Rutgers will pay Norfolk State $275,000 for coming on the road for Saturday's game.
NORFOLK - The idea that Norfolk State might be overmatched against nationally-ranked Rutgers on Saturday doesn’t concern wide receiver Dario Walker.
“They bleed just like we bleed,” he said dismissively.
To Walker, this weekend’s game is about opportunity.
NSU graduate Curtis Hodge plans to be among the half-dozen busloads of fans who will make the seven-hour trek from Norfolk to Piscataway, N.J. He will be showing his colors – “I’ll be wearing green and gold from head to toe,” he said – and hopes the university will benefit, whether it be recruiting athletes or just students.
But the bottom line is the bottom line: More than anything, Saturday’s game at Rutgers Stadium, before a sellout homecoming crowd, is about money.
Rutgers rakes it in from being able to fill its stadium . Norfolk State collects $275,000 from Rutgers for being willing to play a I-A team on the road.
And while $275,000 isn’t exactly big bucks to the folks at major-college programs – Rutgers’ football budget exceeds NSU’s by $11 million – that kind of money is a windfall for I-AA teams like the Spartans.
NSU has struggled to meet the financial demands of Division I since it made the move up 10 years ago from DivisionII. Just as Murray State’s season-opening 73-10 loss to Louisville translated into a weight room , NSU athletic director Marty Miller has his own wish list. Some of them can be checked off through the added revenue this week.
And more is on the way . NSU has scheduled a game at Kentucky for next September, with the financial details similar to the ones with Rutgers.
The money from these games will go into the general athletic fund, but Spartans coach Pete Adrian had two requests for football and was granted both.
For one, the Spartans will not have to bus to Tallahassee, Fla., for next month’s game at Florida A&M or to next fall’s game in Daytona Beach, Fla., to play Bethune-Cookman. That’s good news considering Adrian’s bad memories from the 13-hour road trip the Spartans made two years ago to Tallahassee.
“It was 17-10 in the fourth quarter and we died,” Adrian said. “And I know why.
“It wasn’t that we couldn’t fly, but if we did, then I’d have to take $40,000 from somewhere else and say, 'We can’t do this.’”
Adrian also wanted to make sure enough money is available to cover tuition if his players choose to take summer school.
“We’ve been able to do that for the two years I’ve been here, but it puts a strain on other things,” he said. “This is more like a guarantee.”
Fifth-year seniors will also benefit from the money, Miller said.“This game will help us with those students who come back, whether it be to finish up one semester or 23 hours or even three hours,” Miller said. “Those student-athletes are very valuable to us, and I wanted to be able to provide a way they could finish their education.”
No renovations are planned “this go-round,” said Miller, though the wish list includes upgrading NSU’s track facilities and improving all the locker rooms. Revenue from the Kentucky game may be able to provide that next fall.
So while it’s a no-brainer to figure out why I-AA schools would seek this type of payday, it is curious why NSU would be so ambitious with its first foray into I-A football. The Scarlet Knights are ranked 13th in the country, after all.
“We weren’t supposed to play this Rutgers,” Adrian said with a laugh, explaining that talk of an NSU-Rutgers game came when the Scarlet Knights weren’t so successful.
The Rutgers team the Spartans face is fresh off its first bowl appearance in 27 years and is led by running back Ray Rice, whose Heisman candidacy is touted at the university’s SeeRayRun.com Web site. More than 6,000 names are on a waiting list for tickets to home games.
The Rutgers that Adrian initially had in mind to play was a far different team. After going 7-3 in 1984, Rutgers’ next 20 years produced three winning seasons. Greg Schiano took over as coach in 2001, and the Scarlet Knights were 3-20 in his first two years. In 2004, they closed with five straight losses.
It wasn’t unusual for marketing folks at Rutgers to give tickets away to Pop Warner groups and senior citizens so the stadium didn’t appear quite so empty.
Adrian wanted a I-A game, so he started making phone calls. Flipping through a notebook recently, he reviewed some of the contacts he made:
“I was calling everybody. UCF, Wake Forest, Cincinnati, Northeastern, Ohio U., UNLV, Georgia Tech, Nebraska, SMU, New Mexico, North Carolina. Those are all people I had conversation with.”
Along with Rutgers, fresh off a 7-5 season in 2005.
Any coach will tell you the trouble with scheduling is matching up dates that work for both programs.
“You latch on to somebody and bingo!” Adrian said.
Howard played the Scarlet Knights last season with Rutgers initially asking for a two-year agreement, Adrian said. When Howard didn’t want that, Adrian asked if NSU could have it and eventually ended up with Saturday’s date.
And given the attention the game is bringing to the program, he isn’t complaining.
“From a media standpoint, from a national standpoint, we heard all summer long from our boosters up there,” Adrian said. “There’s a lot of hype.”
All 1,000 of NSU’s tickets sold almost instantly, and the game is on ESPN’s Game Plan package.
As far as the X’s and O’s, despite the mismatch in budgets, size of linemen and depth, Adrian likes to remind his Spartans that they play 11 guys at a time, just like the Scarlet Knights, and that Rutgers Stadium is still 100 yards from goal line to goal line.
“You prepare the best you can,” he said. “We’re going to give it the best shot we’ve got.”
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