By Harry Minium
My dad packed his three sons into the family’s old Rambler and we arrived at Foreman Field more than an hour before Maury and Granby played on Thanksgiving Day in 1966.
It was my first time at Foreman Field, and the place seemed like a palace. Foreman Field was one of the finest stadiums in the state at the time. It was only 30 years old, and much less worn out and outdated than it is now.
We didn’t care that the lines at the restrooms were long or, that the concessions stands were small and the seats cramped.
It was 1966 and we didn’t know any better.
The crowd was announced at 20,000 but every one of the stadium’s 26,500 seats were filled, as was the running track that then surrounded the stadium. There were at least 30,000 people in attendance.
My dad led us up the aisle on the west side of the stadium and we found seats just below the press box, in the aisle. He stood behind us the entire game as we rooted for Granby.
It was one of those bonding moments I will never forget. My dad was a Navy chief and was often gone on long deployments. I remember nearly every game he took me to.
This is where my dad stood for more than three hours on Thanksgiving Day in 1966 when I saw my first game at Foreman Field.
Who knew that eventually I would become a sports writer, and later a writer for Old Dominion University, and would cover hundreds of games in that press box?
Every time I walk up those stairs, now worn down after being trod on for 82 years, I think of my dad, cheering as unbeaten Granby beat previously unbeaten Maury, 14-7, on the way to a state championship.
Saturday, the stadium will hold its last game when Old Dominion hosts VMI at 2 p.m.
Three days later, S.B. Ballard Construction will start tearing it down and over the next nine months, construct a new $67.5 million stadium that will provide all the luxuries now lacking.
It will be both sad and a reason for celebration when the stadium comes down. There are so many memories there. I played football there for Norview High school and have seen and covered far too many games there to count.
It will be something akin to watching the home you grew up in come tumbling down. I know I’m not alone. There are thousands of you with fond memories of the stadium.
But there’s no doubt that the stadium needs to be demolished. Structurally, it wasn’t built to modern standards, and can’t be saved through rehabilitation. Engineers told ODU, essentially, the only way to save it is to tear it down.
Foreman Field hosted thousands of events, from roller derby to boxing matches, concerts, political rallies, ODU graduations, track meets, field hockey, intramural softball and, of course, some of the most memorable football games played in Tidewater.
Here are some of the great moments, or interesting things, that happened in the last 82 years.
Opening Day
What would become Old Dominion University was known as the Norfolk Division of the College of William and Mary when it was founded in 1930. It was a two-year school, and when Foreman Field was built in 1936, its brick was intended to mimic the brick work of the Division's other buildings, which all had a Williamsburg look.
The Norfolk Division had a football team, but the first game at Foreman Field was played by the mother school, the College of William and Mary. The Indians, as they were then known, lost to the University of Virginia, 7-0, on Oct. 3, 1936. Crowd estimates vary from 15,000 to 17,500.
Foreman Field under construction in late 1935 or early 1936.
Norfolk Mayor W.R.L. Taylor hailed the game as a “magnificent spectacle,” and both he and Gov. George C. Peery paid homage to A.H. Foreman, for whom the stadium was named. Foreman helped found the Norfolk Division and was instrumental in getting funding from the Works Progress Administration to build the stadium.
America was in the throes of the Depression. The stadium cost $300,000 to build, and the salaries it generated helped workers feed their hungry families. Across the Atlantic Ocean, Adolf Hitler had just presided over the Berlin summer Olympics, and war clouds were looming.
But all was well on a gorgeous October day, reported the Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch, which praised the stadium in an editorial on game day:
“The handsome brick and concrete stadium, built to accommodate 18,000 spectators and embodying the latest improvements in stadium construction, is a monument to the foresight and untiring efforts of a group of local men who realized Norfolk’s crying need for a plant of this type.”
Norfolk Division Football
Tommy Scott did a bit of everything when he was athletic director at the Norfolk Division. The former Maury High star and VMI graduate coached football, basketball and baseball for 11 seasons.
