It happened over a long time.
Lots on here don’t want to hear it ( and constantly defend cu to no end - which is sickening), but it starts with the weak conference they play in.
1> year in and year out, they play a weak in-conference schedule which allows them to; a>rest starters, b> help avoid injury to said starters, and - perhaps most importantly - c> GET BACKUPS LOTS OF MEANINGFUL EXPERIENCE. This builds quality DEPTH!
2> early on in dabo’s tenure, cu loaded up on skill players. Skill players and the new Chad Morris offense made for an exciting brand of football. Good players took notice, and wanted to come play in that style offense (which was scoring points and winning games).
3> after losing to us 5yrs in a row, I believe cu finally started - or maybe in the midst of the 5 - to pay attention to athletes in the trenches. They greatly improved the quality of those guys to compliment their skill position talent
4> Cheating. Do they do it? Some say everybody does (if WE do, we’re apparently really, really, REALLY bad at it). There is the fact of positive test results for ostarine. Argue the fact if you like. I’ll leave the Newspring issue out of my reasons since there’s no absolute smoking gun. But I believe bending the rules plays a part up thar.
At this point, they have a system that just feeds and sustains itself. Winning begets winning. And at this point, going back to point #1, having an easy 8-10 winds per year makes it easy to sustain.