I, along with a group of friends, have been going to Virginia Tech football games since the early 2000's. Some of those guys are VT grads while others, like me, didn't actually attend VT but have deep family ties to the University.
Naturally I was excited when I got the opportunity to take my 6 year old son along with us on October 26th, 2006. It was his first game in Lane Stadium, and I cannot even begin to articulate how excited that little guy was! He made a sign, got on ESPN, met Erin Andrews and Todd Blackledge (Craig James was a tool), and he wouldn't be denied the opportunity to go into Lane Stadium 2 hours before kickoff. As we walked in, It was like that "Rudy" moment when he walked onto the Notre Dame field for the first time. All he wanted that night was for the Hokies to score the major upset so he could have the opportunity to walk on that field that he had seen on TV so many times. If I could have bottled up the excitement my son had that night it would last me a lifetime.
For my 6 year old son, that experience was something you only read about in a fairy tale. He met Carlton Weatherford (Carlton called him on Christmas Day to wish him a merry Christmas - what an awesome dude he is!), he got a couple of kisses on the cheek from some of the cheerleaders who thought he was so adorable, and most important of all he got to experience Virginia Tech football on a Thursday night!
The cold Blacksburg night, the smell of turkey legs cooking, the "Lets Go... Hokies" in every parking lot, and the allurement of whatever it was that used to settle in on the Lane Stadium atmosphere in those days all served to create something in the mind and heart of my son that only dreams are made of. Somehow he remembers almost every detail of that evening, all the way down to me asking the drunk guy behind us to stop hitting him in the head every time he got excited (what that one of you guys?).
But more than all of those things, he remembers that football team. Just a couple of weeks prior, this same team had lost to Boston College and Georgia Tech in ugly fashion. And if that weren't enough, Frank Beamer and Bud Foster seemed to have lost their team as we all witness players yelling at and pushing each other on the sideline (my 6 year old was so confused as to why teammates would 'fight' each other). It was one of those low points in the Beamer years for sure.
But on October 26 none of that mattered anymore; #10 Clemson was coming to town on a Thursday night! Frank Beamer owned Thursday nights in those days, and everyone knew it, including my 6 year old.
I suspect that even with all the questions surrounding the program in those weeks, Beamer knew exactly who his team was, or at least who/what he wanted it to be. Somehow he always had a way of regrouping throughout the years, no matter the adversity. Remember the 2004 season? That was a "regroup" sort of season after a disappointing 2005 and offseason.
Clemson rolled onto Blacksburg with the #1 scoring offense in the country and boasted the best RB duo in all of college football in James Davis and CJ Spillar. Tech was a double digit underdog in one of the biggest games of the 2006 college football season. Somehow Beamer and Co. would need to figure this out. Somehow, and for some reason a sold out, lit (even if none of us knew what "lit" was back in those days) Lane Stadium crowd knew he could. We've all always (for the last 25+ years anyway) gathered together in Southwest Va. because we knew something would or could happen no matter the opponent, no matter the season. We always knew anything was possible, especially on a Thursday night.
The play of the game for me was when Beamer, as conservative as they come, went for it on 4th &1 deep in our own territory early in the game. And if you remember, there was no hesitation in his decision. Sean Glennon proceeded to pushed forward for the first down, a play that play would serve as a microcosm of the entire evening. Clemson had nothing for this complete Virginia Tech football team. The Defense was lights out. And the offense, while not flashy, put up a whopping 210 rushing yards (203 of those on the back of Brandon Ore). Virginia Tech owned the trenches that nigh. It was an old school physical brand of VT football where Beamer utilized his special teams to steal field position all night long. Beamer had done what he was so good at all those years, getting his guys back on track, and never drifting too far from the identity he established all those years ago. The culture of Virginia Tech football was always there to support even the most difficult of times. And honestly, not just Virginia Tech football, but an entire fanbase who took pride in its blue collar roots.
That night my son got to live his dream; he got to walk on the grass at Lane Stadium after a Thursday night victory! He laid down on that field and pretended to make a snow angel. Then he said, "Dad, pretend to throw me a TD pass!"as he ran to the North End Zone. It was a special night.
