'They Made It Personal!' Deion Rival Backpedaling on Colorado Criticism?

"When they give us ammunition, they done messed around and made it worse," Dallas Cowboys icon Deion Sanders says of criticism of his Colorado program. "It was just gonna be a good game, but they done messed around and made it personal!''

FRISCO - Colorado State head coach Jay Norvell, ahead of Saturday's in-state rivalry game against Colorado and coach Deion Sanders, "gave us ammunition,'' Sanders said, and "made it personal!''

And now - probably doing so too late - Norvell seems to backpedalling.

Sanders, the Dallas Cowboys and NFL legend, has his Buffs starting his career in Boulder with a 2-0 record. He has done so with his signature style - which is not for everybody, admittedly (see "Dirty Legacy'') - right down to his wardrobe that often consists of a hat and sunglasses. Oddly, Norvell opted to make that wardrobe an issue of pregame public debate.

“They’re tired of all that stuff,” he said of his team having to hear about CU hype. “They really are tired of it. And I sat down with ESPN today, and I don’t care if they hear it in Boulder. I told them, ‘I took my hat off, and I took my glasses off.’ And I said, ‘When I talk to grown-ups, I take my hat and my glasses off.’ That’s what my mother taught me.”

Was Norvell disrespecting Sanders? That seems pretty obvious to Sanders' players, who were already 23-point favorites but now seek vengeance against the "non-believers'' and the "receipt-makers'' and anybody who would dare bring up somebody else's mama.

Along comes ESPN's Rece Davis, though, suggesting that Norvell wasn't calling out Deion at all, but was simply sending a message to his players. And Norvell is sort of nodding his head to that concept.

Rece Davis gave his take on Jay Norvell’s comments yesterday ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/KwIvJssYmo

— Nikki Edwards (@nikkiedwardsss) September 15, 2023

"With all the media involved with this game, not one reporter asked me about my comments. One guy got it," Norvell said. "I wanted to send a message to our players and how we run our program."

Yeah, but ... why send a message to Colorado State by dissing Deion, his sunglasses and the way he was raised?

Said Sanders, who will be center stage when the game kicks off on ESPN at 9 p.m. CT: "Why would you want to talk about us when we don't talk about nobody? All we do here is work our butts off and do our job on Saturdays, but when they give us ammunition, they done messed around and made it worse. It was just gonna be a good game, but they done messed around and made it personal!''