“Great Impact On His Community”: Travis Hunter Reacts To Michael Vick Coaching an HBCU Team

Professional football players appreciate being coached by someone who played the game themselves. And if they did so at the highest level, that’s all the better. That’s why more and more pro athletes are getting head coaching jobs in football. The latest is NFL icon Michael Vick, who was recently congratulated for his hiring as Norfolk State’s head football coach by Travis Hunter.

The 2024 Heisman Trophy winner spoke at length about Vick’s appointment at Norfolk State, a historically black college (HBCU), on his podcast, The Travis Hunter Show. Hunter compared Vick’s starting point in the coaching arena to his own coach at Colorado—Deion Sanders.

“Starting off like Coach Prime… Hopefully he can go there and give them a little spark. Hey, starting at an HBCU though… He’s home helping out young kids, he’s definitely making a great impact on his community. That’s great. Can’t even say nothing about that. All you could do is cheer for him. Back in his community, giving back.”

Vick was born and raised in Newport News, Virginia. It’s a shipping town just a 40-minute drive north from Norfolk State on the I-64. Hunter pointed out that while this is a great chance for Vick to give back to the community that raised and shaped him, it’s also a chance for him to get back into football and scratch that competitive itch.

“They’ll definitely be supportive of him. There’s nothing else you can say bad about that. He didn’t have to do that. He was never into coaching, so he didn’t have to go back and help people out. It’s not even just about him helping people out, it’s about he loves football so much he decided, let me get back into football.”

Michael Vick isn’t exactly a veteran in the coaching sphere, but this isn’t his first job either. Shortly after he retired from the NFL in 2015, he joined Andy Reid’s Kansas City Chiefs staff as a coaching intern during their 2017 training camp. After a stint as a Fox NFL analyst, he was hired by the Atlanta Legends of the short-lived Alliance of American Football to be the offensive coordinator in 2019.

Vick was very excited about the OC role. However, he was demoted prior to the start of the season and put in a consultant role. But that interest in coaching never went away, and now he’s got his shot.

Vick will follow in Coach Prime’s footsteps. Both were NFL superstars who started their coaching journey with a head coaching job at a lesser known HBCU. He can only hope things go as well as for him as they did for Deion.