Breaking: Jay Norvell fired by Colorado State

Colorado State has fired Jay Norvell after a 2-5 start to the season. An inside source confirmed the news to DNVR on Sunday morning.

The 62-year-old football coach was in his fourth year with the Rams and had an overall record of 18-26 over 44 games with the Green & Gold. After falling 31-19 to Hawaii, though, CSU’s second significant loss to the Warriors in three years, the administration decided that they had seen enough.

Although he inherited a disastrous situation and deserves credit for the work he did to help bolster key areas like the trenches and skill positions, there just seemed to be a hump that Norvell’s teams were unable to get over from a competitive standpoint. 

The Rams did beat Boise State for the first time in school history under Norvell back in 2023. The problem is that CSU choked with a chance to upset CU after out-playing the Buffs for much of the night. And then the Rams proceeded to do the same exact thing against UNLV before dropping two more rivalry games and ultimately missing out on bowl eligibility after getting walked off in a wonky loss against Hawaii in the regular season finale. 

There was some redemption in 2024 with the first 8-win season in a decade and first bowl bid since 2017. CSU also beat Air Force and Wyoming for the first time since 2015, which included the first victory in Colorado Springs since 2002. The problem was that the campaign did little to help Norvell’s perception with the fans because despite some of the boxes they did check, the Rams both started and ended the year in an embarrassing fashion. 

Nobody expected to go into Texas and win, but seeing the team essentially punt on the matchup was understandably tough for the masses to get behind in year three, even if there was some logic to trying to shorten the game. The performance against CU, though, in the first Rocky Mountain Showdown in Fort Collins since 1996, was what really did him in. It was the most anticipated home game in the history of Canvas Stadium and the Rams just completely laid an egg. It left a stink that never really went away, especially after also blowing the game in Fresno with a shot at the Mountain West Championship on the line, and then getting blasted by a MAC team in front of one of the better travel crowds I’ve ever seen from CSU alumni at the 2024 Arizona Bowl.

Coming off that awful showing in Tucson last winter, CSU needed to start the year with a bang. The Rams needed a September to remember and instead it was another brutal showing. In four years under Norvell, CSU went 5-11 in the opening month with the average margin of defeat being 24 points. And had CSU not lucked out with the controversial overturned catch against Northern Colorado, the program would have been 0-4 for the second time in four years. After the showing that the Rams had in front of an epic Homecoming crowd on Saturday night, it just reached a point where the admin could no longer sell the product to the fans.

While things didn’t work out as intended, on paper Norvell was a great hire back in 2021. He’d just led Nevada to four bowl bids in five years and was even coming off of a blowout victory over Steve Addazio that cost ‘the dude’ his job. He had a proven track record of success within the Mountain West and was eager for the opportunity to work at an institution that truly prioritized football. 

A lot like you could argue with some of the close losses suffered in the first three years of the Mike Bobo era, things might have been different had just one or two key games gone the other way. Games that were there for the taking and had a chance to be program-defining victories, but instead proved to be the moments that showed what type of ceiling there was going to be. 

I enjoyed my interactions with Norvell over the years and have respect for the way that he was such an active participant in the community. He did a lot to repair relationships with alumni of the football program as well, bringing former CSU stars back to speak with the team the night before every game. It was night and day from the attitude of the previous regime and it’s worth bringing up when looking back on the entirety of the Norvell era. 

At the end of the day, while I can say a lot of nice things about the kind of guy Norvell is, winning is what will always matter most and he just unfortunately didn’t do enough of it. With what CSU is committing to athletics and a university that has legitimate championship aspirations, the standard has been elevated from what it was even a half-decade ago. John Weber (AD) has been unapologetic about his ambitions for all of the programs in Fort Collins and none of them have a bigger spotlight than football. 

While the future now is up in the air for CSU, the position should be an attractive gig considering what CSU is willing to spend to try and compete at the highest level. The facilities are in place, the institutional support is there, and the move to the Pac-12 opens up an opportunity to make some noise in a league that will at the very least receive some attention for being new.