Sure, we all have those head scratching losses in our minds and sure, we all hate that we couldn't win too many of the big games. But on that cold October night in 2006 my son fell in love with something. What exactly? Virginia Tech football. What he didn't know at the time, but would learn is that what he experienced that night was Virginia Tech football - nothing less, nothing more.
Through the many head scratching moments of the Beamer era one thing never left, hope. I don't remember navigating through too many portions of the Beamer years where hope ever totally faded. Even in the lean years Beamer had his teams competing and always working to re-center/re-orient/re-calibrate to "Beamer Ball". And because of that we all watched games with a sense of hope, no matter the circumstances.
We've all heard the saying that "culture eats strategy for breakfast", I happen to think it rings true in most situations. Beamer didn't always have the most talented teams, and he certainly didn't always have the best strategy (particularly on the offensive side of the ball), but every single player who ever played for him, every single donor who ever gave, and every single fan who ever cheered knew what the Virginia Tech football culture was all about. And every time you went to Lane Stadium, turned on the TV, or tuned in the radio, for just a few moments in an otherwise chaotic world, you found something in this world that gave you a bit of hope.
Now don't get me wrong. Virginia Tech football has never been the hope of my life. But it has certainly created moments where hope was given life, and that has been a gift!
I tend to be the kind of person who can be a bit sentimental and nostalgic, sometimes to a fault. But in most cases I'm OK letting go of what was in order to embrace what is to come. And honestly this was my posture when Beamer retired and Fuente was named the new Head Coach. An era of Virginia Tech football was coming to a close, and I was OK with that. I had great memories, and I was able to pass those along to my son. On top of that, many in the College Football world though that Whit Babcock made a home run hire to replace the GOAT of Blacksburg.
Virginia Tech football might not be what it was, but the grass ahead was still green... At leas that is what I believed.
Fast forward four years and things just haven't panned out in quite the way any of us expected. Of course we all were hoping (even if it was blind hope) to be competing with Clemson this year or next. But for any realistic fan, that expectation was far fetched. A more reasonable expectation is that we would be competing for the ACC Coastal division crown with the other middling P-5 competition. Yet here we are... in a nebulous moment of Virginia Tech football. One where none of us are quite sure where we are exactly or even where we are going. Fuuente himself seems to share this sentiment (from his post game):
Well, I would say that like any good offense, you have to have an identity," Fuente said. "And we're struggling to find that identity. And we're inconsistent in the run game, we're inconsistent in the pass game. It's a culmination of all those things that we have got to find a way to handle it.
I happen to think the offense is only a microcosm of the entire program itself. Friday night Virginia Tech suffered its worse home loss in over 40 years, against Duke... Virginia Tech is now 3-7 in its last 10 games against FBS opponents. And to add insult to injury look at this list of ACC teams and the number of 4* recruits each has:
Clemson:40
FSU: 39
Miami: 33
Virginia Tech: 19
UNC: 14
NCSU: 12
L'ville: 11
GT: 8
Duke: 7
Pitt: 6
Syracuse: 3
WF: 2
BC: 2
UVA:1
Our team is young for sure, but its been perpetually young. Part of Fuente's job is to manage his roster, and he hasn't done that particularly well. I could point at issues with the team for days, but we've all done that ad nauseam. The root of it all in my opinion is that Fuente has had four years to establish some sort of "new" identity with VT football and here we are not knowing what that identity is. And whats more is that I'm not entirely convinced the players know either.
I don't need for Beamer Ball to be back, and I'm OK if everything I fell in love with changes. But I'm not OK for it to be replaced with nothing.
My son, who is 19 now, still loves VT football (even though he attends JMU), but he watches it the same way he watches our beloved Redskins, with a glimmer of hope and disappointingly realistic expectations.
We know Justin Fuente can develop QB's, and we know he can call plays and run a productive offense. What I'm afraid that we are all finding out is that is his sweet spot, and he shouldn't have left it. I'm afraid we got Dan Hawkins while Memphis kept Chris Petersen.
