NSU fans, students wait hours for tickets to ODU game

Norfolk, Virginia -- Norfolk State football fans waited in line for seven hours to buy tickets for the school's playoff game this weekend. Katrina Kemp waited in line four hours and left empty-handed.

On the first day that tickets became available to the public, a line of more than 500 fans zig-zagged across the sidewalk outside Norfolk State's ticket center. Annette Johnson, an NSU grad who began taking classes in 1963, arrived at 5:30 a.m. to buy her tickets, plopping her portable chair behind a handful of people already in line.

"I wake up at 4, but usually go back to bed," Johnson said. "We used to play at Foreman Field, and we know what it's about, how many people are getting in. We wanted tickets."



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College football offers The Battle of Norfolk

The Battle of Norfolk will happen sooner than expected.  Norfolk State and Old Dominion will meet at 1:30 p.m. Saturday at ODU's Foreman Field in the first round of the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs.
Earlier this year, the schools agreed to begin a six-year series of games in 2013, but now they won't have to wait.

With the NCAA selection committee emphasizing regionalism in its bracketing, there was no easier pairing than pitting NSU and ODU. The travel distance between the two schools is 4.2 miles. Anticipation was high Sunday as students, alumni and local fans gathered on each campus and held their breath to learn who their first opponents would be.

"If that place seats 20,000, there's going to be 20,000 more outside," Moses Atkins, a 1960 Norfolk State alumnus, said of ODU's Foreman Field after the cheers subsided. "It's going to be one of the best things that's happened to this city."

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ODU to host NSU in first round of FCS playoffs

NORFOLK, Virginia -- Old Dominion got a home game. Norfolk State got a close game.

When the dust cleared at 10 o'clock Sunday morning, the two programs learned the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs selection committee had taken the path of least resistance. The teams will meet for the first time at 1:30 p.m. Saturday in a first-round playoff game at Foreman Field.

Since ODU began playing football three years ago, the Monarchs and Spartans camps have been talking about starting a series. This fall, the two agreed to a six-year deal beginning in 2013.

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