The Norfolk Division enrolled 206 students in its first class, who studied at the old Larchmont Elementary School. Yet officials determined there were enough students to field a football team its very first year.
The 1930 Norfolk Division of the College of William and Mary Braves. Coach Tommy Scott is at the far right, back row.
The football team played combination of high schools, college freshmen teams and junior colleges. Many thought that William and Mary was using the Division as a “farm team.” There was some truth to that, as a lot of good players transferred from Norfolk to Williamsburg.
But when the Southern Conference decided after the 1940 season that its freshmen teams would no longer play the Norfolk Division, it made putting together a schedule very difficult.
Tommy Scott was the Norfolk Division's athletic director and football, baseball and basketball coach.
Scott also became ill during the 1940 season and later resigned. The Division was winless in 1940. In its last home game, Bergen College won 21-0 in front of exactly 100 fans who purchased tickets. The school’s 546 students could attend the games for free, but few did. Revenue came to $16.70.
The school held its first spring practice in 1941, but that summer, with World War II underway and fears that America would soon become embroiled, school officials shut down football.
It would not be revived for 68 years.
The Oyster Bowl
Saturday’s game against VMI has been designated the 69th annual Oyster Bowl and for decades, the game was the premiere event in Tidewater.
The first Oyster Bowl matched unbeaten Granby and Clifton (N.J.) high schools in 1946, five years to the day after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Granby won, 6-0, thanks to a 19-yard touchdown pass from Chuck Stobbs to Barney Gill before an overflow crowd of 21,000. At the time, Foreman Field had just 17,500 seats.
Shortly after that game, state high school officials banned football teams from playing in postseason games. But the Khedive Shrine Temple, led by Melvin Blassingham, was undaunted. The Shriners wanted a bowl game to raise money for children at their hospitals.
Virginia Tech and VMI playing in an Oyster Bowl game.
So in 1948, VMI played at the first Oyster Bowl involving college teams. In all, the Keydets have played in 16 Oyster Bowls. Nearly $4 million has been raised for the Shriners hospitals.
William and Mary defeated the Keydets, 31-0, and thanks to temporary bleachers, the game drew 21,500.
The game became an annual social event, featuring parties and a Saturday morning parade downtown.
Eventually, the city added seats to the both end zones, increasing capacity to 26,500. Beginning in 1956, the game drew in excess of 30,000 six years in a row.
Some of the greatest games? Syracuse, which won the 1959 national championship, defeated Navy, 32-6, with future Heisman Trophy winner Ernie Davis.
In 1963, No. 10 ranked Navy, led by future NFL quarterback Roger Staubach, played VMI. A crowd of 31,500 watched as Navy’s Fred Marlin attempted a 31-yard field goal that fell short. Marlin, ever alert, ran into the end zone and fell on the ball for a touchdown. Navy won, 21-12.
One of the most bizarre plays in college football happened in 1977, when William and Mary quarterback Tommy Rozantz was headed for what would be the game-winning touchdown in the third quarter against East Carolina.
When he got to the 2, he was blinded-sided with a jarring, shoulder-first tackle from a guy named Jim Johnson.
“I hit him low and I hit him a good one,” Johnson said.
Turns out, Johnson was a 65-year-old Virginia Beach resident and former ECU coach who was walking the sidelines as a spectator. “What else could I do? I knew (he) was going to score,” Johnson said, using an expletive.
Officials ruled it a touchdown and the Tribe won, 21-17, and knocked the Pirates out of contention for a postseason bowl. There was no ESPN at the time, but the highlight was played and replayed on national TV.
By then, the Oyster Bowl was beginning to suffer. Colleges were building larger and better stadiums, and Foreman Field was showing its age.
The last Oyster Bowl, before ODU renewed the game after it began playing football, drew just 8,414 as Georgia Southern defeated VMI in 1995.
The St. Louis Cardinals were among many NFL teams, including the Washington Redskins, who played at Foreman Field.
