Home Care In Denver, CO

BOULDER — So we know Deion Sanders’ Buffs won’t quit. But will they ever start?

CU averages 2.0 points per first quarter at the season’s midway point, ranking last in the Big 12 and 124th nationally among 138 Football Bowl Subdivision programs. The Buffs’ 3.4 first-half points per game ranks dead last in the country.

“When we score, we can beat anybody in the country,” Sanders, the Buffs’ fourth-year football coach, said Tuesday at his weekly news conference. “We’ve just got to score the football.”

Coach Prime’s crew is 14-3 under Sanders when they score 30 points or more. The problem? They’re 4-22 when it’s 29 points or fewer. And they haven’t scored at least 30 points against a Power 4 team since the last time they met Oklahoma State — a 52-0 CU shellacking at Folsom Field back on Nov. 29, 2024.

That was 23 months, four starting quarterbacks and two offensive play-callers ago.

“We’ve got some guys that I feel like can do the job,” Sanders said, “and if they can’t, that’s on us.”

You know what else is on you, Coach? Penalties. Mercy.

CU (2-4, 0-3 Big 12) got flagged 10 times against the Utes. It’s the fourth time this season the Buffs have incurred nine or more penalties in a game. It’s the sixth time that’s happened over CU’s last 10 contests.

If twice is a pattern and three times is a problem, four times is an identity. A brand. CU ranks 136th out of 138 Football Bowl Subdivision schools in penalty yards this season. In 2024, the Buffs ranked 121st out of 134 programs; in 2023, they finished 132nd out of 133 schools. Only 2025, in which CU ranked 53rd out of 136 teams, feels like an outlier.

The Buffs visit 4-2 Oklahoma State on Saturday (5 p.m. FS1), feeling pretty darn good for a team on a four-game losing skid. CU rallied in the third quarter at home against No. 10 Utah last weekend before falling short, 27-24. Yet Sanders also hasn’t won away from home since Nov. 9, 2024, and some of that is because the Buffs can’t get out of their own way.

“(The Utah game) was a tremendous advancement on us showing up together,” Sanders said. “I don’t think there were a lot of blemishes out there.”

But the blows that landed really hurt. Last Saturday evening against the Utes, a CU penalty wiped out:

• A 2-yard Wilson keeper on fourth-and-1 for a first down on CU’s opening drive. The Buffs wound up punting.

• A 2-yard Micah Welch run on second-and-5, turning a third-and-3 into a second-and-15. The Buffs wound up punting.

• A 10-yard pass on second-and-6 from Wilson to Joseph Williams, bringing up a 2nd-and-16 instead.

• A third-and-8 incompletion by Utah QB Devon Dampier while the visitors were at their own 23 because of a holding call. The Utes would kick a field goal to end that drive.

That’s discipline. That’s coaching. And if it feels like a pattern, you’re dang right it is.

CU’s 1,987 yards accrued in penalties since 2024 is the most of any Big 12 program over the last three seasons — and among peers, only Baylor (1918 yards) has come relatively close.

The Buffs’ penalty yardage is 378 yards higher, on average, than the typical Big 12 school (1609) over the last two-and-a-half seasons, or 23.5% higher than their peers. Since 2024, the Buffs have averaged 64.1 penalty yards per contest.

Over its last 18 games, CU has amassed 80 or more penalty yards seven times. They’re 1-6 when that happens. They put up a record of 4-4 with 80 or more penalty yards in ’23 and ’24, largely because Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter could convert from third-and-just-about-anywhere, escape any death trap.

But in the Isaac Wilson Era, being a country mile behind the sticks matters again.

It also goes a long way in helping to explain why the Buffs are 2-4 in games decided by eight points or fewer since August 2025. And why they’re 1-11 in conference matchups since the start of last year and just 5-13 overall. And why they’re carrying a nine-game losing streak away from Folsom Field into Stillwater.

“Penalties in the second quarter disarmed us last week,” Sanders said Tuesday. “We got it right in the third and fourth (quarters), which were our goals — we break down practice into those types of quarters. But that first quarter, second quarter, we can’t do what we’ve been doing this season. We must have a repeat of last week’s second half. Now, we did some things differently, and we’ll do it again to come out and ensure that things would be different in the second half, as well as the first half, closing the first half.”

