This week ESPN College GameDay is setting up shop in Boulder, Colorado, for Prime University’s cakewalk game against Colorado State. Colorado is a 23-point favorite, but the Worldwide Leader needs a reason to jump on the Deion bandwagon before it loses steam once the schedule tightens. Even before the season, when expectations for the Buffaloes were more modest, Colorado State was one of the predicted wins on Colorado’s last Pac-12 schedule.
Colorado State head coach Jay Norvell should take this opportunity to highlight his program. Instead, Norvell made a transparent joke about the Colorado coach’s style and mannerisms during his weekly radio show Wednesday night.
“I don’t care if they hear it in Boulder,” Norvell said. “I told them I had taken off my hat and glasses. I said when I talk to adultsI take off my hat and my glasses. My mother taught me that. [Colorado’s] We will not be liked no matter what we say or do.”
WHO does he mean by this? 247The best school prospects for etiquette in sports? More importantly, it won’t win Norvell any brownie points from the teen blue chip demographic, among which Deion is much more popular, and talk is Prime’s home base. He’s vengeful, loud and… a verbal locomotive whose mouth won’t stop running. If anyone is going to give him a comeuppance, it will be when he starts standing up to the big dogs. And when a shih tzu starts barking in his direction, you already know Sanders is going to use that as coal to burn.
Not only are Jay Norvell’s words message board material for a team that will smoke them and is always looking for external content to fuel the fire internally, but he went after Sanders for corny and trivial reasons.
A hat and sunglasses. Even if you agree with him, is that really where your focus should be? This is undisciplined messaging at best and obnoxious policing of social etiquette at worst. Norvell may not care about challenging the West’s fastest punch king, but his players certainly do. If I’m a Colorado State player today, we’ll be holding a players-only meeting to address our Group of Five conference coach who set us up by fielding a more talented Pac-12 team for a primetime ESPN matchup. I’d rather run a gasifier at four in the morning
The best thing you can say about Colorado State football right now is that it is currently a one-loss program. Unfortunately, that one loss came two weeks ago in a 50-24 shellacking of Washington State. Norvell’s first season at Colorado State resulted in a 3-9 campaign.
Jay isn’t even the best Norvell. Seminole Mike has locked down that claim.
Sometimes Sanders is an unpaid comedian. And in others, his desire for revenge is central. We’re talking about a coach who demanded loyalty from reporters who doubted his program AFTER WEEK 1! He once complained that he wasn’t referred to as “couch” by reporters because he is owed the same professional respect as doctors. We saw it when, as a Braves outfielder, he poured buckets of ice water on Tim McCarver during the Atlanta Braves’ NL Championship win because the announcer criticized him for playing two professional sports in one day. Nature or nurture, he also passed it on to the next generation. His son and starting quarterback Shadeur Sanders used vague comments Matt Rhule made months ago about Deion’s extreme roster turnover and turned that “disrespect” into the motivation behind their loss to the Nebraska Cornhuskers.
Ultimately, personalizing everything will result in Deion Sanders’ growing program being humbled against a college football giant, but it won’t go against Colorado State.
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