Other bowl games were played there, including the Fish Bowl, which matched historically black colleges; the Red Feather Bowl, which matched local Navy teams and the Kiwanis Classic, which brought NFL and AFL games to Norfolk. Joe Namath, Gayle Sayers, Johnny Unitas, Dick Butktus, “Mean” Joe Greene and so many more members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame played here.
So did Sammy Baugh, when the Washington Redskins blew out the Norfolk Shamrocks pro football team in an exhibition game in 1946.
But like the Oyster Bowl, the Kiwanis Bowl suffered because of the stadium’s size and condition. Eventually, NFL teams took exhibition games off the road and into their home stadiums.
Jim Jarrett and Norfolk State save Foremen Field
Twice in its 82 year history, Foreman Field was put on the chopping block by ODU’s Board of Visitors.
An athletic director with foresight and ODU’s cross town rival are credited with saving the stadium.
In 1973, ODU’s master plan called for the stadium to be razed and replaced with residential housing. Then athletic director Jim Jarrett vehemently opposed starting a football program. But one day, he knew ODU would be ready for football, and the stadium needed to be saved.
An aside here: Jarrett is married to Sugie Jarrett, the daughter of Tommy Scott, the Norfolk Division’s first coach and athletic director.
Jarrett lobbied behind closed doors, and in 1977, the Board of Visitors changed its stance.
Jim Jarrett, center, with his wife, Sugie, at left and retired ODU associate athletic director Debbie White at right.
ODU planned to knock down the two end zones stands and east side and keep the remaining 8,000 seats for soccer and field hockey. At the time, Norfolk State was the primary football tenant. And Norfolk State stepped up in a big way to save the stadium.
It took years of difficult negotiating but NSU, ODU, the city of Norfolk and Oyster Bowl all agreed on a $4.1 million plan to renovate the stadium. It wasn’t a complete overhaul, but the stands were sandblasted and new seats installed.
The contractor found far more issues with the stadium’s foundation than were expected and this required more time and more money to fix. Norfolk State had to move some games to Indian River High School, but the Oyster Bowl and high school football games continued. Plus, ODU had a new AstroTurf field for its then growing field hockey program.
The decision to tear down Foreman Field a couple of years was a difficult one, and give ODU President John R. Broderick and David Harnage, then the school’s CFO, with having the courage to make it. Architects and engineers said clearly, the stadium could not be saved.
The stadium foundation was deteriorating and eventually would not be safe. There was no way to save it without tearing it down.
That was a tough message to deliver. But Harnage, as he usually did, delivered the message clearly, and deserves a lot of credit for all of the work he put into planning the new stadium, as well as so many other buildings on campus.
Harnage, now retired, and will be among those honored Saturday night.
Norfolk State football
No football program has played more games at the stadium than the Spartans. Norfolk State began playing football there in the 1960s, and continued until 1997, when the school opened its 28,000-seat Dick Price Stadium.
The Spartans often drew capacity crowds to Foreman Field. And often the battle of the bands was nearly as important as the game.
I remember covering an NSU game against Virginia State, and as I headed down to the field to talk to players and coaches at game's end, a near-capacity crowd stayed seated. I was mystified as to why.
Both bands then performed, and I took the time the watch and was in awe. Norfolk State’s band might have been the best in the country. In fact, it still might.
NSU officials said three games from their decades there stand out.
Norfolk State won the 1984 CIAA title and its only Division II berth when it held off Winston-Salem State, 20-19, on Nov. 17, 1984.
A year later Hampton defeated Norfolk State, 36-35. It was a disheartening loss in the Battle of the Bay, but drew 30,307 to the 26,500-seat stadium, the largest crowd the Spartans ever drew to Foreman Field.
Then, on Oct. 8, 1994, came one of the wildest games ever played at the stadium. Aaron Sparrow threw for a school record 516 yards and seven touchdown passes. NSU trailed, 48-38, with three minutes left, but Sparrow helped the Spartans score twice in the last 2:42.
James “Noony” Roe, who would go on to a great career in the Arena Football League, caught a 38-yard TD pass and Sparrow capped the scoring with a 4-yard run with 7 seconds left.
