Jay Norvell is upgrade for CSU Rams as football coach. Because he’s everything Steve Addazio wasn’t.

Is he Tony Alford? No. But Jay Norvell is an upgrade, kids. The way CSU is an upgrade over Nevada.

At first blush, the 58-year-old Norvell — who was named the new football coach of the Rams on Monday — makes sense for FoCo in all the ways Steve Addazio didn’t.

Since 2018, he’s won at Cal. He’s won at Air Force. He’s won at San Diego State. He’s won at Boise State, a place where the Rams have never, ever won. And need to.

The best part? He’s not a jerk. He’s not a career bully. Norvell is not going to pick fights with peers within the athletic department. He’s not going to have the HR folks hopping the way the Daz did. He’s not going to require internal investigations or Kansas City law firms. He’s not going to treat his players like it’s 1989.

He’s a solid dude. A solid dude who’s won in the Mountain West. A solid dude who’s recruited in the Mountain West. A solid dude who likes to throw the ball all over the yard.

Instead of three yards and a cloud of Daz, the Rams are about to go all-in on the Air Raid. Over Nevada’s last 21 games, the Wolf Pack were victorious in 15 and scored at least 35 points in 11 of them.

During those 21, they racked up at least 350 passing yards 11 times. Even on the bad days, and there weren’t many, Nevada’s been fun and frenetic to watch, the kind of attack that could chuck its way into your heart.

Addazio’s quarterbacks were there to hand off, get out of the way, and then try to make something out of third-and-long. Norvell’s quarterbacks — NFL-bound Carson Strong being the latest — are center stage, the life of the party.

For the six of you who attended Nevada’s 52-10 demolition of the Rammies at Canvas Stadium back on Nov. 27, remember how that tall, strapping kid at quarterback looked like Kurt Warner against CSU, throwing touchdowns for fun?

That’s what you’re getting. Eventually.

Norvell, meanwhile, is slipping out of the Mountain West’s Kia Forte and into a Mercedes.

According to the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, only San Jose State, Air Force, New Mexico and UNLV spent less on football than Nevada did in 2019 ($10.7 million). Among reporting schools, nobody spent less on coaching salaries that year than the Wolf Pack ($2.55 million).

Norvell reportedly made $619,250 at Nevada after COVID-related reductions in 2021, making him the lowest-paid coach on the circuit. The Daz was No. 2, at $1.55 million.

The Pack has gone 30-17 in football under Norvell since the fall of 2018 with four bowl bids while CSU, which spent $25.1 million on football and $5 million on coaching salaries in 2019, went 11-29 under Addazio and Mike Bobo. Why wouldn’t the Mountain West program that’s done less with more hand the keys to the one guy who’s done more with less?

Norvell’s got friends here. And ties. He signed with the Broncos as a college free agent out of the University of Iowa. He was on CU coach Karl Dorrell’s staff at UCLA as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in 2007. His last five coaching stops before Fort Collins were with the Bruins, Oklahoma (2008-14), Texas (2015), Arizona State (2016) and Nevada.

Unlike the Daz, everywhere the Rams need to be on the recruiting front — California and Texas, specifically — Norvell already has pipelines in place. He’s a Black man taking on the most decorated mantle in a department whose commitment to diversity in recent years has been called into question both publicly and privately.

When last we saw Norvell, he was walking off the field at Canvas Stadium like he owned the joint. And now he does.

No, he’s not the great unifier that Alford, the Ohio State assistant and former CSU running back, would’ve been. He’s not a pipe-dream name such as Gary Patterson, Bronco Mendenhall or Tom Herman.

But he’s a step in the right direction. A step forward. He’s everything CSU athletic director Joe Parker told us Addazio was supposed to be. And, more importantly, he’s everything the Daz was not. From the scoreboard on down.

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