But the little things keep adding up. Since the start of the ’25 season, CU is 1-6 when giving the ball away two or more times in a game. The Buffs are 2-10 in their last 18 contests when their turnover margin against an opponent is even or negative.

Context: In the Buffs’ last 30 games in the Pac-12 under Karl Dorrell, Mike Sanford, or both, they averaged 53.8 penalty yards per game. In 2021 and 2022, CU ranked fifth among “classic” Pac-12 in penalty yardage. Middle of the pack.

Can you imagine how good these Buffs might be if they weren’t leading the Big 12 in stepping on rakes?

“The second quarter of football, we’ve really got to be more focused,” Sanders said. “And understand the little things … those things that cripple us and disable us (from) winning the football game. We can’t overcome that. We’re not good enough to overcome those adversities.”

Not remotely. And you won’t beat the other guy, especially on the road, until you learn to stop beating yourself first.

The monthslong dispute over Bow Mar’s plans to erect a gate on South Sheridan Boulevard came to a head this week as leaders of the town of 900 gave final approval to a contract that should put the barrier in place by the end of next month.

And Bow Mar’s much bigger neighbor is furious about the move, which is intended to eliminate cut-through traffic.

Denver City Councilman Kevin Flynn said Monday’s decision had Colorado’s largest city considering a “nuclear option” in response — installing its own limited-access gate just north of Bow Mar’s, effectively barring residents of the affluent town from being able to access their community from the north.

“None of my residents will have access to that traffic signal” at South Sheridan and West Quincy Avenue, Flynn said Tuesday of the planned Bow Mar gate. “That’s a problem for us.”

His constituents, he said, will be forced to take unprotected left turns onto Quincy from the south, increasing chances for mistakes and collisions.

“It’s an unacceptable alteration of Denver’s right of way,” Flynn said.

Bow Mar’s town council also voted Monday to block access to the town via West Tufts Avenue, approving a permanent closure of that road at the town line. Bill Rigler, a town spokesman, said the gate on Sheridan is expected to be in place by Thanksgiving but won’t actually be operational until January.

As proposed, Bow Mar residents would enter the community using RFID tags placed on their vehicles, while visitors and delivery vehicles would use a guest pass or code to get through.

Bow Mar has justified its gate project as a way to stop cut-through vehicles from endangering the town’s residents. Around 1,200 vehicles enter the town via Sheridan per day, an increase of 51% over the past eight years, according to town data.

Police have issued nearly 900 citations for speeding and unsafe driving in Bow Mar over the last four years, Rigler said. Just last week, a vehicle was found partially submerged in Bowles Lake, which is in Bow Mar. Authorities have not released the identity of the vehicle’s driver.

“In order for that car to get 50 meters out in the lake, you can imagine how fast it would have to be going,” Rigler said.

Vehicles have taken out walls and mailboxes, and residents fear it’s only a matter of time before an out-of-control driver kills someone. The speed limit in Bow Mar is 20 mph.

The town narrowed the scope of its project over the last few months, going from multiple proposed gates to just one, Rigler said.

“All other entrances into the community will remain open,” he said.

But that hasn’t assuaged the concerns of leaders in Denver or neighboring Littleton, which also fears the blockade will restrict its residents’ vehicular movements. In June, Littleton Mayor Kyle Schlachter and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston sent Bow Mar a joint letter asking the town to halt the project.

As the dispute intensified over the summer, Bow Mar hired a law firm at $560 an hour and a public relations company to deal with the situation. Flynn said he didn’t feel Bow Mar officials negotiated in good faith with Denver and Littleton to identify an alternate solution.

“They have not cooperated or collaborated at all,” he said. “Why don’t they work with their neighbors?”

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Filmmaker Sheryl Glubok has noticed a pattern while showing her short film on the festival circuit.

“There’s somewhat of a seriousness bias to festivals,” Glubok said. “Which I understand. They want to pick films that people may not choose if they’re scrolling at home on their couch, you know, do I really want to sit here and see a film about human trafficking or whatever?”

This year, Glubok had something different to offer.

“Welcome to the Fishbowl,” her first feature film, is a “coming of middle-age comedy,” as the director described it, a roadtrip romp that starts in Denver and ends in Telluride.

“It’s a feel good, crowd-pleasing, potentially commercial film,” Glubok said. “So we had an interesting go with festivals.”