Norfolk State drew a crowd announced at 26,385 for its last game at Foreman Field, when the Spartans crushed Virginia Union, 33-0, on Oct. 19, 1996.
Fittingly, ODU’s first game in the new S.B. Ballard Stadium on Aug. 31, 2019 will be against Norfolk State. It was a great call by ODU athletic director Wood Selig and NSU athletic director Marty Miller to play that game.
I hope both the ODU and Norfolk State bands combine and march at halftime.
Climbing the wall
The brick wall surrounding the stadium's north end zone isn’t very tall. At 7 feet, and a with a flat and wide cement top that appears easy to grab onto, it hardly seemed like an impediment to kids who didn’t have the money to buy a ticket.
But the guys who constructed the stadium installed a painful incentive to keep people from jumping the fence.
They put shards of glass in concrete on the top. And I’m not talking about small pieces, but big pieces with sharp, split-open-your-hand edges.
There are still shards of glass, 82 years later, in the brick fence around the north end zone at Foreman Field.
The shards are like sea-glass now, worn down by rain and time. But in 1936, they would cut your hands up so badly you might need stitches to close them.
Athletic director Wood Selig, who was raised in Larchmont, had friends who climbed over the fence. “They all cut their hands up,” he said. Eventually, they began taking towels to place their hands on.
Many Larchmont residents acknowledged to me that they climbed the wall. Only one did so on the record.
W. Sheppard Miller, III, or Shep as most people call him, is a fifth-generation Larchmont resident who became a successful businessman, and a big donor to ODU, who climbed the wall to watch football games and concerts.
“I saw Roger Staubach play there,” he said. “I saw the Norfolk Neptunes play. Yeah, I jumped the fence a few times. At the time, that’s what the kids in Larchmont did.”
Norfolk Neptunes
The Norfolk Neptunes had a short but illustrious history at Foreman Field. They led all minor league football in attendance virtually every season they played, and the love affair between the team and its fans was something you had to experience to appreciate.
How much did their fans love the team? Consider the story of Orion Waterfield, who was a true sports nut. He loved the Neptunes, was a lifelong ODU basketball fan and showed up to watch the very first tryout practice ODU coach Bobby Wilder held in 2008.
Rusty Waterfield, an associate vice president of ODU, recalls a story his mother told him. The night his sister, Cindy, was born in August of 1967, a nurse came out to tell Orion he’d just had a baby girl. He could see her in an hour or so.
Instead, he got into the car with his brother, Charles, and went to see a Neptunes games.
“My Mom never let him forget it,” Rusty said.
I listened to every game on the radio until my dad started taking me to games in the late 1960s. I was riveted in 1965, when the Neps trailed the Philadelphia Bulldogs, 35-7, at the half, and came back and won, 42-35. The crowd of 13,000 just went nuts.
I could hardly hear the announcers because the fans made so much noise.
That was back in the day when men wore hats and ties to games, although the crowds were anything but straight laced. Vendors sold thousands of small cups of soft drinks they called chasers. That was because everyone at Foreman Field seemed to have a bottle of booze in their coats. When extra points were kicked into the end zone, people would sometimes get hurt, they were so drunk, fighting for the balls, which spectators were allowed to keep.
The Continental Football League is now described as semi pro, but it was anything but. The Orlando Panthers nearly signed O.J. Simpson out of college, and the league sent dozens of players to the NFL, including Norfolk’s Otis Sistrunk.
The Norfolk Neptunes played at Foreman Field from 1965 through 1972, and had the best fan base in minor league pro football.
Old Neps’ fans will remember Dan Henning, Junior Edge, Donnie Floyd, Paul Duda (my gym teacher at Azalea Junior High), Ron Nery, Herman Driver, Art Zachary and so many more.
I know of at least one marriage that occurred in part because of the Neps. Doug and Leslie Beckwith were both students at ODU who had met but hadn’t gone on a date. He dropped by her place at Gresham Hall and asked her to come to a football game. They went to see the Neptunes play Roanoke.
