Nevada head coach Jay Norvell during the game against Kansas State on Sept. 18, 2021, in Manhattan, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
Don’t be shocked to see a giant red cross painted on the side of Mackay Stadium or on the middle of the field this Friday night. Both the Nevada Wolf Pack and Colorado State Rams football teams, after all, are certainly in need of some disaster relief. You can donate blood, money, clothing or a pass play that actually works, if you are so inclined.
If you look hard enough, you might also see a plaque at Mackay that reads, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” There also might be some leftover Civil War, World War I or II military hospital tents in the parking lot, you know, just in case things get ugly. That’s how weak, wretched and hobbled both teams’ offenses are right now. The Wolf Pack is 123rd out of 131 FBS teams in total offense at 280.4 yards a game. The Rams are the worst in the nation at 241.8 yards a game.
Yes, members of the clergy will be waiting on both sidelines prepared to give last rites, if necessary, to both teams’ offenses. Colorado State has the worst rushing offense in the nation at 46 yards a game. The Wolf Pack has the 120th passing offense at 147.2 yards a game. Just two teams in the country have fewer than the Pack’s two touchdown passes. Colorado State has allowed the most sacks (6.25 a game) in the country. The Rams’ running game is averaging an embarrassing 1.4 yards a carry. If this was a boxing match, the Nevada State Athletic Commission wouldn’t dare sanction it.
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The Nevada-Colorado War began last December with a bunch of deserters abandoning the Wolf Pack army for Colorado State. Wolf Pack General Jay Norvell abandoned his post in Nevada (after defeating the Colorado State army, strangely enough) to join the green shirts (complete with dollar signs) in Colorado. He also took with him more than a dozen Nevada soldiers and recruits.
But now Norvell is getting a taste of his own selfish coaching karma, as eight of his green shirts have abandoned his Colorado State army since the season started. One of them, wide receiver Melquan Stovall, went with Norvell in the dark of the night last winter from Nevada to Colorado State. Some deserters in real armies get shot. In college football they just head to the transfer portal.
Norvell even issued a good-riddance message this week to those that have left his Rams’ program. “This really actually makes us stronger,” he said. “We’re in a much better place as a football team. The locker room is a lot closer.” Spoken like a true turncoat general whose army is now in retreat.
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Norvell is four games into his Colorado State career and is still searching for his first victory. Talk about coaching karma. And, of course, none of this is Norvell’s fault. Just ask him. College coaches, after all, never are to blame for anything that goes wrong. It’s the players, after all, who aren’t executing. It’s the players who are not living up to their scholarships. And it’s the players, Norvell said, that are not loyal to the cause. But Norvell is no different from any other pampered, overpaid, overhyped coach that has been given the keys to the university. Just ask them. The plays work. You can trust the plays and the system. It’s the players who are not working and can’t be trusted. Just ask Norvell.
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Stovall’s decision to leave Norvell a couple weeks back is a bit stunning and a sure sign of trouble in the Rams’ house. Stovall, after all, spent three years in Nevada with Norvell. He willingly jumped into the moving van last December and relocated to Colorado State. And Stovall was doing at Colorado State precisely what he was doing at Nevada. He was a solid, complementary wide receiver in a pass-happy offense, catching 13 passes in just three games.
But Stovall didn’t last a month into his first season at Colorado State. What changed? If you ask Norvell, it’s Stovall and the others who left the Rams this season, that changed.
“We were depending on players we probably couldn’t depend on,” Norvell said this week. Didn’t Nevada say the same about Norvell last December?
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Wolf Pack coach Ken Wilson hinted this week that Norvell told Nevada players last winter to not play in the Wolf Pack’s bowl game last December or to declare for the NFL draft. Norvell didn’t deny doing so and refused to even talk about it this week. A couple of former Nevada players (wide receiver Tory Horton and quarterback Clay Millen) now at Colorado State said this week that Norvell did not tell anybody to skip the bowl game or jump to the NFL. None of the dozen or so Pack players that jumped to Colorado State, however, played in the Pack bowl game. But that was just a coincidence, right?
Another ex-Pack player now at Colorado State (Jacob Gardner) refused to talk about it. “I’m a football player,” Gardner said. “I just want to play football.”
One current Wolf Pack player (JoJuan Claiborne) who played for Norvell at Nevada even went onto social media this week to defend Norvell and blame the players who left for Colorado State. This is the sort of back-room, shady maneuvering that goes on in college sports these days. Yes, of course, it always took place on some level but now it is over-the-top, in-your-face selfishness and greed. Get used to it. It’s only going to get worse.
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Another two college football head coaching jobs with Norvell connections opened up this week. First it was Arizona State and Nebraska, two schools Norvell once served as an assistant. And this week it was Wisconsin, where Norvell grew up and once was an assistant coach, and Colorado. Norvell never coached at Colorado but he is now in the neighborhood and he once was an assistant at UCLA for the head coach (Karl Dorrell) that Colorado fired. Norvell, by the way, was with Dorrell the year (2007) he got fired at UCLA and now he shows up in the state of Colorado and Dorrell is fired a month into the season. Coincidence or coaching karma?
If Norvell was still in Nevada right now would he be interested in Nebraska, Arizona State, Wisconsin and Colorado? Are you kidding? This is a guy who left Nevada for a meaningless school (Colorado State) in a meaningless conference he already called home. You bet he’d be interested in a Power Five job. If there was a transfer portal for coaches, Norvell likely would have jumped in with both feet already. But he was like a 6-year-old boy in a candy store with a 10-dollar bill in his pocket last December. He bought the first candy bar he could reach. Call the openings at Nebraska, Arizona State, Wisconsin and Colorado more coaching karma coming back to haunt him.
The moral of this story is that if you are a head coach at a school where Norvell was once an assistant, you should be concerned right now. Even if you are a head coach at a school not connected to Norvell (like Dorrell) that once had Norvell on your staff, you should also be a bit worried about your job. Norvell, it seems, is being visited in the middle of the night this year by the ghosts of his assistant coaching past. And those who came into contact with him are paying the price.
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