NORFOLK — In December 2020, as much of the world remained locked in a cautious holding pattern, college football powered ahead as best it could.
The results of a recent presidential election were, it turned out, falsely in doubt.
The COVID-19 pandemic, which by then had killed 300,000 Americans, finally began to meet its match when the world’s first vaccines were rolled out.
College sports seasons, either vastly altered or erased altogether, were dropping like flies.
And Old Dominion, which was coming off a canceled football season with an unproven new coach, restocked for the future.
Ricky Rahne, hired to lead the Monarchs a calendar year earlier after six seasons as an assistant at Penn State, announced an 18-man signing class on Dec. 16, 2020. Never mind that none of the new players had seen Rahne coach a game; most hadn’t even set foot on ODU’s campus.
Through Zoom meetings and FaceTime calls and enough texts to make a teenage girl roll her eyes, Rahne and his staff convinced the high schoolers to come play for a man who had never made all the rules, led a team out of a tunnel or even called a timeout.
Those players — or what’s left of them — reach the end of the line this weekend.
Saturday’s regular-season finale against Georgia State at S.B. Ballard Stadium marks the final home game for the Monarchs’ five homegrown fifth-year seniors. The players, who eschewed the greener grass promised by the transfer portal four times through seasons both verdant and brown, gambled by coming to ODU in the first place.
Rahne, whose 8-3 team is within sight of its first 10-win season since 2016, has made sure it’s paid off.
“It’s a huge leap of faith,” Rahne said, recalling the recruiting process. “I mean, they had never seen me coach. They really knew, basically, nothing about me. They had no other program to look at to say, ‘OK, this is how it’s going to be run.’ I owe those guys a lot.”
The group includes offensive linemen Stephon Dubose-Bourne and Skyler Grant and defensive end Kris Trinidad, all starters and all Virginians. Also on the list, which reads like the most laughable part of the menu at an opulent restaurant, are reserve offensive lineman Elijah Hoskin and injured All-American linebacker Jason Henderson.
The other 13 players on that 2020 list have moved on. Some, like receiver Jordan Bly (Gardner-Webb), defensive tackle Denzel Lowry (Louisville) and linebacker Wayne Matthews III (Michigan State), transferred.
The intensely loyal five — through a miracle finish to the 2021 regular season, a total collapse the following year, two season-long limps toward mediocrity and 2025’s coronation as Rahne’s best team — have remained.
Not that leaving was never on the table, especially as teammates packed their bags around them. But it wasn’t for everybody.
“Why go somewhere and take the easy route out?” said Dubose-Bourne, a former star for Indian River High in Chesapeake who chose ODU over Georgia Tech, East Carolina, Marshall and James Madison. “As a man, I feel like you go through things and it helps you become a better man. So I’m grateful that I stayed through the tough times. I feel like I came out better.”
The Monarchs’ season has included blowout wins over North Carolina Central, Virginia Tech, Coastal Carolina, Louisiana Monroe, Troy and, last week, Georgia Southern. Only victories over Liberty and Appalachian State were anything close to slender.
A respectable season-opening loss at current No. 2 Indiana and anomalous midseason beatdowns at the hands of Marshall and Sun Belt East Division champion JMU are the only black marks on a season that has surprised many.
ODU has won four straight, and defeating last-place Georgia State (1-10) should be all but a foregone conclusion.
The Monarchs will then await their third bowl destination in Rahne’s five seasons on the sideline. Projections, which often turn out to be useless, have them playing in either New Orleans, Orlando, Boca Raton, Florida, or Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Thanks mostly to JMU’s success, including a 63-27 win over ODU on Oct. 18, a Sun Belt title wasn’t in the cards this season. But the Monarchs spent weeks in the conversation, something Rahne saw coming when he signed those 18 in 2020.
“You’ve got to have a championship mentality before you have a championship reality,” he said then, “and I think that these guys give us that.”
Since the class arrived, its record is identical to Rahne’s: 28-33. Hidden within that mark are a five-game winning streak, a six-game losing streak, two wins over the better-equipped Hokies and nonconference near-misses against Virginia, Wake Forest and South Carolina.
In 2024, finishing the regular season at Arkansas State without the possibility of reaching a bowl, ODU won anyway. That means the Monarchs, 4-7 and on the heels of a three-game losing streak at the time, could end up winning 11 of 14 games since then.
For a group of players who essentially walked in blind five years ago, it’s heady ground.
“We said we would come in and change this program for the better,” Trinidad, a Richmond native, said, adding that Rahne called him “every day” during the 2020 recruiting cycle. “Coach Rahne had a plan and everything like that, so it feels kind of good that our hard work and efforts somewhat paid off.”
That perseverance, Rahne said, could help anyone in any pursuit. A former quarterback for Cornell, Rahne said he’d like to see competition required of all high school students, whether it’s chess, debate club or anything else.
His fifth-year seniors, recruited virtually but tested and accomplished in the face of intermittently harsh reality, will suit up at The Steve for a final time as living proof.
“They’ve been through a lot,” Rahne said this week. “And I do think, ultimately, it is going to help them be more successful in their life, whether that’s in football, whether that’s in business, whether that’s whatever.
“I think that the aspect of competing and learning how to deal with failure, learning how to deal with success, which is almost just as important, is something that our entire country could probably benefit from.”
David Hall, david.hall@pilotonline.com.
Georgia State at Old Dominion
When: 2 p.m.
On the air: ESPN+, 94.1FM
The Panthers: To put it bluntly, Georgia State (1-10, 0-7) is the worst team in the Sun Belt and one of the worst in the country. The Panthers have been out of the running for bowl consideration since falling to 1-7 on Oct. 23, and they’re in the league’s bottom three in scoring offense (20.6 points per game), scoring defense (38.8 ppg), total defense (452.5 yards per game), rushing offense and defense, sacks by (17) and sacks against (27). Georgia State’s best bet is to catch the Monarchs overconfident and flatfooted.
The Monarchs: ODU (8-3, 6-2) is looking to match a five-game winning streak that made it, improbably, bowl-eligible at the end of the 2021 regular season. The Monarchs, who have found both their rushing game and their defensive identity, are also trying to improve their postseason destination. QB Colton Joseph (2,518 passing yards, 899 rushing yards) remains one of the country’s most effective dual threats. ODU has won its past three games by a combined 109-16.
