FORT COLLINS – As the Mountain West parade participants walked to the stage, the Cinderella Rams walked onto the stage in a ball gown and combat boots. But the boot they grabbed Friday night, bronze and beautiful, fit Jay Norvell like a pair of glass slippers.

“Seems like the right foot to me,” Norvell said as he surveyed the return, his first as CSU football coach, of the Rams’ gritty 24-10 victory over Wyoming.

A CSU employee had placed the Bronze Boot, beloved award for the Rams-Cowboys winner since 1968 and the most beautiful right foot in Fort Fun, for Norvell during the postgame news conference. Just within reach, close enough to touch.

“Our football team reminds me of my college days at Iowa when our guys just fought for each other…they didn’t care who got the credit. They weren’t worried about the stats,” said Norvell, whose Rams (7-3, 5-0 MW) defeated Wyoming for the first time since 2020. “They just didn’t want to let their teammates down.

“And that is rare in football at the moment. You know, in this age of transfer portal and NIL, there is a lot of selfishness in college football. And for a bunch of guys to fight for each other and prepare for each other and not want to let each other down in the competition, that doesn’t happen every weekend.”

For the fifth weekend in a row, CSU won a league match, something that has not happened here since 2014. Three coaches ago. That was also the last season in which the Rams defeated the Pokes at home in front of a paying audience.

Canvas on Friday evening was sold out. After the last cannon shot, many of those thousands stayed around to storm the field. The same joy as the celebration after The Holy Holker defeated Boise State a year ago, only that celebration was shared by dozens of people.

“And what a special ending that game was,” Norvell said, “and no one was here to see it.”

Everyone has seen this one. In any case, everyone is important to Norvell. A full stadium. A battered, sometimes skeptical fan base. CSU athletic director John Weber, a proud alum, floated into the post-game news conference with a victorious grin.

“What we talked about before the game is, we love each other way more than we hate Wyoming,” safety Henry Blackburn, one of the few current Rams to ever have the boot lifted before, said after the game. “And we love each other so much that we will do it. We will put our bodies on the line. We will do everything we can to win.”

Yes, the Cowboys (2-8, 2-4 MW) are a hot mess. The Pokes might not have scored 20 points against the Rams if you had seen them in the first 14.

But CSU has found mojo. A formula. And, most importantly, a collective, steely confidence that the first two will work.

Sure, firing on all cylinders early and a second half of punting and hanging on for dear life probably wouldn’t work against Boise State, just like it didn’t against Texas or CU. But all you’re asking for over the next two weeks — at Fresno State on Nov. 23, home to Utah State on Nov. 29 — is that that mantra gets you to the Mountain West title game. Putting you within shouting distance of an opportunity 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 beautiful TD from 53 yards to wideout moments later to walk, Tommy Maher rests.

Defense, offensive line, bubble gum and piano wire. It’s not pretty. But it’s not broken either.

And if you’re Norvell, you make no apologies for a rivalry win, no matter how awkward. Especially when it happens in front of a sold-out crowd at Canvas – a stadium that Norvell must continue to fill.

The third-year CSU coach certainly knew the stakes. Norvell was seen in the tunnel before the tilt with his arms in the air, trying to stir up the crowd as he led the Rams onto the field. That fire carried over into the opening drive, in which the hosts ground, pounded and marched 75 yards in 11 plays in 3:31 to take a quick 7-0 lead.

In retrospect, it was a grass shovel with asterisks. CSU’s training staff was a little too busy as temperatures dropped and the big hits flared up. Morrow was shaken 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 out early in the fourth.

CSU should have put the Pokes out for good with a minute left in the first half, leading 17-3 on four downs at the Wyoming 5. But two attempts by Marshall and one by Morrow were stoned, and on fourth-and-goal at the 1, the Rams rumbled away a fighter jet that opened an escape hatch for the stumbling, how-are-they-still-in-these-Cowboys.

On the other hand, if you haven’t touched the Bronze Boot in four years, style points are for wimps and pedants.

The victory even had a little extra historical flavor, as Friday was also the last Border War game in FoCo until 2028. The series’ first breakthrough 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 will change in two years thanks to a Mountain West exodus in which four members, including CSU, will secede from the former and join the new Pac. -12.

Laramie’s Kass Sprague spoke in front of many Cowboys fans in the second quarter as she raised an ice-cold beer in a cold hand to toast the Battle of 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 makes me sad. I feel like all these conference switches are taking away all the good rivalries.

That said, she also doesn’t blame the Rams for taking up an offer from Oregon State and Washington State, the two schools left with the bag bearing the Pac-12 name, the broadcast rights and the payouts from the settlement.

“I think it’s a bit stupid,” she said. “I don’t think they’ll gain anything from it… you get the idea, but whatever.”

“They just hate each other,” Anthony Stoeter, a Wyoming fan and UW law student from Pensacola, Florida, said just before halftime, “but they also kind of love each other. It’s kind of cool.”

So this: Last Thursday, the Rams and Pokes jointly announced an eight-year contract for the Battle of the Bronze Boot – as a non-conference series – starting over three seasons and running 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 – actually beat the sheep.”

When we said goodbye, that option seemed off the table.

The first 30 minutes were 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 got a 38-yard run from Marshall on the second play of the scrimmage and faltered for most of the next two stanzas.

“FIRST AND GOAL, RAMS!” shouted the announcer above us.

“Well, (expletive),” Kass said. “I think they might win this one.”