Where do we/I go from here? Well for one, I'll probably begin to watch the Hokies like I watch the Redskins. I grew up in the old Joe Gibbs era, so every week, no matter how bad things have been and for how long, I turn on the game expecting things to magically turn around for the good. Yes, even after all these years there's still hope for us old school Skins fans.
Also, I will always be excited to watch and cheer for any student athlete who chooses to suit up for the Virginia Tech football program! I'll forever be in love with the Ag - Engineering school in SWVa as so many of my family members have been and are a part of those things. And I will always try my best to see the positives in whatever hand we've been dealt.
But in the end, the current reality of what Virginia Tech football has become is no something I'm terribly excited about. I can deal with that for a while. But what I'd love is to be able to embrace some sort of identifying culture, one that will allow my son to pass on his experience to his children.
Lets Go Hokies!
Comments
Great article. I have only been a Hokie fan since I enrolled as a Freshman in '05 but since then I've been there 100%. I'm hoping that something will snap and things will turn around but I'm not holding my breath. For now I will do the same as you (except with the Giants) and wait patiently for a new identity to form and the Hokies that I love to reappear.
I started at VT in the fall of 2000. I was not a college football fan before I went to VT. I didn't even know until years later that we had played in the MNC game in 1999, that's how little I paid attention to college football. I went for engineering, didn't care about football.
And now I'm not all that worried about what happens with the team. I used to live and die by the most recent result and I'd be bummed all day if we lost a game - and maybe for another day, if my PSU coworkers had won and wanted to hassle me about JMU.
Now, I'm ambivalent. Whatever happens on Saturday (or Friday, or Thursday), I find it easy to just shrug my shoulders and say, "Well, fuck it. We're bad and I can't invest any level of emotion into this program if I'm not going to get anything back."
Tragically, with the cancellation of the ECU series, this is the first time I've donated to the athletic department. I sent them the wrong message. To paraphrase an office-related movie, 'It isn't that I'm not a Hokie, I just don't care'.
Same here. VT fan first, Redskins fan second. Wife's team is Cleveland.
So I've seen some stuff.
I'm still holding on to a hope that Fuente can make some changes and get things back on track. But he needs some decisive action, because the team looks undisciplined, confused, and lost. Seems that they need to get back to some basics.
And what the hell is going on with the defense?
I still care. But I care more about the long term than the short term. I'll gladly sacrifice a season or two for a greater future. But we've got to see some progress and hope somewhere. Fuente needs to look like he's got a plan, and we're moving towards it.
the bowl streak is ending this year. UVA is going to beat us unless Perkins gets hurt and we drastically turn this around. A top 5 all time defensive coordinator is leaving after this year. Fuente can't move the ball conistently against Furman. Duke is clowing us at home- Duke. Fuente won't be fired before Thanksgiving this year- I agree. But this offseason will determine the rest of his career. If he keeps dead weight like Mitchell, corny, Hilgart and to some extent Shibest and Vice around and hires a G5 DC, then this will be his last good job. I hope he realizes that sooner rather than later.
I have never heard this phrase before, but a quick google searched proved that this is in fact a (somewhat known) idiom.
It's well known and it isn't ill-founded. Identity matters. You can be the kind of leader that will try to respond to all of the competition that you'll face, or you'll identify what makes you great and triple down on winning with the identity that you have. If you play to you own strengths, and make those strengths unstoppable, then you'll win against anything that can be thrown at you. It's not a bad mantra, but applies if and only if you have a culture that can win.
Friday night was one of the few chances I have to watch a game this season. I won't be tuning in again, until I have good reason to.
Thanks a bunch, Fuente
Man. I remember that Clemson game. It was the first Thursday night game I ever went to. I was 8 at the time. My dad pulled me out of school early so we could tailgate. He got season tickets every year, and 2006 was the first season where I began attending every game with him. I, too, still have a deep love for VT football despite not attending school there. I also am a Redskins fan and understand what you're saying about watching the two pretty similarly now.