“Welcome to the Fishbowl” makes its Colorado debut Friday night during the Denver Film Festival, which starts Thursday. It is one of 19 home-grown films chosen to screen as part of the festival’s Colorado Spotlight, a showcase of features, shorts and documentaries curated from the nearly 100 films shown during the festival.

Festival screentime is an important opportunity for young and emerging filmmakers to be discovered, and Glubok, 52, considers herself the latter. “You can always emerge,” she said. “That’s the point of the film.”

It was film festivals that encouraged her own career shift, film festivals where she met her production team, and film festivals where she showed the short films that would introduce her to the rest of the moviemaking world. But it’s not where she’s making any money, she said.

The Denver Film Festival is a regional festival, programmed to introduce local audiences to movies they wouldn’t otherwise get to see. It’s a jigsaw puzzle, said artistic director Matt Campbell, whose job balances buzzy special presentations, hidden gems, serious documentaries and quick, bright shorts.

Between a roster of annual festivals and the 1,400 submissions that the Denver Film Festival received, Campbell estimates he saw about 500 films this year.

But keeping track isn’t that hard, he shrugged. “You don’t need to remember the bad ones. You only need to remember the good ones.”

How does he remember the good ones? “There is a spreadsheet,” he said. It has tabs. It’s color coded.

You should be watching bad movies

When Campbell first started working with Denver Film in 2009, he sifted through hundreds of films to give them their first watch. Often none of them were picked for the festival. Those years built his stamina for screenings, he said, and also exposed him to “years and years of bad films” that honed his ability to know a good film when he’s watching it.

It’s something he recommends filmmakers do, too.

“You shouldn’t only be watching Hollywood products if you’re going to be making an independent film. You should be watching independent films,” he said. “And bad ones, too, so you know what not to do.”

Now he’s higher up the chain, and only watches movies that make it past at least one or two screenings. He has figured out how to sideline his personal taste while he selects which films the festival will show.

This year, the festival is bringing back the True Grit Award, a $2,500 cash prize for a feature-length film produced in Colorado. They’ll also host dedicated panels and filmmaker parties for industry folks to network with their audiences and one another.

For Glubok, it was the Sundance Film Festival in 2013 that changed her trajectory. It was in Park City, Utah, where she decided, “I should be doing this. This is what I’ve wanted to do. This is what I believe I can do. And, gosh, darn it, I’m gonna do it.”

Glubok moved to Colorado that year, right as the state began to offer a 20% film tax incentive for the first time. Productions were posting up in Denver, Boulder and Aspen. A year later, in 2014, the state approved a $5 million package to lure Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight,” to shoot on a ranch outside of Telluride.

The state was landing films and the industry was showing promise after a decades-long lull. That incentive was expanded in 2024 to guarantee $5 million in annual incentives for four years, instead of the variable amount set each year by the state legislature.

Despite the industry-wide momentum, Glubok wasn’t sure she was ready to direct a feature-length film. She spent a few years directing shorts and cutting her teeth on the film set, making the connections that would be essential to bringing “Welcome to the Fishbowl” to the big screen more than a decade later.

Then there was the question of funding. The film world is “upside-down,” Glubok said. Streamers are paying cents on the dollar, and there’s a good chance that she will be marketing and working with theaters herself for a broader release. They were able to fund their film, “creatively,” she said, taking private equity from Colorado investors excited to see the state featured so heavily, a fiscal sponsor who can accept funds as a nonprofit donation, and the state’s current 22% tax credit.

“For me, success is obviously having a lot of people see the film, but it’s also being able to say, I paid my investors back. Now let’s go do this again,” Glubok said. “A lot of filmmakers never make a second film.”

The Denver Film Festival starts Thursday and runs until Nov. 1. You can read about all of the , and explore the .

Type of Story: News

Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.

Colorado transportation officials broke ground Monday on a long-planned makeover of Interstate 270, a key metro Denver artery that has been plagued by crumbling infrastructure and intense congestion.

Built in the mid-1960s, the nearly seven-mile-long I-270 connects Interstates 25 and 70 from the I-25/U.S. 36 interchange to northeast Denver. The freeway serves as a major corridor for commuters in and around Commerce City, as well as for freight trucks hauling goods and supplies.

CDOT officials say the highway wasn’t built to handle its current traffic demands, which have risen to more than 100,000 vehicles per day. It was the only interstate serving many motorists that had yet to see a major upgrade.

