While they were not on the field together, CSU football coach Jay Norvell and CU football coach Deion Sanders have gone head-to-head before – in an NFL game nearly 24 years ago.
In a Halloween matchup between the Indianapolis Colts and the Dallas Cowboys in 1999, Norvell was coaching the Colts’ receivers as they went up against the Cowboys’ star defensive back, Sanders.
The Colts-Cowboys game is believed to be the only time a Norvell team and a Sanders team played head-to-head – at least until this year’s Rocky Mountain Showdown between the Rams and Buffaloes on Sept. 16 in Boulder.
When asked about the October 1999 game, Norvell said he didn’t recall much about it, probably because that was the week his son was born.
But the Colts’ 34-24 comeback win (Dallas once led 17-3) on Oct. 31, 1999, was memorable for several reasons:
• Sanders had an impressive punt return for 76 yards where he juked several defenders, but he was tackled two yards shy of the end zone by Colts punter Hunter Smith.
• The Cowboys scored a play later, but Sanders missed the next defensive series and was seen talking to the medical staff and inhaling oxygen. Smith said in an interview after the game that he landed on Sanders really hard, and Colts receivers Terrence Wilkins and Marvin Harrison did well against Sanders after that.
• Wilkins, then a rookie free agent, had five catches for 60 yards, including two long catches against the Hall of Famer Sanders. Harrison, who broke out that year to lead the NFL in receiving yards with 1,663, had six grabs for 85 yards and a touchdown. Norvell later wrote a book on coaching wide receivers.
• Harrison blew past Sanders for a 40-yard go-ahead TD pass from Manning. “I’m peeking in the backfield,” Sanders told indystar.com afterwards, saying he was fooled by Manning’s fake handoff. “I looked back there, and Marvin ran a deep post for six, man.”
• At the time, Sanders’ position coach in Dallas was Mike Zimmer, the former head coach of the Minnesota Vikings who Sanders recently hired to join his staff at CU.
• The game was the only NFL matchup between Hall of Fame quarterbacks Troy Aikman and Peyton Manning. While Aikman was held to 159 passing and was sacked four times, Manning had big day, posting 313 yards and a touchdown as the Colts racked up 419 total yards of offense.
