The ups (DeSean Jackson) and downs (Michael Vick) of two first-year HBCU head coaches

PHILADELPHIA — Delaware State defeated Norfolk State 27-20 at Lincoln Financial Field Thursday in a blustery midweek football matchup between a pair of HBCU rivals.

But this was more than a mere game between conference rivals. Thursday’s game marked history.

This was the first time two historically Black colleges played each other at Lincoln Financial Field, which is the home of the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles. The game was also a deeply personal matchup between two former NFL teammates, rivals and friends. It was a game between two first-year head coaches whose respective institutions hope to use their celebrity to change the fortunes of two moribund football programs.

DeSean Jackson, 38, is the Delaware State head coach and Michael Vick, 45, is the head coach at Norfolk State. Vick and Jackson were teammates with the Philadelphia Eagles for five years. In that time, they helped write each other’s magical chapters with the franchise.

After Thursday’s game, Jackson said the idea that he and Vick would one day face each other as college head coaches was unreal.

“I would have never envisioned this,” Jackson said. “I could have never imagined it. I could have never predicted it. It just shows you how well God works.”

Vick was equally struck by Thursday’s full circle moment when former teammates became head coaching rivals.

“I never thought I’d be looking across the field and watching him coaching, so it was just really a cool moment,” Vick said. “You never know what life is going to put in front of you.”

Philadelphia was the perfect place for a Vick/Jackson reunion. Philadelphia was a safe space for Vick and Jackson as professionals, as they were teammates on the Eagles from 2009 through 2013.

The Eagles drafted Jackson in the second round in 2008. Vick joined the Eagles in 2009 after serving 18 months in federal prison on a conviction related to running a dogfighting operation and after being reinstated by the NFL.

In 2010, Vick and Jackson had a phenomenal season together. Vick was 8-3 as a starting quarterback, enjoyed a Pro Bowl season, won Associated Press Comeback Player of the Year and led the Eagles to the NFC East title. Jackson made the Pro Bowl, led the Eagles with 1,056 yards receiving and the paced the entire NFL with 22.5 yards per reception.

Vick was like a big brother to Jackson, who by his own admission could be a knucklehead and had a bit of a wild streak that Vick helped tame. It all washed up on him when they met in the middle of the field and hugged after Thursday’s game.

“Man, that moment you know at the middle of the field with Michael, I truly look up to him,” Jackson said. “He’s always been a big bro to me. We’ve got a great relationship; I admired him growing up. All his accolades and what he was doing then when he came here, and it was just like a dream come true to be able to play with a quarterback like him. Just that moment when you see your brother, you see how great he’s doing. I just hope that it translates to wins for him because he deserves it.”

Thursday night had to be especially difficult for Vick. Even though he and Jackson are friends, Vick had to look across the field and see Jackson turning around a program which, like Norfolk State, was in shambles. With Thursday’s loss, Norfolk State is 1-8 overall and 0-2 in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. Delaware State, which has not had a winning season since 2012, is 6-3 overall and 2-0 in the MEAC. Although entering this season Vick had the bigger name, bigger buzz and was compared to Colorado head coach Deion Sanders, Jackson has been the revelation at Delaware State.

With three remaining games – Morgan State, Howard and South Carolina State – Jackson’s Hornets could achieve the impossible dream and play for the national championship of Black college football at the Celebration Bowl in Atlanta.

“We still haven’t done anything,” Jackson said. “We got three more conference games, and our goal is to go undefeated and hopefully we can make it to our destination in Atlanta.”

With the exception of a 60-10 loss to Rutgers in September and a 51-20 loss to South Carolina State, each of Norfolk State’s losses have been close. The frustration for Vick is palatable.

As he sat down to face the media on Thursday, he began his remarks by saying, “It feels like I’m saying the same thing every week: ‘We’ll get ’em next time, coming up close, had opportunities in the game.’ The team that makes the least number of mistakes is probably going to come out victorious the majority of the time, and once again it wasn’t us. We’re out of contention to win the MEAC for sure, but we’ll keep fighting.”

There is a learning curve for both Vick and Jackson. After Norfolk State’s loss to Rutgers, Scarlet Knights head coach Greg Schiano talked about the process of learning to become a head coach.

Schiano, for example, has been coaching since 1988, when he was an assistant coach at Ramapo High School (N.J.). He was a defensive coordinator at the University of Miami when Vick was starring at Virginia Tech. He has been a head coach at Rutgers twice, and he was a head coach for a season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the NFL.

Vick and Jackson are part of the Coach Prime coaching tree – not because they ever worked under Sanders, but because his hiring by Jackson State five years ago became a template for HBCU’s celebrity coach methodology. It’s a methodology which did not include the typical decades of paying coaching dues.

“I don’t know what I can do to help him [Vick],” Schiano said. “But when you become a head coach, there’s so many things that you didn’t know you don’t even know. And all of a sudden, when you do it for a lot of years, it becomes kind of secondhand – like any job that you’ve done for a long time.

“So, I think it’s real important that you have good people around you to help you. I know he’s got some really good mentors that help him, so that’s critical.”

Vick and Jackson have rich NFL experience. Vick played for 13 NFL seasons, Jackson for 15. Jackson said he hopes the trend continues of HBCUs giving former NFL professional players an opportunity to become head coaches. The experience these players bring to coaching is rich.

Jackson got his opportunity at Delaware State, Vick at Norfolk State. Sanders got his start at Jackson State, and Eddie George got his at Tennessee State.

“I feel like we’ve got a great insight on the game. We played and we know what it’s like to go out there and go to battle,” Jackson said.

Of course, the flip side of that model is that coaches will get the experience and leave. Sanders left for Colorado; George left for Bowling Green. Two season ago, Florida A&M head coach Willie Simmons led his team to a Celebration Bowl victory and abruptly quit to become the running backs coach at Duke. A year later, Simmons took the head coaching job at Florida International.

But first you have to win. Vick will have to prove in the next two to three years that he can turn around a program like Norfolk State the way Coach Prime turned around Jackson State and how Jackson, so far, is rejuvenating Delaware State.

Vick, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2001 NFL draft and, at one point, the NFL’s most exciting player, must face the possibility of not winning a game the rest of the season.

“I know tough times don’t last, but tough people do,” Vick said. “This is a part of my growth process. Did I ever think that we would be sitting on 1-8? No. So I take full responsibility as the head coach and, like I said, just look forward to the better days ahead because I can see it.”

Thursday night’s game in Philadelphia was a fitting, festive end to the HBCU homecoming season. Indeed, for Jackson and Vick, the game was like an HBCU homecoming. More than 47,000 fans braved high winds and rain to celebrate.

“Philadelphia showed up,” said Jackson, who initiated the idea of the game with Norfolk State. “I mean, wherever people were from — whether it’s Virginia, Delaware, Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore — wherever people came from today, they showed up and showed out.”

Thursday’s game was about history, friendship, and the magic of the HBCU. For Vick, the loss was yet another lesson in humility and a building block toward a better future. For Jackson, the impetus little brother, Thursday’s game and this season are about achieving the impossible dream.

The post The ups (DeSean Jackson) and downs (Michael Vick) of two first-year HBCU head coaches appeared first on Andscape.