Comment on O.J. Mayo, Gary Neal on fire in victory

BOULDER — The road runs through Ralphie. Deion Sanders’ Buffs get Kansas State at home in three weeks. Over a 15-day span in late November, they’ll host Utah and Oklahoma State. The Big 12’s path to the College Football Playoff turns left off the turnpike and right into the sure hands of Travis Hunter. “The good news for CU is, you do have the power brokers largely at home,” Fox Sports analyst and former NFL quarterback Brock Huard told me before the Buffs kicked off with Baylor in a homecoming tussle at Folsom Field on Saturday night.

The Colorado School of Mines football team continues to live dangerously on the road. For the second week in a row, the Orediggers held off a fourth-quarter rally as Devyn Lauer-Duarte’s interception sealed a 13-12 win over Chadron State in both teams’ RMAC opener Saturday in Chadron, Neb. Chadron State got a pair of field goals in the final frame to pull within a point with 5:19 to go, but the fourth-ranked Orediggers (3-0, 1-0 RMAC) ground out a 10-play, 44-yard drive that chewed up 4 minutes, 56 seconds of clock.

It’s probably not hyperbole to say that Alexandar Georgiev reached a crossroads in his Colorado Avalanche tenure during those 48 hours between the end of Game 1 and the start of Game 2 of an opening-round series in Winnipeg last spring. Georgiev, fresh off an undesirable finish to an up-and-down season, allowed seven goals on 23 shots in a wild 7-6 loss at Canada Life Centre.

8212; Daniel Dubois is no longer an accidental world heavyweight champion. With a brutal fifth-round knockout of Anthony Joshua in front of 96,000 fans at Wembley Stadium, Dubois showed he might be the real deal — and the future of boxing’s marquee division. “Are you not entertained?” Dubois roared to the crowd after dominating the all-British title fight to complete his quest to legitimize his status as a heavyweight titleholder, three months after gaining the IBF belt vacated by Oleksandr Usyk. The 27-year-old Dubois entered the ring first — an unusual twist given he was the champion — to strengthen the feeling this was being treated as a homecoming for Joshua, the decade-long darling of British boxing who was bidding to emulate the likes of Muhammad Ali and Lennox Lewis as a three-time heavyweight champ. Dubois left the ring as the heavyweight’s next big thing, having floored Joshua in the first and third rounds before ending the fight 59 seconds into the fifth with a counter right that sent Joshua face first into the canvas. Joshua’s corner threw in the towel but that wasn’t needed.

The Broncos will be without outside linebacker Baron Browning not just this weekend, but for at least the next four games. Denver placed Browning on injured reserve Saturday and promoted wide receiver Lil’Jordan Humphrey to the active roster to take his place, according to the league’s transaction wire. Browning, 25, missed all but 12 snaps of Denver’s Week 2 loss to Pittsburgh after injuring his left foot and had already been ruled out of Sunday’s game against Tampa Bay. Broncos head coach Sean Payton left the door open for an IR placement for Browning on Friday, saying “we’ll see” when asked if it was a possibility. Now the soonest he can return is Week 7 for a Thursday night game at New Orleans.

The human-sparked Pearl fire burning west of Fort Collins in Larimer County is 90% contained, fire officials announced Saturday. At 4 p.m. Saturday, Larimer County officials issued an “All Clear” for the wildfire, lifting all remaining evacuation orders and allowing normal activity in the area to resume. The Pearl fire — a wildfire that started on private property in Larimer County on Monday — has burned 128 acres of land near Red Feather Lakes, fire officials said.