“I don’t remember much about the game. One too many rum and cokes,” she said via Twitter message.
They have been a couple ever since.
“Ten months later, we were married,” she said. For years, they lived in Larchmont while Doug was working on his medical degree. “We would take our sons to ODU soccer games there,” she said. “Now we spend every Saturday there’s a home game at Foreman Field.”
Reacting to a Tweet in which I said I might shed a tear at the closing ceremony, she added: “I just might be crying myself.”
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
A ton of bands played at Foreman Field, especially in the turmoil-filled 1960s and 1970s. I saw Steppenwolf (and if you know that band, then you’re as old as me) while sitting on the crisp, green stadium grass.
But undoubtedly the craziest day in the stadium’s history occurred during the summer of 1974, when Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young played there.
The nation was still torn apart by the Vietnam War. There was racial and political unrest across the country, especially revolving around the Watergate scandal, which would force President Nixon to resign.
At least 35,000 were in attendance in 1974 when Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young played at Foreman Field.
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young sang many of the anthems of rebellious youth, songs I still listen to today.
Yet I wasn’t among the announced crowd of 33,043, the biggest in the stadium’s history. I don’t remember why I didn’t go, but do know this: there were a lot more people than 33,043 there.
“I claimed over the wall,” Miller said. “At that point, the glass was pretty dull.”
Miller was then a 16-year-old student at Maury High School. It was the first time he saw people openly smoking pot, he said. “It was the hippy generation,” he said. “There were people using drugs all over the place.”
Mike Morgan, who would graduate from ODU, was a recent graduate of Norfolk Catholic. He was 18, and that was then the legal drinking age. The police wouldn’t allow you to bring canned or bottled beer into the stadium, but they would allow you to bring in gallon jugs of whatever liquid you desired.
A grocer across Hampton Boulevard was selling gallon jugs and kids were buying them, and emptying 12-packs of tallboy beer into them.
He went to the game with John Newsome, the former Norfolk Catholic basketball star who would play at Maryland.
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young at Foreman Field.
“It was so hot and the concert was so long,” said Morgan, now a Norfolk therapist who lives in Colonial Place. “I remember the fire department hosing down people with water to help them cool off.”
According to a Ledger-Star story by Larry Bonko, there were five doctors, a pharmacist, 27 nurses and 18 paramedics under tents to treat injured and sick people. More than 140 needed treatment, including 27 people who had drug overdoses. In all, police arrested 33 people but one policeman acknowledged they eventually stopped arresting people for jumping the fence. There were just too many to stop.
Miller said there were at least 35,000 people there, perhaps more. No one will ever know.
Morgan said the concert remains a great memory.
“It was really a great event for a young kid. I’ll never forget it.”
ODU field hockey, soccer and track
In the nearly seven decades in which ODU did not play football, Foreman Field was used for a myriad of events. Graduations, freshmen orientation and intramural sports, from power puff football to softball.
There were political rallies, including one by presidential candidate George Wallace, the former governor of Alabama who stood in the schoolhouse door to try to prevent black students from enrolling at the University of Alabama.
Terry Shelton won this race in an undated photo of a Norfolk Division track meet at Foreman Field.
Before ODU’s soccer complex opened in 1990, Foreman Field was the Monarchs’ home field, and during the late 1970s and 1980s, drew some crowds of more than 5,000.
The Norfolk Division and later ODU track and field teams ran there before track was discontinued.
High school track teams often ran at Foreman Field, although the track had a flaw that often led to some ungentlemanly behavior. The track ran underneath both end zones at Foreman Field, and like players at the bottom of the pile after a fumble at a football game, no one could see what happened.
I ran track at Norview for a couple of years, and remember a meet at Foreman Field in which one of our runners (whose name I can't recall) led a race as the runners disappeared under the north end zone. When the runners reappeared, our guy was limping and far behind the field. He claimed he got kicked, and although he was certainly being honest, no one admitted to seeing it.
