Soon after leaving his post as the offensive coordinator at Arizona State to become the head coaching job at Memphis, that photo of him from his playing days as a receiver at Central Arkansas surfaced.
The picture has surfaced a number of times (for a variety of reasons) since then, even making an appearance during GameDay's visit to Memphis earlier this year.
Earlier this week, Norvell was asked to explain the story behind the viral photo on ESPN's Golic and Wingo, and shared an interesting backstory.
Norvell was working an inner-city youth camp and had broken out into small groups for some competitions. Since Norvell had long hair, his group proposed that if they won the competition, they got to braid his hair. Thinking his group had no chance to run the table, Norvell made the deal.
That bet ended up sparking something in his group, because Norvell explains that they went on to not only win, but dominated every competition that they had. He paid up on the bet and returned to campus with a new hairstyle, and when their media day rolled around, he figured it would be fun to keep them for his picture, and that is how the photo came to be.
Two decades later, while on the set of College GameDay, and then weeks later as he was introduced at Florida State, that picture got brought back up and Norvell has used the picture as a lesson for his guy on social media.
"So I tell our guys - 'Understand...social media...it’ll come back to get you.'"
It's not often that coaches can reflect on real-world examples of how social media can come back to bite you, but this is a great example.