Nebraska Football: Former Husker coach all about disrespecting Deion Sanders

While Deion Sanders wants people to know that they shouldn’t disrespect him, one former Nebraska football coach has no problem speaking his mind.

The Deion Sanders hype has only gotten bigger since the Colorado Buffaloes blew out the Nebraska football team last weekend. That’s pretty eyebrow-raising considering the hype was already pretty ridiculous.

Sanders has done a good job boosting that hype himself by pretending that CU’s game against the Nebraska football program was “personal” because head coach Matt Rhule supposedly said some disrespectful things about “Coach Prime” during the offseason. For Rhule’s part, he’s basically said that was nonsense.

Former Nebraska football assistant Jay Norvell isn’t going to be able to make that claim after his comments this week.

Norvell, in fact, has no compunction about disrespecting Deion Sanders. The second-year Colorado State head coach seemed intent on making things personal, in fact.

In appearances in front of the media this week, Norvell took a direct shot at his in-state rival coach.

"“When I talk to grownups, I take my hate and my glasses off. That’s what my mother told me.”"

Call it sour grapes. Call it still being angry over what happened on Saturday and the ridiculous comments he and his kids made after the game. But I can’t help but love that a former Nebraska football coach had no problems calling out Sanders.

Ex-Nebraska football coach takes shot at Coach Prime

On the other hand, it’s a bit of a weird approach for the coach of a team that went 3-9 last year, got run out of the stadium in their first game this year and is a 23 point dog to Colorado.

Maybe Norvell thinks if he can get in Sanders’ head enough he and his players will make a mistake. There’s an argument to be made that Norvell has nothing to lose there. Either he gets blown out like he was going to anyway, or he catches a Colorado team that is off-kilter because they want to teach Colorado State a lesson.

If getting into Deion’s head was the goal, Norvell accomplished that one.

I for one will be rooting for the former Nebraska football assistant who came to Lincoln during Bill Callahan’s regime. Novell was the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks’ coach for the Cornhuskers from 2004 to 2006.

After being fired along with Callahan and most of the rest of that staff, he hooked on with UCLA, Texas, Oklahoma, and Arizona State as an assistant. In 2017, he was named the head coach of the Nevada Wolfpack and forged a 33-26 record. In 2022 he took over the head job at Colorado State.