The students started setting up camp–literally–when the sun was still high, well before when the school said they could, at 7 pm.

Nestled on the grassy patch behind The Ted, they brought water, playing cards, multi-person tents, blankets, soccer balls, boomboxes, whatever they might need to make it through the night to be the first to receive tickets to the innagural season of ODU football.

And then, just around nightfall, the rains came. I’m talking heavy rains. The kind of storm that had people making apocalypse jokes on their Facebook status updates.

But when I visited late yesterday afternoon the students didn’t know it was going to storm. It was just a sunny summer day spent waiting for the games to start.

Rachael Morrill, left, and Gabrielle Herion

“We want to be at that first game,” said Gabrielle Herion, a freshman from Chesapeake. “It’s our first year here and the first year of football. It’s a whole new level of school spirit.”

Gabrielle’s friend, Rachael Morrill, lied next to her on a plush pink blanket. “Even if the team sucks, it’s okay,” she said. “You’ve got to support your school.”

Rachel and Gabrielle didn’t bring a tent. “It’s not going to rain,” they insisted, teenagers steadfast in believing there’s no way Mother Nature could rain on their pigskin picnic. They might have ended up taking shelter with Nolan and Zane, who had sent up camp a few yards away.

Zane Turner, left, and Nolan Gonzalez

“We brought a few extra chairs just in case,” said Nolan Gonzalez, a sophomore, as he glanced at the girls.

Nolan and his friend Zane said that a football team is what’s going to transform ODU from a local commuter school to something bigger, something better.

“ODU isn’t taken seriously yet,” said Zane Turner, from Norfolk. “The football team is gonna put us on the block.”

Nolan agreed. “You don’t see us on ESPN or SportsCenter. Ever. Having a football team will broaden our publicity,” he said.

And it’s true. When teenagers talk about colleges and universities, they talk about three things: partying, sports and, finally, academics. The hope is that with a football team ODU will do something to better all three. Obviously a football team is the diamond in an athletic department’s crown. But just as much, having this football team is about giving kids like Zane and Nolan a chance to flirt with girls like Rachel and Gabrielle. The football brings flirting, which begets sex or relationships, which begets good feelings about ODU which begets… higher academic standards?

Somehow, yes.

Marco Manzo

“It shows that were are growing as a school,” said Marco Manzo, a sophomore strumming a guitar on the other side of the field. “Watch us in five, ten years. People that made it in with 2.7s are not going to make it in.”

And he’s probably right. It’s worth noting that the majority of students camped out were freshmen and sophomores. They made their decisions to come to ODU once it had been announced there would be a football team. They came to ODU, in part, to be sitting on that grass last night.

“A football team adds so much to a school,” said CJ Lindemann, a senior. “We’re going to bring so much prestige and income.”

CJ Lindemann

It’s that little pronoun slip from CJ–when he said we where he meant they–that makes all of this football team hubbub worthwhile. I’m entering my second year as a graduate student in ODU’s MFA program. So far, there’s been nothing really to hold onto for me at ODU. No great national reputation. Not some world-class campus, or even a working monorail. Last year, I have to admit, I’m not even sure what our mascot was. A lion? Some sort of king? The fleur de lys?

Now I’ll know for sure because they’ll be some hyped-up student dressed as a big old lion, king, or fleur de lys running around Foreman Field. That student mascot will get us all to stand and cheer. This fall we will stand and cheer, together, and look from side to side and realize, Wow, I’m a part of something.

And that something won’t be a football team, even if it will be touchdowns we’re cheering for.

That something will be ODU.

Now I don’t know how many students made it through that rainstorm last night. I’m sure some of the students bailed. But the ones that didn’t, the ones who made it through the storm, they got something much more important than tickets to some game they won’t even remember the score of in a month.

They got a real college experience. They got pride in their school that they wouldn’t have had before.

And that’s why ODU having a football team is a very, very good thing.

Additional reporting contributed by Hannah Serrano.