
DATE: Sunday, August 31, 1997               TAG: 9708310083
SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: TOM ROBINSON

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   89 lines

NSU ENVISIONS ITS FUTURE - AND IT INCLUDES MORE THAN FOOTBALL

The day was about vision and image and football, in that order.

Norfolk State went Division I for real Saturday when it christened Price Stadium, with nearly 34,000 inside the place and TV viewers in more than a dozen markets looking in on the Spartans' first game as an NCAA Division I-AA program.

The visionary was there. Of course he was. Harrison B. Wilson is no longer Norfolk State's president, but he wouldn't have missed it. Couldn't have. The stadium was his baby, from years before conception, through its controversial labor, to its awakening to the world.

Wilson retired two months ago after 22 years at Norfolk State. Still has an office in the school library, which he has yet to visit. He's caught in an awkward transitional stage, now that the care and feeding of Norfolk State are in other hands.

But Wilson attended the game, greeting friends and well-wishers behind the stands before the game, acknowledging an emptiness in not being actively involved in the day's proceedings, but reflecting with pride upon what he has wrought.

``This isn't anything that was just thrown together,'' Wilson said. ``This started nine years ago. And now, who would ever think that little old Norfolk State would have the third-largest stadium in Virginia? You've got to have vision.''

Against talk of blown budgets and deep deficits, even with a Division II program, Wilson continued his push to raise Norfolk State's athletic facilities and standards. He saw an on-campus stadium where others saw an impossibility. He saw ways to pay for it, ways for it to pay for itself, where others sensed folly.

And if the state legislature and Norfolk State's Board of Visitors didn't believe in him, Wilson said, why would they have endorsed his dream?

``Everything I did, I did to make money in the future,'' Wilson said. ``And for the future, this is the only way to go. I don't think there's any turning back now. They'll pay the bills here. That's this lady's strong suit. Oh, they'll pay the bills.''

The lady, Norfolk State's new president and image-maker, is Marie V. McDemmond. She was vice-president of finance for Florida Atlantic University before she succeeded Wilson. She knows money. And she knows that there are some things money can't necessarily buy. Oddly enough, a good image tops the list.

``This is so important to the university,'' said McDemmond, who in her pregame comments to the crowd thanked Wilson for having ``the foresight to build this wonderful stadium.''

The exposure commensurate with the higher division raises Norfolk State's profile nationwide, she said, which can only be good. It calls attention to all of its programs, academic and athletic. ``It says we're big enough and good enough to go Division I,'' McDemmond said.

You have to call Day One of the makeover successful. Traffic and logistical problems, always a concern with new facilities and particularly feared this holiday weekend, appeared minimal.

The marching Spartan Legion sounded great, as usual. And Dick Price Stadium looked great, welcoming and alive. Ditto the man the building was named for, athletic director Dick Price, despite his pregame comments.

``When I'm in heaven,'' Price announced, motioning to a little boy by his side, ``my grandson will run for a touchdown here.''

That leaves the actual football, which wasn't so great. The sloppy Spartans were hammered by their old CIAA nemesis Virginia State, an efficient 36-7 winner in its sixth consecutive opening-day victory over Norfolk State.

It will not be lost on the many Norfolk State faithful who oppose their school's move up that Virginia State remains Division II athletically. Division II, that is, with its modest visions and lower profiles.

Saturday represented Norfolk State's official passage from that neighborhood, proclaimed to all that it is wedded to bigger dreams and loftier plans. For better or worse. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MOTOYA NAKAMURA/The Virginian-Pilot

About 34,000 fans fill Dick Price Stadium...

Photos

NHAT MEYER/The Virginian-Pilot

ABOVE: ...crowd of 34,000...

RIGHT: The Norfolk State ban runs screaming...

Ron Knight checks some sausages...

HUY NGUYEN/The Virginian-Pilot

The Spartans lost...

LAWRENCE JACKSON/The Virginian-Pilot

LEFT: Virginia State has Norfolk State's Bruce Johnson...

ABOVE: Yardan Shabazz, a 1995 Norfolk State graduate...