Thursday, September 7 Say what you want, Virginia Tech is for real By Bob Harig Special to ESPN.com

For much of this college football season, ever since it became apparent that Virginia Tech wasn't going away, we have kept looking for excuses, trying to poke holes in the Hokies.

	Frank Beamer has built a powerhouse program that earned the right to play for the national title.

Say what you want about the Hokies, but they are for real.

They might not defeat Florida State in the Sugar Bowl to win the national championship on Jan. 4, but that doesn't make them any less deserving of a chance to try.

And if they do knock off the Seminoles? With all due respect to Hawaii and Ron Dayne, it would be the story of the year in college football.

The Hokies have earned the right to make history. They might not have the best schedule in the country, but they've done all they can do, which is defeat every foe in front of them. The Big East conference might be down, but that's not Tech's fault. The Hokies don't reside in Tuscaloosa or Knoxville or Gainesville or Ann Arbor or Columbus or State College, which makes their ascension all the more remarkable.

It is time to give them their due.

Virginia Tech is 11-0, but must sweat out another week of conjecture about computers, which sure seems like a silly way to be deciding college football's national championship combatants.

The Bowl Championship Series standings that come out next Sunday will determine the participants in the Sugar Bowl. No. 1 Florida State is already assured of a spot. Virginia Tech is the only other major unbeaten (other than Marshall, which is well down the standings), but still must worry about once-beaten Nebraska.

Most agree that the BCS is better than the old days, when politics and popularity meant more than quality. The system uses data to help sift through the debris. Nonetheless, it wasn't meant to place a once-beaten team over an undefeated one. It was supposed to sort a group of undefeated teams or one-loss teams in an unbiased manner.

And yet, it still favors the favorites. Florida State gets a huge break because it has been ranked No. 1 all season. One fourth of the standings are determined by a team's average poll ranking. Since smaller numbers are better in this formula, FSU's No. 1 ranking has kept them in Sugar Bowl contention all along. What if Virginia Tech had been ranked in the top five at the beginning of the season? Who is to say the Hokies wouldn't have been right there with FSU?

To his credit, Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer has refused to be drawn into a heated debate on the subject.

"We have done our talking on the field," Beamer said. "It's the only thing that has been in our power."

Said linebacker Cory Bird: ""The best two teams are going to play at the end of the year. We're one of them. If not, we're going to represent the Big East in the Orange Bowl, where there is still a chance to win a split national title."

There are cynics who would love nothing more than BCS chaos. The theory is that any time the system fails and controversy erupts, it puts us closer to a national championship playoff system. Hey, that would be great.

But if we ever are fortunate enough to get a playoff, it won't be for years. And that would not right the injustice of today.

After all, the Hokies have the nation's top scoring offense at 41.7 points per game and the second-best scoring defense, allowing just 10.2 points per game. They have outscored their ranked opponents by 174-31. They even fared better against Clemson, Virginia and Miami than No. 1 Florida State.

Quarterback Michael Vick might be the most valuable player in college football. Tailback Shyrone Stith is a punishing ball carrier. Bird had three sacks against Boston College.

"You look at the ranked teams that we played this year, and we've taken all of them to the woodshed," Corey Moore said. "I firmly believe and I'm confident that we'll be in New Orleans."

After Friday's rout of Boston College coupled with Nebraska's close call against Colorado, it seems unlikely that the Hokies can be passed. But should it even come to that? What if the Cornhuskers had blown out Colorado? Then what?

Nebraska trailed Virginia Tech by just .63 in the BCS standings heading into the weekend. Who knows if a victory over Texas in the Big 12 title game on Saturday will be enough to vault them over the Hokies.

It shouldn't matter.

Firing line
Coaches are hired to be fired, and the usual coaching maneuvers are taking place. Gerry DiNardo has been let go at LSU, as have Kim Helton at Houston and Mike O'Cain at N.C. State. Spike Dykes has retired at Texas Tech. One who looked to be on the way out but was retained was North Carolina coach Carl Torbush.

Several media outlets in North Carolina, including the Associated Press, quoted unnamed sources as saying that Torbush would be fired. They said negotiations were under way to buy out the remaining three years of his contract. Those reports turned out to be erroneous when Carolina announced this week that Torbush would remain.

Perhaps North Carolina officials saw all those stories and realized how unfair they were being. Torbush was the architect of one of the nation's best defenses just a few years ago under Mack Brown. The Tar Heels went 11-1 in 1997.

What went wrong? Probably a lot of things that Torbush couldn't control, including several injuries. Maybe Brown knew something about the remaining talent when he bolted for Texas two years ago. Whatever the case, Torbush deserves more than two years to put his stamp on the program. He did defeat rivals N.C. State and Duke to end the season.

The healing process
Texas-Texas A&M is always an emotional game, but it was even more so on Friday in the wake of the death of 12 A&M students a week earlier when the bonfire they were constructing in an annual ceremony associated with the game collapsed. The accident touched those at both schools, and there were many who called for the game to be canceled.

But if you saw the crowd on Friday, you know the right decision was made. Those who died were honored in a pre-game ceremony, and fans from both sides held hands in the stands at Kyle Field. It was a stirring scene.

Texas A&M coach R.C. Slocum probably put it best when he said, "We are first of all in the education business. That's what this university is about. And one of the things in life that is an absolute necessity is that you have to deal with the realities of life and you have to go forward."

Pay raise
Although his team finished just 6-5, Hal Mumme got a contract extension and raise from Kentucky. Mumme had been approached by "headhunters" for other schools, which he said were not named.

"They say, "an unknown institution wants to hire you, are you interested?" said Mumme. "I told them they couldn't afford me. "They said 'Try us.' I said, 'Double what I make now.' They just coughed and hung up."

Mumme's contract is now for six years at $800,000 annually.

Unlikely matchup
Oregon State and Hawaii playing each other in the Oahu Bowl makes for a perfect matchup. The Beavers ended a string of 28 consecutive losing seasons and are going to a bowl for the first time since 1965. The Rainbows went 0-12 last season and are 8-4. Hawaii hasn't been to a bowl since 1992.

Oregon State's bowl appearance will end the fourth-longest Division I-A bowl drought. The top three are North Texas (1959), New Mexico State (1960) and Rice (1961).

Bob Harig, who covers college football for the St. Petersburg Times, writes a weekly college football column for ESPN.com.