A Season With Norries Wilson
11/22/2006 12:00:00 AM | Football
The 6-foot-6-inch former offensive lineman coached the Lions to their first Ivy League win in 17 tries. A Gatorade bath was in order.
“He's an excellent communicator,” Murphy said, sitting in her office in Dodge Fitness Center nearly one year after inviting Wilson to join the staff at Columbia. “I think what struck me about Norries when I first met him is that he's a real person. Young people know immediately whether or not you care. I knew our young men would compete for him and play hard for him, and they have all year long.”
By hiring Wilson away from the University of Connecticut, where he was the offensive coordinator, Columbia became the first Ivy League school to hire an African-American as head football coach. Murphy said the two never talked about it before he arrived in New York.
“Norries and I both feel very strongly that it's not about him being a black football coach,” Murphy said. “It's about him being the best fit for Columbia.”
As soon as Wilson moved into a guest room on East Campus last December, he began work on assembling a coaching staff and the 2006 team, while still traveling back up to Connecticut three times a week to be with his wife, Brenda Wilson, and their infant son, Cecil. To Wilson and his coaching staff's credit, most of the players who had committed to play at Columbia under the previous coaching staff kept their word. “I say they're all mine,” Wilson said, sitting behind his office desk that boasted five photos of Cecil. “We're rebuilding now. Players can come here and make their mark.”
After 17 years of being an assistant coach, that's just what Wilson, 41, is trying to do as the head coach of a Division I program. He coached at four other programs before taking a job coaching Connecticut's offensive line. Three years later, he became the offensive coordinator for the Huskies and, in 2004, was one of five finalists for the Frank Broyles Award, given to the nation's top assistant coach. Wilson had the diamond-studded ring and a game ball from Connecticut's 39-10 win over Toledo in the Motor City Bowl that year.
While coaching for the Huskies, Wilson met his wife, Brenda Marquis, who had graduated from Connecticut the year before and was working for an insurance company in Hartford. “I didn't call him until a week after I met him,” she said, sitting on the couch in their Morningside Heights apartment on a Friday morning in early November.
“She was scared of greatness,” Wilson said, giving a knowing, sideways glance to his wife. He was already dressed in black pants and a white polo shirt with the Columbia football insignia, ready for the team's departure that afternoon for New Haven, Conn., to play Yale.
They dated for four years before Wilson proposed, in the form of a scavenger hunt he set up at their apartment in East Hartford. “When I was in school, I only went to the football games because I knew people on the team,” Brenda Wilson said. “Norries would come over and want to watch more football after coaching, and I didn't understand it. Now, he comes home, and I'm already watching the games.”
The Wilsons talked while 20-month-old Cecil, nicknamed “Papa,” roamed about energetically with a blanket tucked under one arm and a teddy bear under the other. A long, uncarpeted hallway that does double duty as Cecil's runway led to the living room. A University of Minnesota blanket covered the back wall, and the jersey Wilson wore for the Golden Gophers in the 1985 Independence Bowl hung in a frame on the opposite wall. Brenda Wilson found the jersey in her husband's closet and the three game balls her husband received while an offensive tackle at Minnesota in her mother-in-law's basement in Illinois.
Wilson sipped on a caffeine-free diet Coke, his beverage of choice. He estimated that he drinks between 12 and 14 sodas per day, a habit he picked up while working for R.C. Cola after college. He keeps his stash in a wine cooler with a clear glass door that serves as his nightstand.
Brenda Wilson's mother-in-law entered the room with 3-week-old Trinity Renee, whom Wilson nicknamed “Kitty.” She handed the tiny bundle to Wilson, who tucked her into the crook of his arm. His new job does not afford Wilson a lot of time to spend with his family, so when he's home, he dotes on his children. There's a limit to what he will do, though. “I'm not good at changing clothes,” he said earlier. “I'm always afraid I'm going to break an arm or a leg.”
If the Wilsons have their way, when Papa and Kitty grow out of their diapers, neither will play contact sports. Arthritis in his knees and ankles and chronic soreness in his neck and back are daily reminders to Wilson of his days in the trenches at the University of Minnesota.
“They can have fun playing chess,” Wilson said.
“They could play golf,” Brenda suggested. “Tiger and Michelle Wie.”
With the amount of athletic ability in the Wilson household, the idea is plausible. Besides playing football, dad also wrestled for the Golden Gophers for two years.
Brenda was a forward/center on the Connecticut basketball team for two years. In 1995, her first season, the Huskies went undefeated and won the school's first national championship in women's basketball. Wilson won the last one-on-one basketball match-up with his wife, which she described as “a wrestling match with a ball involved.”
Wilson's mother, Ella Wilson, had as little trouble with her son – whom she called a “jolly” baby – as Brenda and Norries Wilson have with their children. “At the bottom of his first grade report card,” Ella Wilson said, “the teacher wrote, 'If you give him away, give him to me.'”
Every Sunday during football season, she sits down to write her youngest son a letter, usually right when she gets home from church. “When your spirits are high, you're ready to share,” she said.
“We usually win if the letter gets here before the game,” Wilson explained. “Usually—it ain't 100 percent. One time, the letter came on Friday, but we had already left because we were playing an away game. Brenda read it over the phone – and we won. I'll be honest: My mama's in tight with the Lord.”
