers were answered when the university put all its (buffalo) chips on Deion Sanders, bringing “Coach Prime” to Boulder, and giving him a whopping $29.5 million contract to turn the program around.

A honeymoon of all honeymoons.

And then Deion Sanders prayed with and for his team in public at a practice.

The atheist Freedom From Religion Foundation, sensing an easy mark to get itself some national attention, fired off an overwrought letter to the university expressing its horror at Prime Prayer Time. They ignored the fact that Coach Sanders had made prayer a key part of his successful run at Jackson State, a historically black public university in Mississippi.

And what were Coach Prime’s sins? One example was a relatively benign prayer of gratitude for the day, for the players, for the coaches and for the opportunity to be part of a top-shelf college athletics program.

This, the atheists wrote, was not only illegal; it was also something the athletes needed to be protected from.

The university, genuflecting at the altar of liberalism, threw their $30 million man under the team bus. A CU official wrote back deferentially agreeing with the atheists but noting they met with Coach Sanders to “educate” him about the error of his ways. How condescending and demeaning toward not only one of the greatest American athletes in the last half century but also a very smart, successful and inspirational coach.

How would you like to be the clipboard-carrying lickspittle who had to sit down with Deion Sanders and teach him from CU’s left-wing catechism? Luckily for the Buffs, he didn’t tell them where to stick their intolerance. The university dutifully reported back that Sanders was “receptive” to the training and came away with a “better understanding” of the university’s anti-prayer policies.

Let’s hope Deion doesn’t change what makes him such a positive model  for young athletes.

Beneath “Coach Prime” lies a man of deep faith. A faith that arose from seeing that all the things you acquire don’t provide the deep meaning and satisfaction you craved. Whether that’s a hall of fame career or just your dream job, for all of us the idols and accolades aren’t enough. It brought Deion Sanders to a suicide attempt. And he found faith in Jesus Christ.

What the anti-religion activists do not understand and respect is that being a person of faith is not like being part of a club or a sports team. It’s not a segregated segment of one’s life, pigeonholed to an hour on Sunday. It’s an integral and indispensable part of one’s life and worldview.

That’s what Coach Sanders believes.

“I don’t believe you can be at your optimum without your faith,” Sanders said in 2018. “Sports is sports, it’s a game. My faith is everything. It’s the gas that propels the courage, the truth, keeps me going. It’s the wind, it’s the wings, it’s the air that pumps into my lungs, that provokes me to live. Faith is everything.”

Not only did the atheists get Deion Sanders wrong, they also got the law wrong.

The pro-religious freedom First Liberty Institute, in its own letter to the university, underscored that a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision it won on behalf of a high school coach protected the “right of public-school employees to engage in religious expression and exercise.”

In past years, anti-religious activists said people of faith were seeking to “impose their morality” on others. In fact, demanding that Deion Sanders cease praying with his team and coaches is part of a never-ending effort to impose atheists’ “morality” on people of faith.

Colorado is increasingly in the news as a state that is antagonistic to First Amendment religious expression. Here’s another notch in that belt of intolerance.

For the Colorado Buffaloes to have a prayer this football season, they need this man of prayer. That the University so quickly took the side of a liberal activist group against its marquee coach, who did nothing wrong, speaks volumes about CU, its values, and its loyalty to its employees.

Sean Duffy, a former deputy chief of staff to Gov. Bill Owens, is a communications and media relations strategist and ghostwriter based in the Denver area.