FORT COLLINS — Jay Norvell woke up 45 minutes before his alarm was set to go off Thursday morning. It’s been that way for the last two weeks.

All summer, the Colorado State coach has been anticipating the start to fall camp ahead of his fourth season in charge of the Rams.

Last year was the breakthrough during his tenure in Fort Collins. CSU won eight games for the first time since 2014 and made its first bowl appearance since 2017. But Norvell knows that has now become the bare minimum in terms of expectations. The Pac-12 is looming in a year and the Rams would love to bring some momentum with them in the form of another successful season.

Norvell’s solution is a simple mantra that has set the tone for the entire CSU season, which kicks off on Aug. 30 against Washington in Seattle. It’s ‘We Over Me.’

“It just really hit me this summer,” Norvell said Friday after the team’s first official practice of the summer. “It kinda answers the question of what you need to do in all areas. The best quality a team can have is unselfishness and that people are setting their personal agendas aside. That’s what we need to do as a program and as a team. I think if our kids will do that, we’re gonna have a great year.

“This is (the) NIL era, transfer portal era. There’s a lot of focus on individuals. We want the focus to be on the team.”

Norvell did that himself last season. After coming to Fort Collins preaching about the Air Raid system and putting together a team that won with a big-armed quarterback and speedy wide receivers burning opposing defenses at Canvas Stadium, Norvell completely abandoned that philosophy in the middle of last season.

There was more West-coast style under center action with bootlegs, play actions and a lot of handoffs to the talented stable of running backs. A lot of handoffs.

It resulted in six wins in the last seven games — including rivalry wins over Air Force and Wyoming for the first time under Norvell — to secure a second-place finish in the Mountain West standings (tiebreakers kept the Rams out of the conference title game).

Even with three starters on the offensive line gone and last year’s leading rusher in Avery Morrow gone, that might be the recipe again this season. CSU can go four-deep at running back and has confidence the o-line will be a strength again.

But they’re also going to lean on Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi, who is suddenly entering his third year as the starting quarterback and is now one of the most experienced and productive returning players in the Mountain West at the position.

“We want to win. That’s what our goal is,” Norvell said. “We’re gonna take this group and do the things that we need to do to win. I think Brayden understands that better than anybody. It’s a great advantage for us having Brayden. When you look at this conference, it’s (Boise State’s Maddux) Madsen and there’s Brayden. They’re the two most experienced guys.

“Brayden started as a freshman, we put up with all his immaturity and now this is the payoff. It’s his third year starting. He was like a skateboard kid his first year. He’d run around and give everybody the (middle) finger — that was Brayden. He’s not that anymore. He’s got a chance to reach a lot of school records this year and we’re excited. He knows the whole playbook in and out.”

There are also plenty of plays in that playbook that were designed to get the ball to star wide receiver Tory Horton the last three years that are little less relevant now that Horton is impressing at Seattle Seahawks training camp ahead of his rookie NFL season.

But that’s life in college football, as Norvell so plainly puts it.

“We’re not trying to find a cure for cancer here, we’re playing football,” he said. “(Hall of Fame former Wisconsin coach) Barry Alvarez used to say it all the time to me. ‘Everybody’s got problems.’ We’re not the only team in college football that has a bunch of transfers that they’ve got to get ready to play. We want to get ‘em ready early. We have a goal to be playing on all cylinders when we line up in Seattle (against Washington in Week 1).

“We have a vision for what we want this team to look like. We take advantage of all the skill that we have. We did that last year and we gotta do it again this year. We gotta find a different way to do it this year.”

Just like Sonny Lubick did in 1999 in the first year in the Mountain West, Norvell is hoping to find the formula that leads to a conference championship for the Rams on their way out.

“It’s like the last dance, is what it is. We started this conference being conference champions and our goal is to finish it that way,” Norvell said.