The Hampton Roads area is going to be eager to declare big time football at Old Dominion University a failure or a success.

View from the press box.

I’m not quite ready to give the football team a passing grade, even after it’s 49-17 drubbing of Virginia Union on Saturday. Virginia Union is Division II, after all. ODU is supposed to mop up with the likes of them. And the sold-out stadium is great, but let’s be realistic: it’s the first year, and this region is sports starved. It should sell out every home game the first year.

But as for Foreman Field? Give me a permanent marker, cause I’m ready to hand it an A.

A view from the fancy boxes in the south end zone.

I missed the opening game, so Saturday’s rumble with Virginia Union was my first chance to check out the refurbished stadium. You need to understand that I’m a person who spent many a Sunday growing up going to NFL games at Giants Stadium. I went to one of the most successful big time sports colleges in the country, the University of Connecticut in the Big East. I spent some time working for ESPN. And I’m very critical of the money-first nature of college athletics. So I didn’t walk into Foreman Field hoping to like it, if that makes any sense.

But I loved it. I loved just about everything about it.

I loved how when I drove down Hampton Boulevard, with the undergrads swarming, alums feeling their way through the rebuffed campus, and the band warming up in the distance I thought, Ahhh. A college campus.

Fans watching from the parking garage.

I loved how many parking garages there were, and in what close vicinity they were to the field. What I loved even more were the fans watching from the top of the nearest parking garage, giving Foreman Field a hint of Wrigley Field-esque mid-city charm.

I loved how well tailgaters were accommodated with their own lot to the south of the stadium, and how fans streaming into the stadium were met by the smell of barbecue.

I loved the white-washed brick of the interior of the stadium. I loved how the cement rafters, in the right magic hour light, almost looked like treated pine.

I loved how close the fans are to the field. When you’re in the front row of the bleachers you practically feel like a wide-out.

As I walked around the stadium on the perfect Saturday for football and thought about this article, I wondered, is it just me? Is this place really this good?

The Virginia Union University team, gearing up before the game.

To get an honest answer I made my way to enemy territory. I asked some Virginia Union fans.

“It’s beautiful. Oh, it’s beautiful,” said Brinda Fowlkes, who actually had a son playing for the team ODU was beating up on.

“I like the way it’s shaped. I like the field,” she said. “And even sitting here in the corner, I still have a great view.”

Brittany Walker, an undergrad at Virginia Union, stopped herself short of evusiveness after taking notice of the scoreboard.

“It’s nice. I won’t say any more because I go to Union,” she said. “We don’t even have a stadium, so what can I say?”

The gushing section of this column will now continue.

I loved how when walking around the stadium I wasn’t forced through some indoor corridor; the game was always in view, the sun always on my shoulders.

I loved that the stadium isn’t a Division 1A monstrosity. Foreman Field is intimate, almost with the ambiance of a high school field. And that’s a good thing. If ODU is ever going to be a Division 1A power, they need to build the program first. Foreman Field is perfect for that. In fact, if they ever do rise to 1A, it will be in part because of the smaller size of this field, and the environment it fosters.

I loved how the undergrad girls were dressed—how to put this delicately?—like they were going to an event. I loved how many of the guys had painted their bodies in ODU blue.

And then there’s the team that played on the field. Coach Bobby Wilder called for an onside kick after the first touchdown of the game. When ODU recovered the crowd was sent into a froth.

“You know when you make a decision to do something like that, the crowd’s gonna get in it,” Coach Wilder said. “We knew it would engage the crowd.”

Hold on. So that coach actually called a play with the fan’s entertainment in mind?

“Absolutely,” he said.

It doesn’t exactly have to do with the field, but I loved that too.

I could go on and on. The lush trees that peaked around the stands on the north side of the field. The way the band makes use of the entire field. The convenient (working) outdoor sinks near the Port-a-Potties. The kettle corn stand and the Domino’s pizza. Right down to the Grandma’s Homestyle Oatmeal Raisin Cookies (so soft and chewy!) they were giving out in the press box.

Grades for the football team itself and how it affects ODU’s reputation and life on campus will have to wait. But one thing’s clear even after week two: it’s not just the team that has a perfect record. In my book, Foreman Field does too.