Minium: Monarch Nation Basking in the Glory of ODU Football Victory at Virginia Tech

By Harry Minium

NORFOLK, Va. – The fallout from Old Dominion’s stunning, 45-26, football victory at Virginia Tech has been delicious for Monarch Nation.

All weekend, ODU was trending on X, formerly known as Twitter, and Monarch fans are still basking in the wake of the program’s biggest road victory in school history. It was the first road win against a power school, and came against a school that has long dominated football in the Commonwealth.

On Saturday night, there were more than 400,000 views on ODU social media alone. Millions more viewed highlights on dozens of other social media sites.

Football writers from ESPN, The Athletic and so many other websites are waxing poetically not just about ODU, but Colton Joseph, the Monarchs’ outstanding quarterback.

And a team picked to finish fifth in the Sun Belt East is now, according to ESPN’s power ratings, No. 56 in the nation and No. 1 among Sun Belt schools.

Following behind ODU, in order, are Pitt, Cal, Colorado, Maryland and Boise State. And even though it’s a ranking, and therefore just a matter of opinion, that’s heady company to be in.

Several social media sites said simply that ODU-Tech is now a rivalry game. Winning three of seven games against the Hokies will do that. Consider that since ODU began playing football in 2009, Virginia, Tech's archrival, has beaten the Hokies just once. 

This was the backdrop Monday morning as ODU Head Coach Ricky Rahne walked into Harbor Park to speak to the Norfolk Sports Club’s weekly luncheon. What great timing for the sports club -- the crowd was larger than usual and was sprinkled liberally with ODU fans.

Rahne began his presentation with a quote that, although a cliché, rings true.

“Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan,” he said. And then he mentioned that he had received 422 text messages over the weekend.

“I don’t remember any after Indiana,” where the Monarchs lost 27-14 in their opener.

The crowd laughed.

Rahne said that while expectations of his team may have changed since beating Tech, “our expectations haven’t changed.

“I mean, our expectations were to go beat Indiana.”

The Monarchs lost, 27-14, to Indiana, a team now ranked 19th nationally. Had ODU not turned the ball over three times, who knows what might have happened?

And it’s telling that since holding off ODU, the Hoosiers have beaten Kennesaw State and Indiana State by a combined score of 129-9.

“We know that the same way people underestimated us, that people will underestimate the teams that are left on our schedule, and we play some great football teams,” said Rahne, whose Monarchs are off this weekend.

ODU's next game is at home against Liberty on Saturday, Sept. 27, at 6 p.m. Less than 3,000 tickets remain. And although this game likely isn't as big to most ODU fans as Tech was, it's clearly a big game for Monarch coaches and players.

The Monarchs have lost four in a row to Liberty, and all four losses have been by 14 points or more.  ODU hasn't beaten Liberty since 2013, when the Monarchs were ascending to FCS and Liberty was in FCS.

The Flames, who host James Madison this weekend, are 1-2.

"Liberty once again has a really good football team," Rahne said. "They've had some turnovers issues but that's an outstanding team coming to our place." 

Regardless, I expect, and hope, that S.B. Ballard Stadium will be full. 

Rahne worried a little that his players might return to Norfolk feeling a little too self-satisfied. But during practice Sunday, he was relieved to see them hit the field with the same spirit they’d shown a week earlier.

 “They weren’t acting like they’d won a championship or anything like that,” he said. 

“In fact, there were a lot of plays they were upset about not making. They were upset about giving up so many points in the fourth quarter.”

The microphone didn’t work during Rahne’s presentation and that was fine with him. He eschewed the mic and his presentation lasted about two minutes.

“I am the worst in the country in terms of having something planned to say,” he said. “So, I’ll answer all of your questions.”

He was peppered with questions for 40 minutes before he had to excuse himself to take part in the weekly Sun Belt coaches media Zoom conference call.

I was struck by how warmly he spoke not just about how his team has played, but how it has carried itself both on and off the field.

“The thing I’ve said to everybody is that this team genuinely loves playing football,” he said.

“I’ve talked a lot about how I want our team to be violent. I know a lot of people don’t want football to be violent anymore, but it is a violent game played by violent people.

“Our kids are the greatest kids in the world off the field. We have eight semesters in the last 11 where we’ve had over a 3.0 GPA. We’re the only school in the Sun Belt that has over a 3.0 GPA.

“And our kids, they just love to play football.”

I spoke to several ODU football alumni over the weekend and they all mentioned that there is something special about the way this team carries itself. They're correct. This team enters a stadium with a little swagger.

The Monarchs are confident and play with poise and, as Rahne told the sports club, “they love each other.”

In the age of NIL and the transfer portal, you don’t see that everywhere. At some schools it’s more about money than football.

I was also struck by the success of ODU’s passing game.

Much of that is due to Joseph, who was near-perfect – he connected on 16 of 22 passes for 276 yards and a touchdown and rushed eight times for 63 yards and another TD. He threw one bad pass and threw so many others right on target.

The redshirt sophomore is bigger, faster and much more confident than he was last season. And smarter. He's checking off at the line and seems to be making all the right decisions.

And his accuracy has been off the charts.

So far this season he’s completed 68 percent of his passes for 629 yards and rushed 30 times for 291 yards and four TDs.

It’s difficult to name one pass that stood out, but to me, his off-balance toss on the run to Tre' Brown III for a 13-yard touchdown near the end of the first half is one any QB would love to have on his highlight reel.

Joesph was being chased out of bounds around the 35 and Brown was well covered as he headed toward the right top corner of the end zone, but Joseph’s pass was on the money, right into his arms.

I worried about the passing game heading into this season, not because of Joseph but because the Monarchs returned just one wide receiver who caught a pass a year ago.

But ODU recruited so well among junior colleges. Ja’Cory Thomas, who had three receptions for 83 yards, comes from Hutchinson Junior College in Kansas. Na’eem Abdul-Rahim Gladding, a sophomore from Brooklyn, New York (three catches, 71 yards) and Brown (three catches, 35 yards), who is also from Hutchinson, all made stellar grabs.

Thomas’ one-handed. 38-yard grab in the first quarter gave ODU good field position and helped set up the first touchdown.

Wide receivers coach Kody Cook deserves a ton of praise not only for helping to recruit these guys, but also teaching them ODU's offensive system in a matter of months. 

And dare I leave out the offensive and defensive lines, which won the battle along the line of scrimmage against the Hokies. For a Sun Belt team to so overwhelmingly win the battle in the trenches against an ACC team is a major feat. 

"We had a four to nothing sack margin and an eight to three TFL (tackle for a loss) margin," Rahne said. "We won the rushing game by 80 yards."

Enough said. 

As Rahne was concluding, he mentioned former Alabama coach Nick Saban and said he thought Saban left the game because “now we’re paying players.”

He then spoke emotionally for a few moments.

“That’s why I love my team, because my team loves to play football,” he said. “And unfortunately, that’s very rare now, very rare.

“A lot of guys (at other schools) love the things that come with playing football. The money, notoriety, and all of those sorts of things.

“But our team is not like that. They just love to play football.”

And they love to win, something the Monarchs seemed poised do a lot this season.

Minium is ODU’s senior executive writer. Contact him at hminium@odu.edu or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram