| Thursday, September 7
By Bob Harig
Special to ESPN.com |
|
BLACKSBURG, Va. -- There is no ignoring the
Hokies here, not even if Virginia Tech football elicits
little interest. And that hardly seems possible.
Take a stroll down Main Street and store fronts
are dotted with signs of encouragement. Walk into a
bar or restaurant, and you can bet on the conversation. Tech talk is everywhere.
This campus in Southwest Virginia is awash in
maroon and burnt orange, and the anticipation for
the Jan. 4 Sugar Bowl has been building ever since
the Hokies knocked off Boston College to
cap an 11-0 regular season. The Hokies will be
playing for the national championship, against No. 1
Florida State.
|  | | Corey Moore and the Tech defense have their town and school all revved up. |
They apparently came out of nowhere, but
actually, the Hokies have been around for quite
awhile. They have played football since 1892, yet this
will be just their 13th bowl game, although it is the
seventh straight postseason appearance. (Florida State's football program
did not begin until 1947, while the Seminoles are
playing in their 18th consecutive bowl game.) Tech
had never been ranked higher than ninth in the
Associated Press poll before this season.
And fans are loving it. The school's allotment of
16,000 tickets to the Sugar Bowl sold out in a
heartbeat, leaving residents and alums scrambling
for more.
Paul Torgersen, the school president, has
just hung up the phone.
"It was a friend of mine whose husband is a Tech
graduate. She said the two of them wanted to go to
New Orleans. Could I find two tickets," he said. "I
told her to sit tight."
Torgersen is as excited as anyone. In fact, he is so
smitten with his school's team, he delayed his retirement by a week -- until after the Sugar Bowl.
"Damn right," Torgersen says with a laugh. "I am
going to be president for the Sugar Bowl."
And why not? Torgersen, 67, has been there for
all 11 of Virginia Tech's victories this season, stalking
the sideline during games, visiting the locker room
afterward, attending a few practices. "I get very
nervous," he said.
A former engineering professor who first came to
Virginia Tech -- the formal name is Virginia Polytechnic Institute -- in 1967, Torgersen loves the football program as much as the those he presides over.
The student body is giddy as well. Some 3,200
tickets were at stake in a lottery that had more than
14,000 students apply. Face value for Sugar Bowl
tickets is $85, and Tiffany McPadden was one of the
lucky winners.
McPadden, 21, a senior from Newport News, Va. -- hometown of star quarterback Michael Vick, she is quick to point out -- could not pass up the opportunity.
|
“ |
We're bringing the community
together, we're bringing the university together. I
get about 70 e-mails a day from alumni who want
to say they are proud to be Virginia Tech
graduates. It helps bring everybody together. ” |
|
|
— Defensive end Corey Moore |
"Everybody is into the football team. That's all
anybody talks about," said McPadden, who has been
offered $400 for her ticket. "After the Boston College
game, the fans tore down the goal posts and carried
them through downtown. It was pretty wild."
When not being overrun by boisterous students
and the Lane Stadium goal posts, the downtown area is
prospering from the Hokies as businesses have seen increased traffic.
"It's been a great thing for Blacksburg," said
Roger Hedgpeth, a 1952 Virginia Tech graduate and
the city's mayor since 1982. "It's an evolutionary process. The team
has certainly garnered some attention over the last
few years. But being No. 2 for quite awhile is a whole
different ballgame. It's really been great. The interest
has multiplied tremendously. You find things such as
people who would not normally read the sports
section are reading it. It's a great thing."
At the off-campus Tech Bookstore, they can't
keep all the Sugar Bowl shirts and hats in stock long
enough. "We sell out the stuff as soon as we get it,"
said Harry Hurlburt.
The best-selling item? Beamer Ball T-shirts.
That would be for Frank Beamer, the former Tech player who took over the program in 1987,
was nearly fired after a 2-8-1 season in 1992, and has
since taken the Hokies to seven straight bowls.
"This is just a great time for our program," said
Beamer, 53, who is 88-59-2 at Tech and 130-82-4
overall as a head coach. "That was a special scene
after the Boston College game. To look down and see
all the players and coaches who have worked so
hard, and to look up at all the fans who have also
waited a long time for this day ... all the pride and
enthusiasm and excitement ... I'm happy for all of our
supporters."
Why is this so special? Well, as Florida State fans
can surely appreciate, Virginia Tech followers have
long been forced to play the role of poor stepchild to
another state school. In FSU's case, it was Florida. For
Virginia Tech, it is the University of Virginia, located
some 150 miles away in Charlottesville.
Virginia is Thomas Jefferson's University. Virginia Tech, despite a top engineering school and strong reputation in computers, has the stigma of being a
place for farmers. Football has helped give the school
a different identity.
Beamer has won mostly with players whom
schools with bigger reputations didn't pursue. Only
once in the past six years -- 1998, when quarterback
Vick signed -- has SuperPrep magazine ranked one
of Tech's recruiting classes among the nation's top
30. Compare that to FSU, where a class not ranked in
the top 10 would be considered a disaster.
The Hokies have a knack for finding talented
players who might be missing one of the blue-chip
ingredients. Perhaps they are undersized by Division
I standards. But they are typically fast and hungry
and willing to work.
One of the gems found by Tech is Corey Moore, a
defensive end from Brownsville, Tenn., who made
recruiting visits to Duke and Penn and went to a
junior college before ending up at Tech. This year, he
won the Outland Award and Nagurski Award, given
to the nation's best defensive player. His counterpart
at the other defensive end position, John Engelberger, was a walk-on.
"I think the fans are appreciating what we're
doing," Moore said. "We're bringing the community
together, we're bringing the university together. I get
about 70 e-mails a day from alumni who want to say
they are proud to be Virginia Tech graduates. It helps
bring everybody together."
Of course, not everyone is so impressed. The
attention focused on Virginia Tech is not necessarily
for the right reasons, said Henry Bauer, an interdisciplinary studies professor at the college.
"In terns of football and athletics, this is great. But
over the last decade or so, academics has not been
given the proper priority over things," Bauer said. "I'm also very skeptical about the commonly made
statements that big-time athletics is the only way to
interest the public or your alumni to get contributions. It would be worth trying to see if that is not the
case.
"I think Vick is great. He is a phenomena. I think
it's nice that the team has done this. But I think there
is almost no relationship between the team and the
university. These are students who would not be
coming here if it were not for the football program."
There are cynics who would suggest that not
even the football program used to attract such students. Success certainly helps. But so does being in a conference like the Big East.
Recruits know that the Hokies will get to play
Miami and Syracuse every year in conference play and
that winning the league means playing in a big bowl.
Tech used to play in the Southern Conference, then
became an independent in the mid-1960s until joining
the Big East in 1991.
But unless you are Notre Dame, playing as an independent is difficult. For example, the Hokies finished 9-2 in 1983 and didn't even get invited to a bowl.
"The thing that Tech needed was to get in a
conference," said former coach Bill
Dooley, who was at the school for nine seasons from
1978-86. "I worked like the devil to get in the ACC. ... They've gone to the Orange Bowl and the Sugar Bowl and now they're going to the Sugar Bowl again. Hell, you couldn't even get the Peach Bowl to return your calls some years. We were fighting like hell to
get the Independence Bowl."
And the fans would have followed. Bowls love
Virginia Tech because Hokies fans are known to
travel. Three years ago, when Tech played in a rather
meaningless Sugar Bowl game against Texas on New
Year's Eve, Virginia Tech fans filled Bourbon Street.
"All of New Orleans was maroon," Torgersen
said. "You never saw so many happy people. Those
folks down there love us. The Texans came and went
the same night. We stayed and partied forever."
For Virginia Tech and fans, it looks like the party
is just beginning.
Bob Harig, who covers college football for the St. Petersburg Times, writes a weekly college football column for ESPN.com. |  |
