The Buffs are running a bluff. As it is now Colorado won’t win enough games to get Miss Peggy, Ralphie VII and the dedication of a season to Bill McCartney in a conference championship or any bad bowl.

CU still has the wrong offensive coordinator and the wrong starting quarterback, and the defensive coordinator and his staff don’t look so right either.

Pat Shurmur should be put out to pasture with mascot Ralphie VI, who no longer was enthusiastic about leading the Buffaloes into the stadium. Kaidon Salter is not qualified to be leading the Buffs as quarterback. Liberty Biberty. And defense doyen Robert Livingston and NFL-weathered assistants couldn’t even figure out that a spy should pry on Georgia Tech’s QB every play.

So the Rambling Wreck beat the Stumbling Buffaloes in a game that should have been a Grand Opening in Boulder.

Unless the subdued Deion Sanders, who suffered serious surgery from bladder cancer in the off-season, makes changes immediately, the Buffs will be also-rans in his third season as the CU director and resurrector.

Will Colorado finish 5-12?

Oh, the Buffaloes will dump Delaware and whack Wyoming at home and possibly pick up three other victories, but seven losses likely loom in the Big 12 Conference. They won’t be invited to the Pop-Tart or Cheez-It bowls.

Their only chance for success is to shift to a 17-year-old quarterback who has never played a college game and a 45-year-old former quarterback who does not even have a paying job at CU.

Bring on Julian “JuJu” Lewis and Byron “The Human Joystick” Leftwich.

And perhaps James Bond to play The Spy.

The Buffs’ defense was the recipient of two Yellowjackets fumbles and an interception early on Freaky Friday at Folsom Field. But the Buffs’ offense managed one meager touchdown. In NCAA 1 games when a team has a 3-0 advantage in turnovers it prevails 85 percent of the time. CU permitted a late long touchdown run by GT quarterback Haynes King to fall behind 27-20, and the Buffaloes couldn’t respond in the decisive moments with two Hail-Mary passes and no other prayers remaining. But they did have two unused timeouts left.

Three youthful quarterbacks from the state of Georgia were not provided with a chance to play in the state of Colorado.

Yellowjackets backup Ben Guthrie, a sophomore, and Aaron Philo, a freshman, and Buffaloes freshman Lewis, who doesn’t turn 18 until Sept. 21, were confined to their benches.

Tech had no reason to substitute for King, who was king on a night when he passed for 143 yards and ran for 156 yards and three touchdowns, including slinking 45 with 1:07 left. Afterward Sanders said Haynes “looked like a Heisman candidate right now. We made that happen for him.’’

His own quarterback, Salter, did not deserve a participating ribbon. He did throw for 159 yards and a score and rushed for 43 yards and a second touchdown, but he didn’t create a comeback or wow anybody in his CU debut. He won’t remind anybody of Shedeur Sanders – or Kordell Stewart and Darian Hagan, who played in the Bill McCartney era.

The Buffs wore a patch on their jerseys to honor McCartney, who died Jan. 10. McCartney’s 1990 CU team shared the national championship with Georgia Tech. But the Yellowjackets are now 1-0 against Colorado and will have the follow-up game in Atlanta next Sept. 5.

Maybe the Buffaloes will awaken and allow Lewis to play a game near where he grew up and became a five-star prospect at Carrollton, Ga.

Sanders had hinted Lewis could play a series or more. Shurmur, who has ruined two Colorado offenses in his career (the first with the Broncos), obviously, did not consider a move.

Before the next game, against the Fightin’ Blue Hens, Salter must be demoted and Lewis elevated, and Shurmur fired as a coach and replaced by Leftwich, who has collaborated with the quarterbacks in the spring and summer as a volunteer coach not officially on the staff. There should be an opening. Leftwich, who played quarterback in the NFL for nine years, last was an offensive coordinator with the Tampa Bay Bucs, and his primary quarterback was Tom Brady. Sanders and the two quarterbacks have given the mile-highest praise to Leftwich.

No more bluffs in Boulder for the Buffs.