I don't want to come off as a fair weather fan because I'm certainly not, but my interest in VT football is positively correlated with the team's performance. I'll still watch them every week, but I'll stop watching games early, I won't get as upset about losses, and I won't plan my days around the games. It happened from 2012-2015. I started high school in 2012, and my Saturdays consisted of soccer games, so Dad canceled the season tickets. We used to miss one home game per year, and starting in 2012, we really only made one home game per year and didn't exactly make an effort to see games that we were able to see. I actually chose to nap through the second half of the 2014 Wake Forest game because I was so bored. I never did that even when our offense was at its peak ineptitude under Stinespring. I planned to work during the Tulsa bowl game instead of watching.
Enter 2016, my freshman year at Marshall. My hometown of Lewisburg, WV, is an hour and a half away from Blacksburg. Huntington is three and a half hours away. That year I made three football games including skipping my Thursday and Friday classes to attend the Thursday night Miami game. I traveled all the way to DC for the 2017 WVU game. I made the Clemson game. In a season and a half, I had been to more VT football games than I had in the four years prior to that, and I was living further away.
Then 2018 happens. After the loss to Old Dominion and then the four straight losses later in the season, I had zero desire to watch the team. I went to the Marshall game because my friends and I all thought it would be a good time, not to watch the game necessarily. My desire to watch any games this year is at an all time low, though. My family is wanting to go the UNC game, but not only am I not trying to spend any money on this team, I'm not trying to spend any time on the road for them either. It's nothing against the players. They're plenty talented and give a shit. But the coaches (namely the head and offensive coaches) don't deserve a single penny from us. I think a lot of people feel the same.
I think at this point, Whit needs to do somewhat of a clearance sale on the program. By that, you fire Fuente and give Foster the interim position. Yes I understand the buyout situation, but we're going to have more money problems if we're losing by 30 at home every weekend anyway. If you promote Bud, maybe it injects life into them. I think it's fair to assume that the players like him way more than Fuente. It would be throwing in the towel for sure, but maybe people start watching to see the scenario we all envisioned post-Frank. Maybe people start watching because Cornelsen isn't calling plays anymore. Maybe people start watching simply because it's different. Maybe people start watching to pay their respects to Bud. I don't know. But Whit has to do something. I imagine the basketball team will make a little less money this season, so he has to salvage something. Then we start building for the future.
I loved that Clemson game. It was my first VT game after moving away from Blacksburg. We were in the north stands and all you saw was the whole Davis and Spiller wanted to hit and then Adibi and Hall fill it instantly. It was one of the best games for the all22 view.
The Blacksburg-Huntington run can be made in less than 12 parsecs (2.25 hours).
You can get away with that on 77 and 64. You're asking to get a ticket if you try that on 460.
Fantastically written, thank you.
My very first impression of Tech, the one that made me even start to consider it, was the school's response to 4/16 when I was in the 8th grade. It wasn't the stellar engineering program, nor was it the football program (I remember Tech's football scores on the ESPN crawl being far less significant than the Red Sox scores before then). Rather, it was the resolve of Hokie Nation, a culture that says "I'm down but I'm far from out", a family that was hurting but vowed to heal. I knew I wanted to be a part of that. If there's one way that God redeemed an absolute tragedy, it's that in and through VT's grit, he showed me a family to join - and I don't at all say that lightly.
My second impression of Tech was my high school junior year tour. At the time I was considering 3 other schools for engineering programs, one of which was the one in Charlottesville (no, I'm not proud). The night before the official campus tour, my family and I drove around campus to catch a local, non-tourist glimpse - to say I was blown away by Hokie Stone against a backdrop of a Blacksburg sunset would be an understatement. I knew I was home, and the campus tour just confirmed it. On a random spring Tuesday, more than half the students marching between classes was dressed in something VT and had an infectious enthusiasm, and THAT spoke louder than anything any Hokie Ambassador could have said.
My first game was Clemson 2011 (part 1), looking on from the top of the East stands with a friend. Between standing there wet and freezing and seeing us get absolutely throttled by Tajh Boyd and Sammy Watkins, it should have been a terrible time. But Lane had other ideas... for the first time, I knew what it meant to jump like a fool to Enter Sandman, scream my face off on defense, spell HOKIES on first down, pee your pants at the sound of Skipper... I continued to see what Hokie Nation was made of in one of its pure forms, and yet the game itself wasn't even great.
