Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, November 20, 1993                   TAG: 9311200213
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By DOUG DOUGHTY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

TECH'S BAND DOESN'T RECEIVE MARCHING ORDERS

Just don't expect to see them.

Virginia Tech's band, the Marching Virginians, was told this week that it would not be able to take the field before, or at halftime of, the Hokies' game at Virginia.

UVa's band, the self-proclaimed "Award-Winning Virginia Fighting Cavalier Indoor/Outdoor Precision (?) Marching Pep Band and Chowder Society Revue," has spent most of its season in silence after refusing an athletic department order to relinquish the microphone it had used for its pregame skits.

For five previous home games, the UVa Pep Band members have sat on the hill overlooking the north end zone of Scott Stadium and listened while a newly formed, 20-member University Sports Band played in the stands.

"Quiet isn't it?" a pep band banner read.

Thursday night, however, the UVa athletic department announced that the pep band and the sports band had agreed to merge and would perform in the stands Saturday.

"Basically, what we have done is establish a working relationship," pep band director Matt Fader, a junior from Baltimore, said. "We have not even talked about next season.

"What it comes down to is, we all wanted to support the student-athlete and to be there Saturday with a big-sounding pep band."

It was no coincidence that the announcement came with the Cavaliers fighting for a bowl bid and meeting their in-state rival.

The Marching Virginians also were wondering about the timing of the decision to keep them off the field.

"This is payback," David McKee, director of the Marching Virginians, said Friday.

McKee said his band was being penalized for a Virginia Tech decision to keep the UVa Pep Band off the field at Tech's Lane Stadium last season. In 1990, the UVa band had infuriated Hokies' supporters with a skit mocking the first name of Tech basketball star Bimbo Coles.

The payback claim is "absolutely untrue," Virginia associate athletic director Kim Record said. "We've got something prepared for halftime and, with television, our pre-game schedule is too tight."

Record said there will be skydivers before the game and that Gov. Douglas Wilder and Gov.-Elect George Allen will be recognized at halftime, after the parents of UVa's senior football players have been introduced.

"Hey, I'm not going to touch it," Virginia Tech athletic director Dave Braine said. "I tried to make a deal [with UVa athletic director] Jim Copeland and the deal couldn't be worked out. I understand Jim's situation. Jim and I don't have a problem."

Others at Virginia Tech wondered if UVa was concerned about letting the Marching Virginians on the field while restricting its own band or bands to the stands.

"That has nothing to do with it," Record said. "I can't control what people think, but I know what we've done."

Fader said he would not have had a problem with allowing the Marching Virginians to take the field.

"I had assumed they would march," he said.

The UVa Pep Band has favored a "scramble" format since its formation in the mid-1970s, when current Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner Gene Corrigan was the UVa athletic director. It was frequently controversial, most notably in skits that depicted Maryland ex-Gov. Marvin Mandel in chains and made fun of Elvis Presley and the state of West Virginia.

"At the beginning, it was good because we didn't have anything . . . no band, nothing," Corrigan said. "It's the band's fault it came to this. If I had still been there, they'd probably have been gone long before now."

Copeland eventually pulled the plug on the band's microphone last summer, although he caught a lot of flak from alumni and fans who felt the pep band stood for sense of humor, free speech and keeping athletics in perspective.

"One of the writers . . . called the decision to impose the restrictions upon the Pep Band an act of a `humorless pinhead,' " alumnus Robert Hastings wrote in a letter to Copeland. "I hate to read that about UVa, but unfortunately I agree one hundred percent."

Hastings then threatened to rescind his $6,000 annual contribution.

Copeland responded to Hastings and others that, in his five-year association with the band, there had been incidents of drunkenness in the stands and damage to hotel rooms, in addition to the controversial skits.

"[It] has been a source of entertainment and even pride for some, irritation and outright anger for others and embarrassment for many," he wrote to Hastings. "It has by any standards been divisive among our fans."

Fader said two weeks ago that Copeland had failed to furnish dates and that current pep band members were being held accountable for skits that occurred while they were in grade school, but he adopted a conciliatory tone Friday.

When told that band board member Noel Munson had referred to the agreement as "a truce" and said the band would not return next year without a microphone, Fader said Munson did not speak for the group.

"Our vote was not unanimous," Fader said, "but it was not close either. I would hope nobody sees this as an issue where the band is a winner and a loser. The winner here is the student-athlete."