Steve Stone, who later became a journalist at The Virginian-Pilot, enjoying some champagne at his ODU graduation at Foreman Field
ODU’s longest tenant at Foreman Field was the field hockey team, which did not move into the current field hockey stadium at the L.R. Hill complex until 2009.
Beth Anders coached ODU field hockey for 30 years, and as I’ve written before, she’s the Mike Krzyzewski of her sport. She won nine national championships, her last against North Carolina in 2000 at Foreman Field.
I wasn’t a big field hockey buff, but came out that day just to watch ODU claim a national title. ODU entered the game 24-1.
“I wish I knew her secret,” UNC head coach Karen Shelton said of Anders.
Marina DiGiacomo (Mendoza, Argentina), Julie Miracle (Audubon, Pa.) and Virginia Beach native Laura Steadman all scored for ODU, which won, 3-1. Goalie Marybeth Freeman (Holland, Pa.) had six saves, including five in the second half.
ODU celebrates its 2000 field hockey national championship the Monarchs won at Foreman Field.
"I'm so proud of my kids," Anders said. "They played with all their hearts. They played hard and never quit."
The crowd wasn’t particularly large, perhaps 4,000 or so, but it was loud. To see ODU win a national championship in any sport was a special moment.
ODU football
The first time I cried at Foreman Field was Sept. 5, 2009, when ODU played its first football game.
Foreman Field had been spruced up. Most of the $24.5 million ODU spent went into a parking deck, luxury suites, a locker room and loge area in the south end zone. But the rest of the stadium had been sandblasted and new seats installed.
I had so many memories there that it choked me up to see the stadium looking so good.
I was a season-ticket holder, but had gotten some free tickets from The Virginian-Pilot as a reward for a project I'd worked on. My wife, Ellen, and I were sitting on the 45-yard line, just feet away from where my dad stood and my brothers and I sat 43 years earlier.
I remembered my dad writing letters to the editor in favor of Old Dominion football. He would have been so happy to see the Monarchs finally playing at Foreman Field.
Thomas DeMarco, now an ODU fundraiser, was the Monarchs' first starting quarterback.
Outside the stadium, it looked as if ODU has been playing football for years. Hundreds of trucks, campers and cars were parked as people tail-gated like ODU was an SEC team. There were flags, banners and a sense of optimism in the air.
Finally, after so many years, ODU was really playing football.
ODU sold out of season tickets, and had to turn hundreds of potential ticket buyers away. There was a sellout crowd of 19,782 on hand, and the first time the Monarchs hit the field, there was a thunderous standing ovation that lasted for minutes. I saw people around me dabbing at their eyes.
There were many responsible for the start of football, including Sonny Stallings, the Virginia Beach attorney and member of the Board of Visitors who fought hard to persuade others to agree to playing football. Broderick wasn't yet president, but he may have been the key figure behind the scenes who worked to pitch and raise money to begin a team. He also helped lead the selection committee that picked Bobby Wilder as ODU's first head coach.
Wilder had been hired in 2007 to begin the process of building a team. Wilder spoke at hundreds of events, promoting the team, hired a staff and began recruiting players to a program without any history or a workout facility and a stadium that until, renovated, looked like a prime candidate for the wrecking ball.
He signed two classes of players before that first game, including junior college transfer quarter Thomas DeMarco, who was a standout for ODU, and remains a standout as a fundraiser for the Old Dominion Athletic Foundation.
ODU’s first opponent was Chowan University, and Wilder said he had no idea whether his Monarchs could beat anybody, much less an established Division II program like Chowan.
“I’ll never forget the thrill of running out onto the field for the first time in front of our fans,” Wilder said. “It was a great moment.
“But we didn’t know if we could beat anyone. You don’t have exhibition games in football. We had no idea what was going to happen. We feared that we might lose 35-0.”
ODU defeated Chowan, 36-21, and ended the season by beating VMI, 42-35, in front of 8,132 in Lexington, including about 2,000 ODU supporters. The Monarchs finished 9-2 and were off to the races.
What were the other great games in ODU history? That’s a matter of opinion and yours is just as valid as mine.
