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NORFOLK, Va. – The Norfolk State football team opens the 2016 season Sunday by hosting the Vikings of Elizabeth City State at 6 p.m. in the ABNB Labor Day Classic at Dick Price Stadium. The game was pushed back a day due to inclement weather expected as a result of Hurricane Hermine.

Game 1: Elizabeth City State (0-0) at NSU (0-0)
• Sunday, Sept. 4 • 6 p.m. • William "Dick" Price Stadium (30,000)
• Radio: WNSB 91.1 FM (Live), WGH Star 1310 AM (tape-delayed, approx. 9:30) - Play-by-Play: Ross Gordon; Color: Maguell Davis
• Series History: 57th meeting - NSU leads 33-22-1
• Last Meeting: NSU 14, ECSU 7 (Oct. 26, 1996)
• First Meeting:  ECSU 52, NSU 0 (1938)
• Current Streak: NSU has won last 2 meetings

1st and 10
• This will be the first meeting between Norfolk State and Elizabeth City State since 1996, the Spartans' last season in the CIAA. 
• Despite going 20 years between meetings, NSU has still played ECSU more than any other team (56 all-time meetings). From NSU's first year of football in 1938 until that 1996 season, the teams played every year except 1942-44, when the Spartans suspended their program due to World War II. The teams also played twice in 1946.
• The last time the teams played in Norfolk, the teams combined to score 112 points in a 62-50 Spartans' win at Foreman Field at ODU. The game was the highest scoring in NSU history until the 63-61, 4-OT loss to Bethune-Cookman in 2005. The 1995 game with ECSU remains the high-est scoring regulation game in Spartan history.
• 2016 marks the return of the Labor Day Classic, which traditionally pitted NSU against Virginia State from 1991-2009 and again from 2011-12. This is ECSU's first time playing NSU in the LDC. VSU returns as the Labor Day opponent in 2017 and '18.
• The Spartans are 12-7 on the field (excluding vacated wins) in home openers since moving to Division I in 1997.
• With his next win this season, Latrell Scott would attain his 30th career victory as a college head coach.
• The Spartans will be seeing a couple familiar names and faces on the opposing sideline. New ECSU coach Ernest Wilson roamed the visiting sideline at Dick Price Stadium on Nov. 7 of last season as head coach of Savannah State, which lost a 20-17 overtime affair to the Spartans. He was also formerly an assistant coach at Hampton University. Additionally, one of the Vikings' starting wideouts listed is James Roe, the son of the former Spartan great of the same name. The elder Roe (1992-95), a former D-II All-American at NSU, is the school's all-time leader in receptions, receiving yards and touchdown catches.
• NSU has lost 12 straight non-conference games, dating to a 31-24 at Liberty on Sept. 8, 2012.
• NSU has not lost to a Division II team since dropping a 34-6 season-opening decision to Virginia State on Sept. 3, 2005 – exactly 11 years to the date from this year's opener.
• The home opener is the first of eight games this season (out of 11) that the Spartans will play within Virginia borders. NSU will not play a game outside the state until Oct. 6, at North Carolina A&T.