The gospel according to Warren Sapp is a gospel that a number of his young Colorado defensive players have likely never heard before and will probably never hear again.

It’s a gospel that preaches toughness, being your authentic self and staying focused. As he tells players: “You ain’t got to think outside the box. If you see a little, you’ll see a lot, but if you see a lot, you see nothing. It’s the tedious repetition of the simplest movements.”

Sapp, a first-round pick in the 1995 NFL draft, is a graduate assistant for the rising Colorado Buffaloes. But he’s way more than anybody’s graduate assistant. Sapp played 13 NFL seasons and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2013.

“That’s the title they gave me,” he said referring to being a graduate assistant. “I teach life. I touch them all, from the quarterback to the running backs to the O-line to the receivers to the tight end to the D-line.

“I touch them all. Trust me, I touch them all. I coach life, baby.”

Whatever Sapp is doing in Boulder, it’s working.

Suddenly, the Colorado defense is looking a lot like the swashbuckling, sometime outrageous defensive unit Sapp led in 1994 at the University of Miami when he was the best defensive tackle in college football. Sapp wasn’t just good. He was loud, quick. physical, and intimidating. He’s brought that same bodacious spirit to a Colorado team that has put itself in the College Football Playoff conversation.

Since joining the Colorado staff coaching staff this season, Sapp has helped turn Colorado’s defensive line from an object of derision into an intimidating force of nature. The swagger was on full display Saturday against Texas Tech in a game won by Colorado 41-27.

The defense recorded seven sacks on Saturday. Fittingly, the game was sealed on a forced fumble that was scooped up by Shilo Sanders for the game’s final touchdown. Colorado’s defense currently ranks sixth in the Big 12 with 22 points allowed per game. The defense held Texas Tech to under 3 yards per carry on Saturday.

But Sapp’s influence goes beyond X’s and O’s. Like coach Deion Sanders, Sapp has infused Colorado with a spirit that runs hot. He brings passion, wisdom, and the ability to teach.

What’s funny is that the carefree Sapp didn’t really want to coach.

At least he thought he didn’t.  

“Oh, the hours were too long,” he said during a recent phone interview. “I’m like, ‘Hell, they spend more hours over there than the players do.’ “

It was Sanders who put coaching on Sapp’s radar when he took over as coach at Jackson State. Sanders asked Sapp to come to a practice and look at one of his best defensive linemen and tell him what he thought.

Sapp obliged and after he observed an interaction between the defensive line coach and the player, he concluded that what the young player needed was coaching. He needed someone who knew what he was doing, someone with the ability to impart knowledge and teach technique.

“He was cussing, not teaching,” Sapp said, referring to the defensive coach he observed.

After witnessing that practice, Sapp told Sanders that he wanted to coach. He had so much knowledge to impart. Many NFL defensive line coaches used Sapp’s tape to teach technique to their players. He knew he had much to offer.

Problem was, Sapp needed to complete his college degree.

Sapp had a spectacular Hall of Fame NFL career. He was named to the NFL’s 1990s and 2000s All-Decade teams. When it was time to go back and share his knowledge with college players, Sapp discovered he lacked the one credential he needed. While Sapp had spent four years at the University of Miami, he left for the NFL without earning that valuable piece of paper.

He told Sanders that he would take care of that problem.

“You know what? I said, ‘Don’t even worry about it. I’m going to get my degree. I want this,’ ” Sapp said.

Sapp earned a bachelor’s degree from Texas Seminary Christian University and is enrolled in graduate classes at Colorado. The entire experience made him committed to making certain that young players he coaches at Colorado don’t make the same mistake of focusing so much on football that they lose sight of the academic mission.

“Now when I say that to the kids, I tell them, ‘Hey, man, what’s up with your grades?’ ‘Oh, man, coach.’ I said, ‘Oh, man, my ass. You’re not going to be me at 50 years old going back to school. You’re going to take full advantage of this opportunity.’ ”

On the field, Sapp is teaching a master class in technique. Sapp was explosive as a defensive tackle, a master at getting into the offensive backfield in the blink of an eye. “I was disciplined and consistent,” he said. As a young player, he had been exposed to the technique of some of the greatest pass rushers in NFL history. Ultimately, he learned that he had to develop his own style. That’s what he teaches his Colorado players.

“What I realized is I have to play my game to my strengths, to my abilities,” Sapp said. “I can’t do what Johnny Randle did. I had to figure out a way to play my game.”

To make the point about individuality, he told players to watch a movie. “You know what I told them? I said, ‘Fellas, you ever seen The Tuskegee Airmen? It’s called the Walter Peoples Special. You got to make it up as you go along, but you got to be your own thing.’ “

The players watched The Tuskegee Airmen and paid special attention to Peoples, an airman who specialized in improvisation as a fighter pilot.

