Colorado State coach Jay Norvell uttered words that may go down in infamy on his call-in radio show ahead of his team’s clash with in-state rival Colorado.
“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,’” Norvell said. “‘When I talk to grown-ups, I take my hat and my glasses off.’ That’s what my mother taught me.
“They’re not going to like us, no matter what we say or do. It doesn’t matter. So, let’s go up there and play.”
The Rocky Mountain Showdown probably didn’t need more juice than it got this week owing in large part to Deion Sanders being Colorado’s head coach and the Buffs riding high at 2–0. Both on-site college football pregame shows will originate from Boulder on Saturday morning with ESPN running its entire Friday slate of programming like “First Take” and the Pat McAfee show also from CU’s campus. But Norvell’s bulletin-board material adds not only another subplot to the game, but created one of the great “right place, right time” stories for Blenders Eyewear that you could possibly think of.
Chase Fisher, the company’s CEO, was at his office when he saw Norvell’s interview and his phone began to light up.
“I probably got 40 text messages about the same thing,” Fisher says. “And as soon as that hit it was like ‘oh my God,’ you know, now there’s major shade being thrown at Deion and not just at Deion, but there’s a lot of attention around the sunglasses now and that puts more eyes on us, and it was just like, ‘holy s---.’”
Fisher said his dad, a big fan of Sanders, started sending him articles in 2022 about Sanders’s success at Jackson State and Fisher started paying attention. In April, Fisher and Blenders began conversations with Sanders’s team about a partnership, and they’re now the preferred eyewear partner of CU athletics. Sanders can often be seen sporting sunglasses whether inside or outside. There are videos on Sanders’s Instagram page of his son, Shedeur, joking with him that they make him look like a member of the rap group the City Girls. He’s worn shades during interviews throughout his life, going all the way to his famous NFL draft day interview in 1989, where he quipped that if he’d been taken by the Detroit Lions he would have asked for so much money, the team would have had to put him on layaway.
At first Fisher wasn’t sure they could launch a line by the start of this football season. He says the glasses usually take 90 to 120 days to produce, then 30 days to ship overseas. But eventually they were able to at least get something on Sanders’s face for the Buffaloes’ season-opening win against TCU. The plan was to align the colors with CU’s colors, and thus the Prime 21 gold and Prime 21 black sunglasses were born. Sanders prefers the stealthy black ones for the most part, but Fisher said he knew the gold ones would be “show-stoppers” that created a lot of buzz, and they certainly did when Sanders wore them postgame after the team beat TCU.
“They don’t realize not only are we gonna kick their butts because it’s personal,” Sanders told his team in a Thursday meeting while handing out pairs of the gold sunglasses, “But it’s gonna be business but it’s also pleasure. When I say business, Blenders, I’m doing a line of shades with Blenders, this is one of the first lines. So they don’t realize that they just helped me with business. But it’s also gonna be personal.”
In what can only be charged to incredibly fortunate timing, Blenders already planned to launch their Prime 21 line for pre-order on Friday. The groundswell of attention thanks to Norvell’s comments specifically about the sunglasses has been an injection of attention for the collaboration. They’re only available for pre-order right now, and the 150 or so that CU has on-hand are about the only ones in existence. Sanders handed a pair to Pat McAfee on Friday on his appearance on McAfee's show.
“They’re not even available for us,” Fisher says. “I mean, everyone’s trying to get their hands on at least a few pairs and we’re just like, ‘we don't have any.’ … They’re all being made right now.”
Fisher declined to provide sales data, but did say that this launch has been the biggest partnership the brand has had to date.
“I’ve never known what it’s like to go viral. I’ve always wanted to and now I know kind of what it feels like,” Fisher says. “I’ve personally never received more calls, texts, emails or DMs in my entire 11 years [with Blenders] in one day than I have in the last, you know, 24 hours to two weeks. Honestly, I have people calling me from high school that I haven’t talked with in 15 years, they turn on the TV dealing with wearing Blenders like ‘What the hell? How does that happen?’ And so it’s been truly profound. I mean, it’s been earth shattering in terms of the amount of interest and curiosity and eyeballs and interest around the brand, which is just super exciting.”
The attention has forced Fisher to change his weekend plans and fly to Boulder for the Colorado State game on Saturday night to spend some time with Sanders and his team. He may even see Norvell on the field while he’s there, but there are no plans for a thank you gift to the CSU coach who unwittingly provided a bit of viral marketing.
“Our hands are full with helping Prime block out the shade,” Fisher says. “We’re always willing to help someone up their style game, but for Jay, that’ll have to wait until after the season.”
