FORT COLLINS — As Mountain West pageant contestants go, the Cinderella Rams walked the stage in a ball gown and combat boots. But the boot they grabbed on Friday night, Bronze and beautiful, fit Jay Norvell like a pair of glass slippers.
“Looks like the right foot to me,” Norvell said, surveying the spoils, his first as CSU’s football coach, of the Rams’ gritty 24-10 win over Wyoming.
A CSU staffer during the postgame news conference had placed the Bronze Boot, beloved prize for the winner of Rams-Cowboys since 1968 and the most gorgeous right foot in Fort Fun, in front of Norvell. Just within arm’s reach, close enough to touch.
“Our football team reminds me of my college years at Iowa when our guys just fought for each other … they didn’t care who got the credit. They weren’t worried about stats,” said Norvell, whose Rams (7-3, 5-0 MW) beat Wyoming for the first time since 2020. “They just wanted to not let their teammates down.
“And that’s rare in football right now … you know, in this era of transfer portal and NIL, there’s a lot of selfishness in college football. And to have a bunch of guys fight for each other and prepare for each other and not want to let each other down in competition, it doesn’t happen every weekend.”
For the fifth straight weekend, CSU won a league game, something that hasn’t happened here since 2014. Three coaches ago. That was also the last season in which the Rams had beaten the Pokes, at home, in front of a paying crowd.
Canvas on Friday night was sold out. After the final cannon shot, many of those thousands stuck around to storm the field. Same joy as the party after The Holy Holker win over Boise State a year ago, only that celebration was shared by dozens.
“And what a special ending that game was,” Norvell cracked, “and there was nobody here to see it.”
Everybody saw this one. Everybody important to Norvell, at any rate. A full stadium. A scarred, sometimes skeptical fan base. CSU athletic director John Weber, a proud alum, floated into the postgame news conference riding a victor’s grin.
“What we were talking about before the game is like, we love each other way more than we hate Wyoming,” safety Henry Blackburn, one of only a handful of current Rams who’d ever lifted the Boot before, said after the game. “And we love each other so much that we’ll do it. We’ll put our bodies on the line. We’ll do anything to get a win.”
Yeah, the Cowboys (2-8, 2-4 MW) are a hot mess. The Pokes might not have hit 20 points against the Rams if you spotted them the first 14.
But CSU has found mojo. A formula. And, more importantly, a collective, steel trust that the first two are going to work.
Sure, firing on all cylinders early and a second half of punting and hanging on for dear life probably wouldn’t fly against Boise State, just as it didn’t against Texas or CU. But all you’re asking of the next two weeks — at Fresno State on Nov. 23, home to Utah State on Nov. 29 — is for that mantra to get you to the Mountain West title game. For it to get you within shouting distance of a chance to shock the world.
Tailbacks Justin Marshall and Avery Morrow, CSU’s 1-2 punch, combined for 188 rushing yards while BFN poked and prodded for 197 passing yards, completing 14 of 17 attempts, including a gorgeous 53-yard TD to walk-on wideout Tommy Maher just after halftime.
Defense, offensive line, chewing gum and piano wire. It ain’t pretty. But it ain’t broke, either.
And if you’re Norvell, you don’t apologize for a rivalry win, however ungainly. Especially when it happens in front of a sellout crowd at Canvas — a stadium Norvell needs to keep filling.
The third-year CSU coach certainly knew the stakes. Norvell was seen in the tunnel before the tilt with arms in the air, trying to fire up the crowd as he led the Rams onto the field. That fire spilled out into the opening drive, which saw the hosts ground, pound and march 75 yards on 11 plays in 3:31 to take a quick 7-0 lead.
In hindsight, it was a grass-kicking with asterisks. CSU’s training staff was a little too busy as temperatures fell and big hits cranked up. Morrow got shaken up a few times and missed much of the second half. Center Jacob Gardner, same deal. Kicker Jordan Noyes was wide left from 44 yards out in the first quarter and short from 57 yards early in the fourth.
CSU should’ve put the Pokes away for good with a minute left in the first half, leading 17-3 with four downs at the Wyoming 5. But two attempts by Marshall and one from Morrow were stoned, and on fourth-and-goal at the 1, the Rams fumbled away a jet sweep that opened up an escape hatch for the stumbling, how-are-they-still-in-this Cowboys.
Then again, when you haven’t touched the Bronze Boot in four years, style points are for jerks and pedants.
The win even had a little extra historical oomph in that Friday was also the last Border War game in FoCo until 2028. The first break in the series since World War II looms in the fall of 2026.
CSU and Wyoming have been conference brethren since the Rams joined the WAC in 1968. But that’ll change in two years thanks to a Mountain West exodus in which four members, including CSU, will split from the former and join the new-look Pac-12.
Kass Sprague of Laramie spoke for a lot of Cowboys fans in the second quarter as she raised a frosty beer in a cold hand to toast the Battle for the Boot.
“That’s (expletive),” Sprague said of the series going dark in 2026 and ’27. “It’s the best rivalry in sports, so it does make me sad. I feel like all of these conference switches are doing away with all the good rivalries.”
That said, she also doesn’t blame the Rams for jumping at an offer from Oregon State and Washington State, the two schools left holding the bag that featured the Pac-12 name, its broadcast rights and settlement payouts.
“I think it’s kind of stupid,” she said. “I don’t think they’re going to gain anything from it … you get it, but whatever.”
“They just hate each other,” Anthony Stoeter, a Wyoming fan and UW law student from Pensacola, Fla., told me just before halftime, “but they also kind of love each other. It’s kind of cool.”
So’s this: This past Thursday, the Rams and Pokes jointly announced an eight-year contract for the Battle of the Bronze Boot — as a non-conference series — that starts in three seasons and runs through 2035.
“It’s just — we’re a small state, a small (campus) town,” Sprague said of Wyoming. “And it’s really cool to beat them — beat the sheep, basically.”
As we bid adieu, that option looked to be off the table.
The opening 30 minutes was largely a green and gold party. The Rammies led at the break in total yards (274 to 61), first downs (12 to four), rushing yards (151 to 40) and passing yards (123 to 41). A 14-point deficit flattered the Cowboys, who were gashed for a 38-yard run by Marshall on the second play from scrimmage and staggered for most of the next two stanzas.
“FIRST AND GOAL, RAMS!” the public address announcer shouted above us.
“Well, (expletive),” Kass said. “I guess they might win this one.”
“Think they might,” I laughed.
She took another sip.
“It’s all right,” Sprague continued. “But it’s the first one (since 2020), so I’ll allow it.”
In truth, it shouldn’t have been that close. But if you’re Norvell, of course, you take it. Take it and run.
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