But here are my top five in descending order:
Number 5
It was ODU’s first season in the CAA, and the Monarchs were 5-1 when they hosted James Madison on Oct. 15, 2011.
JMU had a long-established program. The Dukes had beaten Virginia and Virginia Tech and won a national championship over the years.
ODU took the lead on a fourth down, a 23-yard touchdown pass from Taylor Heinicke that Larry Pinkard pulled down between two defenders.
Larry Pinkard pulls down what eventually proved to be the game-winning points in ODU's 2011 victory over James Madison University.
Playing in a driving rain, the Monarchs didn’t win until the game’s last play, when linebacker Craig Wilkins got a hand on Cameron Starke's 47-yard, potential game-tying field goal attempt as time expired, setting off a raucous celebration at midfield.
It was ODU’s first victory over an in-state FCS team and marked the arrival of the Monarchs as a FCS power.
Number 4
When ODU received its first bid to the NCAA FCS playoffs in 2011, the 19th-ranked Monarchs were given the right to host a home game.
And it came against crosstown rival Norfolk State, which was scheduled to begin a series with ODU in 2013.
It was a special event for the city, with Norfolk’s two Division I teams meeting for the first time.
The pre-game type was immense. When Norfolk State ran out of tickets, Selig graciously gave the Spartans more to sell. Tickets in the parking lots were going for $100 apiece.
The crowd was electric and included at least 2,000 Norfolk State supporters. There was a palpable sense of camaraderie between the fans of both schools, who mingled in the tail-gate lots, where they shared food and drink.
The game did not live up to the hype. Norfolk State outgained the Monarchs, but committed 18 penalties and had costly turnovers.
ODU won, 35-18, and would lose to Georgia Southern the next week. But for the first time in their short history, the Monarchs finished in the Top 10 in both FCS polls.
Number 3
Marshall had crushed ODU in its first two Conference USA seasons, but was no match for the Monarchs in 2016. ODU used Ray Lawry’s 209-yard rushing yards and crushed the Thundering Herd, 38-14. The victory guaranteed ODU its first bowl bid ever with three regular-season games to go.
Marshall had won 33 games, the 2014 C-USA championship and three bowls in the past three seasons, and its two wins over ODU have been by a combined 83-21.
Lawry, who became ODU’s career rushing leader, said revenge was sweet.
“It feels good to have made history, to be the first team to go to a bowl game, and it feels great to finally beat Marshall,” he said. “They embarrassed us two years ago in front of our home crowd.”
ODU would finished 10-3 that year, including a 24-20 victory over Eastern Michigan in the Bahamas Bowl.
Number 2
It was perhaps the wildest game ever played at Foreman Field and one of the greatest performances by a quarterback in the history of college football.
Taylor Heinicke led ODU back from a 26-point deficit to defeat New Hampshire, 64-61, on Oct. 22, 2012.
I covered the game for The Virginian-Pilot, and Daily Press sports writer Dave Fairbank and I looked at each other in disbelief when we were handed the final box score.
Heinicke became the first player in the history of football to amass 791 offensive yards in a game. Think about that for a second. He was the first to do that in the history of a sport in which hundreds of teams had played thousands of games for a century and a half.
Taylor Heinicke won the Walter Payton Award the same year he set the single game college football record of 791 offensive yards.
He completed 55 of 79 passes for 703 yards and five touchdowns and ran for 61 more yards. And get this: several passes straight into the hands of receivers were dropped.
He broke the single-game Division I records previously set by Houston’s David Klingler for total yards and passing yards in 1990.
ODU and New Hampshire combined for 1,549 offensive yards.
The game generated a ton of national publicity for ODU and Heinicke, who after the season would be presented the Walter Payton Award given to the nation’s best FCS player.
"They've got a guy pulling the trigger,” New Hampshire coach Sean McDonnell said.
They surely did.
Number 1
On Sept. 22, 2018, not only did ODU host the biggest game in school history, but the biggest game ever held at Foreman Field.
