BOULDER – Wearing bright red gloves, Bill McCartney stared at the hands responsible for building a football dynasty at Colorado and confessed his sin.

“Better red than dead,” McCartney told me, chuckling at the memory of his trademark battle cry, which long ago turned the Buffaloes into a national power that feared no one on the football field, least of all the dreaded Big Red of Nebraska.

Coach Mac, now 82 years old and gaunt in the way age can slowly diminish even a strong man, inspected the red gloves like a detective solving a mystery. “These gloves? My bad. You got me,” he said.

With a wry smile, McCartney looked as if maybe somebody had placed the gloves on his hands to prank a legendary coach that gleefully thumped the Cornhuskers 27-12 in 1990 on Colorado’s journey to the lone national championship in program history.

“If you could beat Nebraska, you could beat ‘em all,” said McCartney, explaining why he created a rivalry the Huskers never wanted.

A bona fide CU legend laughed the laugh of a life well-lived, slapping me on the shoulder and declaring: “Football is intoxicating. There’s nothing else like it.”

We sat on a golf cart, Mac and me, watching the Buffs practice indoors on a recent morning that was blanketed in snow, as hip new Colorado coach Deion Sanders patrolled the field wearing a gold chain and a black cowboy hat.

“I never wore a cowboy hat. Couldn’t pull it off,” McCartney said Wednesday when he attended practice for the first time during the eagerly anticipated era of Coach Prime.  “But I will tell you this. I like this guy. Neon Deion. He’s the real deal. I can’t wait. Who do we open the season against?”

I grabbed my cell phone and showed McCartney a September schedule as tough as anyone who stands shoulder to shoulder with the Buffs can remember.

Better hold on tight to your cowboy hat, Mr. Sanders. It could be a rough ride out of the chute: This season starts with a trip to Texas Christian, followed by a visit to Folsom Field by those bug-eating Huskers, then a Rocky Mountain Showdown with feisty Colorado State, with a quick turnaround for the Pacific-12 Conference opener at Oregon.

Whoa. May the good Lord have mercy on Colorado.

“Looks like a 4-0 start for the Buffs to me!” McCartney bellowed with evangelical zeal, anticipating a showdown of Heisman-worthy quarterbacks and teams ranked in the top 10 when Colorado wraps up September against the Southern California Trojans.

No pressure, Coach Prime. All Coach Mac expects you to do is hang the moon and have the Buffaloes jump over it.

“That’s the way you’ve got to think!” said McCartney, who fashioned a 93-55-5 record during 13 seasons as coach of the Buffs.

While we chatted, Coach Mac’s eyes brightened as he tracked the arc of spirals thrown by quarterback Shedeur Sanders. He followed his famous father from Jackson State and is projected to earn in the neighborhood of $1.5 million this year by cashing in on his name, image and likeness in the brave, new world of college football. It’s a whole different ball game than when McCartney recruited Alfred Williams, Eric Bieniemy and All-American talent to Boulder.

“When you’re the former coach, you shouldn’t get involved. I try to stay out of the way,” McCartney said. So he keeps a low profile. And family members carefully guard his privacy, especially since 2016, when it was revealed Coach Mac suffers from dementia and Alzheimer’s, a disease he admits can be “frightening,” but a journey he now takes with more than six million Americans.

I’m happy to attest that the laughter of McCartney is full of life. With a little prompting, he remembers the Fifth Down at Missouri, the pivotal moment during that championship 1990 season, and the wild, crazy finish to a controversial victory none of us thought we’d ever forget.

During the 25 minutes we talked, however, his short-term memory frequently sputtered, causing Coach Mac to repeat himself several times, including this bluntly honest confession, so raw and honest it made me flinch.

“I’m a sad lad,” McCartney said.

At the height of his coaching powers, with the 1994 edition of his Buffs a 11-1 juggernaut led by Heisman Trophy winner Rashaan Salaam, McCartney walked away from a job he loved, with10 years remaining on his contract, following a 41-24 victory over Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl. He did it to save his family, heal a marriage rocked by the CU coach’s confession to a decades-old infidelity that so unsettled Lyndi, his wife, that she contemplated suicide.

“I had to walk away to save my queen,” McCartney said.

Trading blows on the field with Nebraska and Oklahoma was awesome, but it paled in comparison to the satisfaction McCartney took in holding the hand of his wife through 50 years filled with the joys and sorrows of marriage.

What McCartney will never forget are the farewell words of Lyndi, when the ravages of emphysema squeezed the life from his spouse in 2013.

“I was married 50 years to a queen. And she abandoned me,” recalled McCartney, who would repeat the tale that makes him a sad lad three times within 25 minutes.

“At the end, Lyndi looked at me and said, ‘Billy, I’ve got to go now.’

“I told her, ‘What do you mean, you’ve got to go? Please, don’t leave me.’

“But she replied: “My time is up, Billy.’ And then she left me.”

McCartney draped an arm around me and admitted: “I never have gotten over it. She died, went to heaven and I’ve never recovered. When you get married to the right one, you can’t let go.”

Through his pain and loneliness, as Alzheimer’s casts shadows on a life well lived, McCartney still summons the optimism to see every sunrise as a blessing.

On this chilly spring morning, he savored the sounds of shoulder pads cracking and coaches shouting encouragement as his beloved Buffs worked. Before practice was over, however, longtime CU assistant coach and forever friend Brian Cabral approached McCartney and said: “Let’s take a walk around the track and get out of here.”

His mother lived to be 103, so battling against long odds is in McCartney’s DNA. Even legends eventually grow weary, though. His tender heart aching, McCartney jokes there’s a better use of time and money than to try fixing an old ball coach.

Coach Mac, who unflinchingly wore his Christian faith on the sleeve of the black-and-gold sweatshirt issued him by a public university, has long been prepared for one last drive during the fourth quarter.

“I’m getting old. If there are any best parts about getting old, I don’t know them,” McCartney said. “But I do love being here at CU. It’s a special place.”

He walks slowly, as the clock winds down, but with shoulders square and proud, leading by example, for anyone who wants to follow. A great coach teaches more than Xs and Os.

The harsh cruelty of mortality seems intent on stealing McCartney’s memories, but he won’t let dementia rob his dignity without a fight.

“When I was young, I knew I was going to be a coach. It was in my blood. I was born to coach,”  McCartney said.

“Now, as an old man, I still feel like I can coach. Always coaching. Always a coach.”

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