His parents were strict, and academics came first. Wilson's father, Cecil Wilson, organized weekly spelling bees on Friday nights after dinner when Wilson and his brother, Styron, who is four years older, were in grade school. Wilson remembered getting a list of 10 to 15 words on Monday that he and Styron had to learn by the end of the week. Then there were the book reports Cecil Wilson assigned over the summer. “We had to read part of the encyclopedia,” Wilson recalled.
Wilson first visited Minnesota as a senior in high school, and freshman Pete Najarian was one of the football players assigned to welcome him. “At that time, he was quiet,” said Najarian, who went on to play linebacker in the NFL from 1986-92. “He seemed like a gentle giant.” Najarian laughed. “I found out later that he was outgoing.”
Najarian recalled how Wilson managed to interact with everyone on the team, from the scholarship players to the walk-ons, from the linemen to the linebackers.
“Norries never tried to put himself in a category as an athlete, or as an African-American,” Najarian said. “He was Norries Wilson.”
Just as he does as a coach at Columbia, Wilson commanded respect from his teammates at Minnesota, where he was a tri-captain in 1986, his senior year. The Golden Gophers made it to the Liberty Bowl in Memphis that season, and he and fellow captain Ray Hitchcock were in charge of keeping the offensive linemen in line and in bed by curfew.
“We were out at a bar a few nights before the game,” Hitchcock, a center who went on to play for the Washington Redskins, recalled. “When he said we had to leave, without even flinching, the guys stood up to go and never contested what he said.”
On a crisp, sunny Saturday morning in October, it was cold enough for a jacket. For Wilson, who grew up playing football in the vacant lot across from his house outside Chicago, a grey Columbia sweatshirt was enough.
Wilson sat with his back against a concrete column outside Butler Library, holding his first cup of coffee, a Venti decaf with room for cream from Starbucks. One by one, the assistant coaches, three of whom coached with Wilson at Connecticut, arrived and stood in a semi-circle in front of the head coach. They discussed last night's debacle, Connecticut's 37-11 loss to West Virginia.
Assistant coach Chris Nugai asked the football-minded crowd for help with his Treo phone, and surprisingly, the usually technology-shy Wilson volunteered a tutorial. Wilson has the same phone, which he uses to return e-mails when he has some down time before practice. “Coaching keeps you young,” he said later. “It keeps you in touch with the trendy things.”
He finished his coffee before filing into the dining hall with the coaches and 76 players who comprise his Ivy League squad. Once inside, he filled the large empty cup with more coffee – this time caffeinated.
“They don't have decaf,” he said. “I'm just going to blow my heart up today.”
Wilson has had high blood pressure since high school, which comes, he said, from having the body of an offensive lineman.
While the players milled in and out of the breakfast buffet line according to seniority, he sat at one of the round wooden tables in John Jay Dining Hall with three other members of the football staff.
“I forgot marinara sauce,” said Jeff Kupper, director of football operations, after sitting down to a hearty meal of pancakes with butter and syrup and a ham, bacon and cheese omelet.
“What do you need?” Wilson asked.
“Marinara sauce.”
“I'll get it,” Wilson said. He turned to leave before Kupper could protest – or defend his choice for an omelet topping – and returned with a bowl full of the red sauce.
“No task is too small. If a garbage can is overflowing, he'll take it out,” assistant coach Aaron Kelton said later.
From the dining hall, Wilson walked across campus and sat down on a low, brick wall and rested his elbows on his knees. Welcome to the “fortress of solitude,” a spot he staked out on the Columbia campus where he can be alone to sit and think. He named his hideout after Superman's headquarters, and behind his tinted, prescription glasses, he could very well be concocting offensive schemes.
“I have an alternate fortress in case this one is under siege,” he said, continuing the metaphor. From his spot on this ledge near the tennis courts, he can see frustrated students who can't get into buildings on Sundays, people working late in their offices in the evenings, and the birds he sometimes feeds Fritos.
“I've sat here so long,” he said, “I've seen people get better playing tennis.” A few minutes went by. “That's my early warning system: the shadows,” Wilson said, seconds before several students with backpacks walked right by him, as if all 6 feet 6 inches of him were invisible.
That, he explained, is the beauty of the fortress of solitude.
It wasn't hard to find Wilson during football practice on a windy afternoon in October. The former offensive lineman stood a head above many of his players – and he was the only one walking around without shoes.
“Aw, man, it feels great out here,” he said, standing on the artificial playing surface the university installed before the 2005 season. He lumbered over to where part of the team was running short-yardage situation drills.
“Have you talked to that teacher?” Wilson asked a first-year after a play ended.
“Umm,” the player replied.
“Yes or no?”
“No.”
“Listen, when you want to talk to me, do you send me an e-mail or come into my office?”
“Come into your office.”
“God bless America. Go talk to the teacher.”
He took the laminated play cards from one of his assistant coaches so he could run the offensive side of the drill himself. “Don't step on my toes,” he said, holding the play cards above his head as players jockeyed for position behind him.
“Wait a minute,” he called jokingly after a receiver. “You caught that. You can't play for us. You caught the ball.”
Wilson looked at the sky every time a plane flew overhead. “Where do you think they're going?” Wilson asked. “To somewhere boring, like St. Louis, or exciting, like Thailand?”
Just a moment of reflection for a coach who has already made a momentous impact on a program that needed – and has received – new energy.