Fast forward to now. The football team is 2-2 (0-2), without any sense of positive direction. For some, all seems lost with the team, and a (perhaps myopic and dramatic) tone of fatalism has beset the fanbase. And yet, on Friday in Coral Gables, the day before the what seems like a given loss to the home team in enemy territory, I plan to wear my VT polo loud and proud. Not because I know, or even think, this team will win, but because Virginia Tech is the best university in the whole world and I'm proud of anyone who dons a VT on their chest.
Moral fiber is what I root for. The lunch pail is what I root for. Giving it your absolute best shot, leaving it all out on the field, facing adversity with determination, and fighting for the guy next to you is what I root for. Without that, what are we? If not nothing, then definitely not the Virginia Tech I know and love.
It used to take me a week after a loss to even read about football online. Now, that is thankfully down to 2 days. Mostly due to maturity, I think. I came back to tkp today not to share in misery, but to read posts like this. I too will be proudly wearing maroon this week even if my expectations are lowered. After all, Muck Fiami!
Your poor son, Redskins fan and a Hokies fan? he is hurting right now, at least he has JMU coeds to distract him...
Kidding aside excellent story, can't wait till me demon hellspawn are old enough to take to a game in Lane and hopefully they will have a similar first time experience to your son...
~90% of college football games I watched in person, were at VMI as a kid. I remember my Father and his Brother Rats being upset with the product, and us leaving many games at halftime.
Last month outside of Fort Drum, I got to join Pop and some recent VMI grads for an alumni eventin the area of Watertown, NY. When introduced as a Hokie, they told me "At least you got to see your team win Football games."
I don't want VT to become the same crappy fan experience.
Get things right, Fuente & Whit, or step aside
Awesome article, man! But still holding out hope the spark of our identity is still out there just waiting to be re-captured and turned into a roaring fire.
All I could think was:
I didn't go to Tech but grew up in SWVA and have lived for Hokie football my whole life. I loved the blue collar, lunch pail, don't take no shit off nobody, and never quit attitude. I was proud of it because I felt like our football team matched the region's identity: tough, hard-working, resilient. It was something I could identify with. When I moved to South Carolina for law school, people would ask where I was from and I could tell them near Virginia Tech and I felt like they didn't just get a picture of where I was from but of who I was. That all feels like it's gone now. When I woke up yesterday I put on a Tech t-shirt because that's what makes up about 80% of my t-shirt collection. When the fiancee suggested we take the dogs to the park to run around for a while, I changed shirts because I didn't want to identify with the product we put on the field Friday night. We quit in the first quarter. We just rolled over and took it. We don't do that. That's not Tech football. Or, at least, it didn't used to be.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still proud of Virginia Tech and the things the university is accomplishing academically and athletically. It's great for Appalachia and Virginia. But watching the football program that gave an identity to a region and a fanbase fall further and further from its once prominent position feels somewhat akin to watching a friend or loved one slowly succumb to the inevitable. It hurts to watch because you remember how great it used to be and you feel helpless to stop it.
This was spot on and I desperately want this feeling back.
Excellent post.
My brother and I were that kid, except our moments were from the 90's: seeing Beamer being carried off after the '99 BC win as we ran around Worsham Field, or when we rushed the field after beating Miami in 1995. I wanted to write something very similar to this - about how we have lost our identity - but you captured my exact sentiments.
We've lost our culture, our identity. I miss hearing Valleydale commercials on the radio in between Roth and Burnops post game analysis, miss hearing the faith in Beamer's voice after we lost because he knew where we were headed, miss knowing we'd smack you in the mouth on defense and run it down your throat on offense, miss seeing the crowd expecting every pass thrown by the other team to be picked off and returned for six, and miss seeing our offense do enough to win games by putting up the big plays that make you almost fall down from celebrating so hard.
I miss Hokie Football.