CSU Rams football did Joe Parker in. Jay Norvell must beat Coach Prime to avoid same fate.

Beat Deion. Oh, there’s more meat on the “goals” section of Jay Norvell’s 2024-25 job review, sure. But those are the two most important words. The mantra. The mission statement. (Followed closely, you’d imagine, by “Beat. Wyoming. Now.”)

CSU football is the biggest fish in a small pond that still can’t swim when it counts. Year 3 always felt like a make-or-break moment for Norvell in FoCo, given a 5-7 mark last fall that missed a ton of chances to be 6-6 or 7-5, and a program bowl-less streak that’s chewed like a boll weevil through seven years, three coaches, two athletic directors and one pandemic.

But with the man who hired him, former Rams athletic director Joe Parker, relieved of his duties over President’s Day Weekend, the clock for the affable Norvell starts ticking a little … louder.

Beat Deion. It all comes down to Sept. 14, doesn’t it? Parker needed Jay to land this bird. As his boss, he could run interference. Stress patience. Caucus green and gold eyeballs staring at a half-something glass toward the “half-full” camp.

That protection’s gone now. Toast. Finito. Rammies football has come a long way in two-and-a-half years, although, granted, the Steve Addazio Era (R.I.P.) also set a pitifully low bar for Norvell to clear. Interim athletic director John Weber, as many Rams do, likely sees in Norvell a genuine leader with noble intentions who’s lurching this train forward again. But Weber also sees a record of 8-16 through 24 games and, most importantly, an 0-5 mark in rivalry tilts. A peerless front porch and an empty trophy case.

Beat Deion. CU visits Canvas Stadium, the beautiful house the Rammies built as a play for Power 5 — sorry, Power 4 — status that never came, for the first time in mid-September. They’re bringing the circus with them. Deion Sanders and his Buffs are going to keep loading up through the portal for as long as the NCAA will let ’em. CU’s shoving every chip it can afford to the center of the table like it’s a walk year, in order to maximize the final collegiate seasons of Shedeur Sanders and Shilo Sanders, Deion’s sons, and their respective NFL draft stocks. Although maybe not in that particular order.

Beat Deion. If Norvell can notch CSU’s first Rocky Mountain Showdown win since 2014, the load of those first two seasons lightens considerably. Weber — or Weber’s successor — and CSU president Amy Parsons ain’t messing around here. Parker, who hired Norvell, was one of his leading advocates and best defenses against a sea of angry alumni waving buyout checks. Those shields are gone, too.

Football drives this train. Always has. Rams faithful feel like they’ve paid a king’s ransom, only to get taken for a ride and driven off the nearest cliff.

Addazio was a disaster on so many levels — football, player engagement, player development, culture, accountability, workplace politics, basic human decency — that had Monday’s announcement come around, say, Christmas 2021, it wouldn’t have felt remotely out of step.

Parker brought in Urban Meyer to help clean up Mike Bobo’s mess. Only Urby looked out for his old buddy Daz first, FoCo third, and Parker somewhere between seventh and 12th. To paraphrase noted undergraduate philosopher Eric Stratton, like Flounder in the NSFW classic “Animal House,” Joe messed up. He trusted him.

“Over the last year, I have spent time assessing and evaluating our athletics program,” Parsons said via a curious university statement, “and navigating the rapidly changing landscape will require a new style of leadership … the world of intercollegiate athletics is going through a time of unprecedent(ed) change and volatility.”

So Weber, the guy who ran The Green & Gold Guard, CSU’s collective, becomes the one running the whole ship. Which, you’ve gotta admit, skips straight past the subtext and plants a flag right on the point.

Player power was a good, necessary and inevitable revolution. But the sad, predictable thing about college football’s current Thunderdome/Fury Road phase is that even if all the wink-wink crapola that used to be under the table is out in the open, the Mad Maxes with the fattest checkbooks are still the ones calling the shots.

College football, like too many pillars of our government, was always a proud, raging, unabashed plutocracy. It’s just more of a legal one now. And as with the men and women of Congress, our football coaches these days spend more time ginning up the locals and passing the donation plate and less time doing their actual jobs.

At first blush, Weber fits. He’s a CSU alum. He’s Stalwart to the marrow. He’s a uniter, well-liked. He is, in the words of his LinkedIn bio, “a dynamic and proven entrepreneurial leader with a well-rounded and diverse engineering, consulting, marketing, sales and management background.”