The Monarchs were 0-3, Virginia Tech was unbeaten and ranked 13th nationally and the Hokies had crushed the Monarchs, 38-0, the previous year. No one expected an ODU team that lost at Liberty, 52,-10, to win against the Hokies.
Virginia Tech has turned the 757 area into its recruiting hotbed and came to town expecting to turn Foreman Field into a Hokie pep rally. About 4,000 Tech fans were among the ODU home record crowd of 20,523.
Quarterback Blake LaRussa came off the bench to throw for 495 yards in ODU's upset of Virginia Tech.
But just minutes into the game, quarterback Blake LaRussa was inserted into the game and immediately connected with Travis Fulgham for a 30-yard reception. The crowd roared, the Monarchs played out of their minds and somehow, someway, won their first game ever against an ACC team, a 49-35 victory that made ODU a national name in college football for the entire week.
LaRussa threw for 495 yards and the Monarchs rolled up 632 on a defense that had allowed just 20 points in two games. It was the most yardage the Hokies have yielded in the 24 years Bud Foster has been the defensive coordinator.
It was an emotional game on the sidelines, from where I watched the game. I saw grown people cry. As the clock ran off the final seconds, I saw ODU players fall on their knees in prayer.
I turned and saw Jena Virga, ODU’s long-time fundraiser, and Debbie White, ODU’s former assistant athletic director for sports information, shedding tears.
So was I.
The students weren't crying, they were celebrating. Hundreds stormed the field and celebrated wildly with the team. Wilder got so into it that as his players were headed off the field, he called them back to celebrate with the students.
“I’m really glad the students came on the field,” Wilder said. “It’s not very often that you get to celebrate a victory that’s this significant. These players are their classmates and they should have been celebrating together.
“I know I’ll cherish it forever.”
Afterwards, I was allowed to witness perhaps the most moving moments ever to occur in an ODU locker room.
President John Broderick thanked the ODU football team minutes after the Monarchs upset Virginia Tech on Sept. 22, 2018.
President John Broderick spoke to the team just days after his father died. He was in Connecticut that morning, at his father’s funeral, and arrived back at Foreman Field for the second half.
A video of Broderick's speech.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BoDfTX4li89/?utm_source=ig_twitter_share&igshid=139x71cz6p6jr
“I couldn’t be any prouder of you,” he told the Monarchs. “Today might have been the saddest morning of my life.
“We buried my dad. And to come back here and to get this, I can’t thank you enough. And I know somewhere up there, because he was a big fan of coach Wilder’s, he’s looking down here and saying . . .
I couldn’t hear the rest of what he said, because the players drowned his voice out cheering.
I didn't leave the stadium until nearly 2 a.m., after writing a long column about the victory. In the distance, I still heard students celebrating.
Last game
President Broderick grew up in New England, and went to many Boston Red Sox games at Fenway Park, and said the stadiums share an ambiance.
He recalls going to an Oyster Bowl many years ago with First Lady Kate Broderick long before he became president.
"I actually had a chance to go to one of those early Oyster Bowl games with William and Mary and VMI when I first came here," he said.
"You could always sense that special things had happened at Foreman Field. Coming from New England and having that Fenway Park and Boston Garden background, sometimes older places, while they don't have the amenities, you could feel the history."
ODU intends to save as much of that history as it can. There will be memorials to the stadium, a timeline and a plaque with a biography of A.H. Foreman.
ODU is a huge favorite to defeat VMI. Regardless of who wins, though, the final ceremonies, including a video of great moments at the stadium, shutting off the old lights, a fireworks display, and then shutting on the new lights, will bring a lump to the throats of so many.
In nine months, a new stadium will arise in its place. It will have about 21,500 seats, and most will be far more comfortable than the seats at the current stadium. There will be adequate restrooms and concessions stands, a new press box and new club facility.
Finally, fans will be able to watch with all the modern comforts that you expect in a college football stadium.
Progress is sometimes painful, but in this case, it’s necessary, and will lead to a much brighter future for ODU's football program and its fans.