A quarter-century after quarterbacking Virginia Tech to the brink of a national title, Michael Vick is attempting to bring championship football to Norfolk State — as the Spartans’ fledgling head coach.
Vick and NSU agreed to contract terms Tuesday, multiple sources said, with an introductory news conference expected within a week. He replaces Dawson Odums, whom the Spartans dismissed last month after a four-season run in which the program went 15-30.
A Newport News native and four-time NFL Pro Bowler, Vick, 44, has never coached, which will make staff composition paramount. Vick has already reached out to potential assistant coaches and support staff, sources said, and some of his hires likely will be familiar to fans.
During his NFL career, Vick played for two of the sport’s most renowned coaches in Andy Reid and Mike Tomlin. In four seasons with Reid and the Philadelphia Eagles, 2009-12, Vick twice established career-highs for passing yards, and as the Kansas City Chiefs head coach in ’17, Reid hired Vick as a training-camp intern.
“I think my heart is really into teaching, you know, the game of football,” Vick told ESPN’s Adam Schefter on a 2017 podcast. “I feel like I’ve learned so much from so many great coaches over the years. You know, I don’t want to bottle up a lot of knowledge, and (I) really can’t relay the messages that I want to relay to a high school kid because … you don’t have to dumb it down, but you can’t be as complex. And I get that.
“So (at the) collegiate level or professional level, you can express ideas. You can go into detail. You know you can coach hard, and that’s what I want to do.”
But rather than coaching, Vick transitioned to media. Since 2017, he has been an NFL analyst for Fox Sports, working in studio, contributing to FS1’s NFL coverage and appearing regularly on national radio shows such as Colin Cowherd’s.
Dating to the late 1990s, each of Norfolk State’s last five coaches — Odums, Latrell Scott, Pete Adrian, Willie Gillus and Mo Forte — had losing overall records with the Spartans. Odums’ lone winning season was 6-5 in his 2021 debut, but half of those victories came against non-Division I opponents.
Norfolk State has also seen its conference, the Mid-Eastern Athletic, pillaged by realignment as rivals such as Hampton, North Carolina A&T, Florida A&M and Bethune-Cookman exited for other leagues. The Spartans are among just six MEAC football programs, a shortage that compounds nonconference scheduling challenges.
In each of the next two seasons, NSU is contracted to play in stadiums familiar to Vick. The Spartans travel to Rutgers in 2025 and Virginia in ’26, venues where he led Virginia Tech to wins in 1999.
Moreover, Norfolk State is scheduled to open the 2026 and ’27 seasons at Old Dominion.
A Peninsula District star at Ferguson and Warwick high schools, Vick led Virginia Tech to an undefeated regular season in 1999 and the national championship game as a redshirt freshman. That Sugar Bowl setback to Florida State was Vick’s only loss as a starter in two seasons with the Hokies.
The Atlanta Falcons selected Vick with the No. 1 overall pick of the 2001 NFL draft. He also played for the Eagles, New York Jets and Pittsburgh Steelers.
In 2006, his final year with Atlanta, Vick became the first quarterback in NFL history to rush for 1,000 yards in a single season. Only Lamar Jackson and Justin Fields have done so since.
David Teel, david.teel@virginiamedia.com
Michael Sauls, michael.sauls@virginiamedia.com