“This corridor is in desperate need of improvement,” said Shoshana Lew, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Transportation, during a groundbreaking ceremony beneath one of the interstate’s aging bridges in Adams County.

Other attendees included Gov. Jared Polis and Sean McMaster, the administrator of the Federal Highway Administration.

At the heart of CDOT’s project is the addition of tolled express lane in both directions, which will be free to access for buses, motorcyclists, and drivers of cars with three or more passengers.

Other aspects of the I-270 project include replacing 12 aging bridges, rebuilding the Vasquez Boulevard interchange, building a pedestrian bridge over the interstate between East 56th Avenue and Quebec Street, improving on- and off-ramps at Interstate 76, and adding a smattering of sidewalks, multiuse paths and bus stops along local streets.

Officials say the upgrades will improve travel time on the interstate and, in turn, deter motorists from being forced to use I-70 and I-25 as detours, which has only further exacerbated congestion.

At $806 million, the project’s price tag is already nearing that of the I-70 Floyd Hill Project in the mountains, which is currently at its midpoint and is CDOT’s largest single road project now underway.

The I-270 project is set to be completed across three phases. In the first, crews will redo the roadway and replace bridges that are in the most critical conditions. Those include bridges over the South Platte River, Burlington Ditch, Brighton Boulevard and East 60th Avenue.

CDOT projects the first phase will be completed in 2030, with the rest of the project finished in 2033.

Widening draws protests

While state leaders heaped praise on the plans, the project faces intense pushback from environmental groups. They warn that adding lanes to the highway will only lead to more traffic and pollution in an already heavily industrial area.

Environmental advocates point to the $1.6-billion I-25 widening project completed in 2006 through southeast metro Denver. Known as T-REX, the project included the addition of up to two new lanes in each direction in some sections. Yet traffic on the interstate has only filled in since then, and it remains a serious pain point for motorists.

GreenLatinos and Earthjustice, two national environmental nonprofit groups, last year asked CDOT to consider an alternate proposal for I-270. It would have avoided adding new lanes in favor of tolling the highway’s existing four lanes in accordance with peak travel times (with discounts or potential zero-fare costs for local residents).

Environmental advocates also wanted more investments in other modes of travel, like buses and pedestrian infrastructure.

Jamie Valdez, a transportation and energy advocate for GreenLatinos’ Colorado branch, said the organization continued to hear concerns from local residents worried about what increased traffic would mean for a corridor that touches part of one of the most polluted zip codes in the country. He said the project was more focused on economic impacts than public health.

“It’s a situation where commerce, i.e., profits, are being put once again ahead of the needs and impact to the community,” Valdez said.

‘We found a way to move forward together’

Adams County Commissioner Julie Duran Mullica acknowledged the importance of I-270 to the local economy during Monday’s groundbreaking event. She said the freight corridor carried local products from Adams County across the state.

But she also thanked community members who spoke up about the project.

“We listened to the people who live in this corridor,” she said. “And I want to be clear: Maybe we didn’t get everything we asked for in this project, but I think that we found a way to move forward together.”

CDOT officials said planning for the project underwent six years of community engagement and a rigorous environmental impact study, with the agency publishing a final report last month. Officials say they’ve adopted several recommendations from community conversations that are aimed at expanding travel options and improving public health.

Those include adding new air quality monitors along the interstate, launching a slew of improvements to local streets, and helping the Adams 14 and Mapleton school districts obtain grants for electric school buses.

“What you’re seeing here is a project that’s not the same project that it would have been without advocacy,” Lew said.

The state last year also published an analysis of the project’s estimated impact on greenhouse gases, stating that while emissions could rise during project construction, the addition of an express lane would not increase emissions.

The study attributed that finding to shorter travel times due to safety and congestion improvements that it said would reduce the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by vehicles per mile driven. CDOT said improved travel conditions on the interstate would also take more cars off surrounding roads.

Environmental groups have questioned the findings, saying highway-widening projects have historically resulted in more cars on the road that bring more emissions.

In a statement, Alexandra Schluntz, a senior attorney for Earthjustice’s Rocky Mountain Office, cited decades of experience with highway widenings, as well as an independent technical analysis of CDOT’s plan. Both “demonstrate that the project will result in more traffic, more pollution and overall longer commute times for many Commerce City residents by redistributing instead of reducing congestion.”

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