“They went and watched the movie, they were like, ‘Now I see what you said, coach.’ I said, ‘Yeah, the Walter Peoples Special, baby. They teach you a certain way to do things, but if you got another way to do it and you get it done, I ain’t going to do nothing but keep my arms folded.’ ”

If Colorado’s young players can learn from Sapp about what to do on the field, they can also learn from his life about what not to do off the field.

“Google is where you ask questions, Warren Sapp is where you get some answers,” he said. “All players have to do is Google Sapp’s name and it’s all there — all of the great and wonderful things he did on the football field and in his personal life section all of the mistakes Sapp made off the field.”

Sapp wants his players to see it all.

“Oh, no, I tell them this — and this was what my mother told me a long time ago — ‘Jesus Christ was the only perfect man to walk the Earth, and they hung him on a cross, so you and I are fair game.’

“What I can tell you is you can’t make every mistake in life. You can learn a lot from a dummy, and I got a bunch of missteps in my life that I can help you with. I promise you I’ll lay mine out in front of you, I’m an open book. I don’t hide from nothing I did. I don’t regret anything. Trust me, I know I’m dealing with 18- to 22-year-old young men who are going to make mistakes, who are going to do some silly stuff. What I’m trying to do is let them know, ‘Don’t allow a 30-second decision to affect the next 30 years of your life, please.’ That’s why we are in the position we’re in, to be able to think, maneuver, use the resources we have to make today and tomorrow a better day.”

There are plenty of former pro players who have great experience but not everyone knows how to coach. Sapp is learning the art of coaching.

“The biggest thing I do is I listen,” he said. “I know this from having six kids. They’re not all the same. They each learn differently, they each have different things that turn them on, turn them off, different things that they drift to, different things that they rebel against. You have to be able to relate.”

The difference between last year’s Colorado team and this year is night and day. Especially in the trenches, where the offensive line and especially the defensive line have assumed a ruggedness and swagger that they lacked last season.

Sapp said the difference between last year and this year is that the players are playing for each other. Despite being made up of a number of transfers, the unit has jelled.

“We speak in one beat, and we speak together,” Sapp said. “It’s 11 men that will play this thing the proper way.”

In one meeting, Sapp said he told players “Fellas, I got a bust, a full 6-foot, 200-, 300-pound statue in Tampa. My name appears in three NFL stadiums, and one of them on a Saturday. It’s not about me.

“Warren Sapp is a badass, but if you put me out there on that football field by myself, they’ll run circles around me. I can’t do it by myself. Nobody can. Lawrence Taylor by himself, Reggie White, Bruce Smith with 200 sacks, by himself is going to get circles ran around him. But when you have a collection of 10 other men and you, you say, ‘Not today, I believe in you.’ ”

Sapp also preaches player to player accountability and that has showed up throughout the season. On Saturday, there were instances when Colorado players were confronting each other after blown assignments. This, Sapp believes, is as it should be.

“I drove Ronde Barber crazy all the way to the Hall of Fame,” he said referring to the Hall of Fame defensive back who was his teammate in Tampa. “Trust me. I told him he wasn’t good enough to play for us, and he ain’t going to play for us until he gets his stuff together. That’s how y’all should be about your teammates. If your teammate ain’t doing what they supposed to do, you supposed to get on them, you supposed to look at them sideways, because you are the one that’s going to be sitting around in five months like, ‘Damn, we threw away a brilliant opportunity.’ ”

Colorado was picked 11th in the preseason Big 12 poll. After Saturday’s victory, Colorado is 7-2 overall (5-1 in the Big 12). The Buffaloes find themselves in second place in the Big 12 standings behind BYU. Colorado is on track to play in the Big 12 championship game.

The Buffaloes close with Utah, Kansas and Oklahoma State. Those teams have a combined 3-14 record in Big 12 play.

Sapp preaches that players must stay focused on the moment.

“Don’t look up at the work,” he said. “Keep your head down, your nose down, keep grinding, and then all of a sudden, when you look up, you’ll be in the biggest spotlight you ever seen in your life.

“You’ll be in the biggest flourish field you’ve ever seen in your life. Everything you want in life will be right there for you.”

Sapp was a member of the Tampa Bay team that won Super Bowl XXXVII under Jon Gruden in 2003, beating the Oakland Raiders 48-21. Sapp wanted to make Tony Dungy the first African American coach to win a Super Bowl title, but Dungy was fired as coach of the Buccaneers after the 2001-02 season, a season before the Buccaneers won the championship.

Now he wants to make history with Sanders.

“What I have a chance to do, what I couldn’t do in the National Football League, is hand a Black coach a championship,” he said, referring to Dungy. “I had a chance to hand him the trophy, and we missed it by a sliver, but I won’t miss this one. I won’t miss a chance to get the first Black head coach an NCAA championship. We’re going to get this done.”

And that is the gospel according to Warren Sapp.