We love, we hate. And can’t wait for the next time embrace both.

Are we really surprised it has come to this?

When you’re a disrupter, an outlier, this is how the story goes. Sides are drawn, the outside nonsense overshadows the inside work, and it invariably heads down a familiar road.

Everybody wants a piece of the traveling Colorado circus Deion Sanders has built, everyone wants to glom on for their own selfish reasons.

Earlier this week on one of those typically annoying television gab shows where they scream to hear themselves scream, Keyshawn Johnson said he heard from friend who knew a coach, who knew a member of the Oregon staff.

And — hold onto your hat, everyone — other assistant coaches in college football were feeding Oregon scouting information about Colorado before last week’s game.

Heavens, what will we ever do?

In other words, what Key was trying to insinuate — awkwardly and stupidly, yet oddly effective to those ignorant of facts — is other coaches are so jealous of Sanders and what he has built so quickly as coach at Colorado, they’re banning together to beat him.

Meanwhile, Fox decided to take its traveling pregame show to Boulder, Colo., again this week — hours after Colorado’s 36-point loss to Oregon.

And after the USC-Colorado game draws 9 million viewers (every other Colorado game has), and after USC covers another 3-touchdown spread, the bean counters at Fox will stare at the Colorado schedule for the next town, the next stop, of the Colorado circus.

Deion wanted this. He strolled — wait, he swagged — into Colorado wearing his Burberry and Gucci and declared he was bringing his Louis with him.

How did anyone think this was going to end?

But here’s the one thing we’ve all missed after 4 weeks of the college football season: Colorado is right about where it should be, considering the roster restructure — and that it’s playing with 1 of the top 5 quarterbacks in the game.

The upset of TCU was fantastic, a combination of coaching and motivation and the 2 best players on the field (QB Shedeur Sanders, CB/WR Travis Hunter). Other than that, the season has gone right down the middle.

Beat the teams you should because you have the better roster (Nebraska and Colorado State), struggle on the road against the better team with a better roster (Oregon), especially without your potential 2-way All-American.

But this isn’t about football anymore. This is about the menagerie coming to town, and blowing everything out of proportion.

Everyone wants a piece of Prime. The good and the bad, the envious and the curious.

Johnson was a No. 1 overall NFL Draft pick, an elite player in college football and the NFL. And he’s throwing out that garbage — when he knows assistant coaches have spoken to each other about opponents since Rutgers and Princeton kicked it off in 1869.

It doesn’t end there. Now there’s a video circulating on social media — the death of our society — where Deion’s son Shilo, an elite defensive back for the Buffs, is telling Oregon players before last week’s game, “I’ll beat the f— out of every one of y’all and your coach. … We finna run through y’all ass.”

The typical response from the sewer that is social media: Deion did this. This is what he is producing at Colorado.

Except there’s one teeny-weeny problem: These things happen every game, at every stadium, between every team, on every Saturday.

But because Shilo is part of the Colorado circus, it has become part of the freak show. You love it, you hate it — and you aren’t going to miss it.

In the process of doing everything he could to transform the Buffs — and why, I ask, is his plan any worse than any other new coach? — even Deion couldn’t have seen this nonsense coming.

At the end of the day, this is about football. About blocking and tackling, and somebody making a play when it’s 3rd-and-long and the road environment is nearly untenable.

Sanders and his staff took the worst Power 5 team last season and transformed it into a working, functioning collection of players who didn’t know each other (nearly 80 of the 85 scholarship players didn’t play at CU in 2022) yet found a way to begin the season with 3 wins in 4 games. This from a program that won 1 game last season and has produced 1 winning season in the past 16.

That’s what we should be staring at in middle of the Big Top. Not the 800-pound man or the bearded lady. Or any other nonsensical collateral flak.

We should be staring at the family on the high wire, and how they got there and where they’re headed. Because if you think this is a weekend show never to return, you clearly haven’t been watching this thing play out.

Sanders is a ball coach. He’s an elite recruiter, a motivator and a change agent all rolled into one.

The Buffs may not win 6 games to reach bowl eligibility, and if they do, it will be a remarkable coaching job by Sanders and his staff. A rare and successful execution of something never before seen in college football: the complete gutting of a roster.

Other coaches aren’t jealous of it; they’re intrigued by it. Because inside that Big Top tent could be another way to gain an advantage, to find a way to win a game that maybe they shouldn’t.

At the end of the day, that’s what this is all about. Winning and losing.

And love it or hate, you’re not going to miss it.