CSU Rams coach Jay Norvell says Henry Blackburn received death threats after hit on CU Buffs’ Travis Hunter, won’t be suspended
“I hope everybody’s healthy; I hope that Travis gets healthy and gets back out there,” Norvell said.
FORT COLLINS — CSU safety Henry Blackburn won’t be suspended by the Rams for his hit on CU Buffs football star Travis Hunter, Rams athletic department officials confirmed to The Post on Monday.
But football coach Jay Norvell said during his weekly news conference at Canvas Stadium that Blackburn and his family have received death threats during and after the Rocky Mountain Showdown at Folsom Field this past Saturday night.
“The police department is supporting him because of the seriousness of the threats that have come out of this,” Norvell said of Blackburn, who was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct late in the first quarter after striking Hunter in the chest while the latter was chasing down an incomplete pass from quarterback Shedeur Sanders.
“And, I mean, it’s just sad. It’s sad that that’s the state of the world we live in. I mean, it’s a football game. Let’s not make it more than that. We don’t want anybody to get hurt. (We) don’t coach that kind of football.”
Blackburn was on deep coverage on the play in question and Hunter did not appear to see the CSU defender before contact was made. The Jackson State transfer and two-way star crumpled in a heap along the visitors’ sideline. Blackburn was immediately confronted by Shedeur Sanders, before officials broke the two up. The defender, who played his prep football at Boulder’s Fairview High School, was not considered to have led with his head nor to have targeted Hunter above the shoulders and remained in the game, which the Rams lost in double overtime, 43-35.
Hunter returned to the tilt in the second quarter but was removed at halftime and taken to a local hospital for examination. The Georgia native did not return and, according to multiple media reports, suffered a lacerated liver that will sideline him for at least three weeks.
“I hope everybody’s healthy; I hope that Travis gets healthy and gets back out there,” Norvell said in advance of 0-2 CSU’s visit to 1-2 Middle Tennessee this weekend. “We certainly don’t want to see anybody get hurt.”
Norvell described the hit as a “bang-bang type of play” but didn’t feel it was malicious or deserved punishment from the school or the Mountain West Conference.
“When you throw a deep ball and you’ve got a guy playing middle safety, he’s got to react on the boundary and he’s going full speed,” Norvell said. “The officials looked at it, we looked at it. It’s not certainly not something that we teach or coach, it just — it happens in football sometimes. And so (there) seems to have been a lot of attention about that play. But it’s a play that happens.”
The Rams coach expressed concern that the social-media stardom of Hunter, who had 978,000 Instagram followers as of early Monday, and that of CU coach Deion Sanders, whom Norvell verbally tweaked late last week, have only accelerated the vitriol aimed toward his safety.
Blackburn’s hit also drew scorn from celebrities such as LeBron James and JJ Watt via the “X” platform.
“We had a player get death threats and his family get death threats and their address (get) posted all over Instagram and social media,” Norvell continued. “And I just don’t think those kind of things have any place in college football. And I hope there can be some accountability (for) that type of behavior.
“And I’m very concerned for our kids. These are 18-to-22-year-old kids. They play college football. I know a lot of people get excited about that, but there’s really no place for that in athletics and sports.
“I think we have a responsibility and I think we have to be careful in today’s age (with) all the information and everything that’s out there, that sometimes all this stuff becomes real and it’s not real. It’s something somebody’s created on the internet or something, or a campaign that somebody’s running for somebody else …
“If you just check your phone every time it buzzes and you see the headline, that’s not reality. That’s just something somebody created on YouTube. So I think we have to be careful of that. And people that aren’t really paying attention to what’s going on in college athletics … they get their news from that, from YouTube and all that.
“And I’m not against it. I look at that stuff, too. But I just think you have to be mature and adult in taking on that information …
“And you’ve got to be careful. And I think responsible adults have got to reframe what is going on in the world. And if we don’t do that, it’s irresponsible. In my opinion, there’s a lot of irresponsibility going on all over in the media … I think too many times, people get complacent and whatever they see, they replace their social media feed for news. It’s not news. It’s propaganda. And so don’t take it as news.”
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