RJ Young
FOX Sports National College Football Analyst
Moments after the beginning of the primary house sport of the College Football Playoff period Friday night time at Notre Dame Stadium, Michael Vick is on the telephone explaining how he plans to construct a program able to successful at Norfolk State.
While Marcus Freeman grew to become the primary Black coach to win a CFP sport, pushing the Fighting Irish one step nearer to successful a nationwide championship, Vick began from scratch. He’s placing collectively a employees. He is working to recruit gamers. He’s pushing his youngsters into the automotive as he explains how he’ll current his imaginative and prescient of Spartan soccer to gamers and oldsters.
“I perceive the place that Norfolk State is in,” Vick mentioned. “I perceive the place we’re. There will likely be a variety of youngsters on the market on the lookout for alternatives to play soccer, to play at a stage the place they’ll proceed to develop. I sit up for working with youngsters day by day, versus a coaching camp of two-day soccer.
“Instead of seeing them develop in two days, I can now practice them day by day with an excellent teaching employees that may assist me guarantee these youngsters play their finest soccer.”
Who is a part of that employees? He’s engaged on it. Which gamers are you trying to signal? The finest. What is your plan for achievement? Make tomorrow higher than right this moment.
Vick, 44, formally grew to become the nineteenth head coach at Norfolk State, a comparatively younger traditionally black faculty with none triumphs on the FCS stage. In reality, this system hasn’t completed with a successful document since 2021, which was the final 12 months a Norfolk State participant, Justin Smith, signed knowledgeable soccer contract, inking a take care of Houston Roughnecks within the USFL.
In 2011, the Spartans appeared poised to take a step ahead after successful the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) championship and incomes an FCS playoff bid, solely to have the title stripped from them in 2016. 48 student-athletes were deemed ineligible in 11 sports activities and three soccer groups from 2009 to 2011.
The college endured two years of probation imposed by the NCAA, in addition to scholarship reductions in all 11 sports activities. When Dawson Odums took over the soccer program in 2021, he did so after placing collectively eight straight successful seasons with 4 West Division titles and a convention championship at Southern University. However, his first season was the one one during which the Spartans gained extra video games than they misplaced over the following 4 years. Odums was relieved of his duties in November, posting a 15-31 document throughout his 4 seasons at Norfolk State.
Enter Vick, who has been ready for the chance to return to teaching since he interned for Andy Reid and the Kansas City Chiefs in 2017. Vick has maintained a relentless dialogue with Reid relating to the subject of teaching. He additionally spoke with Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin in regards to the prospect of teaching. Recently, he picked up the thought of Deion Sanders, maybe probably the most well-known player-turned-coach success story.
Sanders led Jackson State to a pair of SWAC championships earlier than heading to Colorado, the place he turned this system round from two wins earlier than he arrived, to 4 in his first 12 months, to 9 in his third, with the Heisman winner enjoying for him.
“I reached out to Deion simply to have a dialog with him,” Vick mentioned. “The dialog was extra about philosophy and an important steps to get began. It jogged my memory that I’d have a gaggle of individuals pulling for me.”
But Vick, who has been with FOX Sports since 2017, serving as an analyst for “FOX NFL Kickoff,” needed to make the appropriate resolution first. He had two selections throughout this final teaching cycle: Norfolk State and Sacramento State.
The Hornets had constructed an attention-grabbing schedule, making the FCS playoffs in three of the final 4 years. Former head coach Troy Taylor accepted a Power 4 head teaching job at Stanford in December 2022. They would additionally built a NIL community with the purpose of elevating $50 million and shifting as much as the highest division of the game.
“Sacramento State had a improbable scenario. They had tons of NIL cash and tons of alternatives,” Vick mentioned. “But I did not need to make my resolution primarily based on cash. I wished to make it primarily based on what I might do and who I might genuinely assist. And I believe, , I might assist each side. But I felt prefer it was nice to come back house and doing it in my yard and that was in all probability the deciding issue, having the possibility to do it the place I grew up.”
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When Vick known as, it was from a 757 space code quantity, the place he had made a reputation for himself at Warwick High School in Newport News, Virginia – AKA Tidewater. The Tidewater space is famend for the expertise it has produced, particularly in sports activities. The record of star athletes produced by the 757 is staggering, from Vick and Lawrence Taylor within the NFL, to Alonzo Mourning and Allen Iverson within the NBA, to three-time Olympic gold medalist Gabby Douglas.
When Mack Brown grew to become the top coach at North Carolina, he made recruiting the 757s a precedence, creating gamers like Dre Bly, who later coached for Brown at Chapel Hill, and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame, similar to Brown.
“We really recruit Tidewater prefer it’s in-state,” Brown said me in 2021. And the legacy of the place and the individuals who made their mark on America was one other recruiting benefit for the coach who additionally turned Vince Young and Drake Maye into family names.
“Nowadays, you must be the appropriate place to be,” Brown mentioned. “And if individuals see you having enjoyable and your gamers are your finest recruiters, then they will inform the opposite guys, ‘Come right here, man. This is nice. This is enjoyable.’ What you see is actual. They’re not making these things up.”
No one was extra enjoyable to observe than Vick, or extra ruthless when a present failed. During his faculty enjoying days at Virginia Tech, Vick hit Tommy Polley and Roland Seymour so laborious within the 1999 Sugar Bowl that they each blew ACLs of their knees. Vick was such a gifted athlete that he was chosen within the thirtieth spherical of the 2000 MLB Draft by the Colorado Rockies, regardless of not having performed baseball since eighth grade. The query wasn’t whether or not the Atlanta Falcons would choose him with the primary choose within the 2001 NFL Draft. The solely query was: What would Vick do within the NFL? The reply: no matter he wished.
He was so chilly that we known as him by his first and final title. “Mike Vick” was like shouting hallelujah in church. By the time he appeared on the quilt of “Madden 2004,” he had already damaged the sport. Playing with Vick on the joysticks was dishonest.
When Vick left the NFL, he did in order the primary quarterback to hurry for 1,000 yards in a season. He was a four-time Pro Bowler and was named the NFL’s Comeback Player of the Year in 2010 following his return to the league following 21 months in federal jail for his involvement in a canine combating ring. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2018 and can probably be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. In the meantime, he expects to fill the minds and hearts of student-athletes who need to play for him, to offer them a platform and a plan to succeed.
“The wins and losses will outline themselves,” Vick mentioned. “In the tip, the necessary factor is to be relatable. The necessary factor is that guys can come to you and ask you questions, the door is at all times open, they aren’t afraid to come back to you and inform you how they actually really feel. It’s a friendship mutual. It’s a mutual relationship that you just attempt to develop.”
Michael Vick is an iconoclast, who demolished the restrictions of the quarterback place within the NFL and proposed the cell QB not as a gimmick, however as a necessity. In the method, he skilled highs and lows that many have by no means had and ever can have. With that have got here information so profound that he merely feels known as to unfold it. To pour it into the place that raised it. To pour it into the gamers who most remind him of himself, whose story started no in a different way than his. He simply wished an opportunity to be nice. He has as soon as once more been given that chance as a coach and he’s trying to prolong it to those that select to play for him.
RJ Young is a nationwide faculty soccer author and analyst for FOX Sports and host of “The Number One College Football Show” podcast. Follow him to @RJ_Young.
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