I created a new MVC3 project, hit F5, saw the sample page.
Then I used NuGet to get the Ninject.MVC extension. I modified my global.asax according to the Ninject doc
Wanted to add one more cause ...
We installed the Ninject.MVC3 package to multiple projects - only one of which was an actual MVC applicaiton. However, we forgot to remove the App_Start folder.
Removing the App_Start folder from the referenced project resolved the issue.