Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, December 31, 1994 TAG: 9501030037
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: JACKSONVILLE, FLA. LENGTH: Medium
As the day approached for Virginia Tech fans to head south to watch their team in the Gator Bowl, the school put out the word: Take your maroon colors.
With the University of Tennessee claiming rights to the color orange, the school feared its entourage would blend in with its enemy's.
Blend in? The school should have worried instead about Tech fans navigating the interstates and roadways around Jacksonville - or finding a parking space in Gainesville, 63 miles away, where the game was to be played. Or worried about whether spectators had brought umbrellas to the Sunshine State, where Friday morning dawned gray and misty.
Heck, if they were in the alcohol-fueled throng Thursday night at the downtown Jacksonville Landing - a courtyard surrounded by bars, restaurants and other nightspots, where Tech's pep rally was held - school officials should have worried about supporters stumbling into the dark St.John's River. The river was all that separated Tech's pregame festivities from Tennessee's, held across the water in Friendship Park.
But the school didn't need to worry about fans' blending in.
When it comes to pregame challenges, hype, bluster - call it what you will - "colors" mean much more than just maroon and orange.
Just ask John Philpott, a 1954 Tech graduate from Martinsville.
"I guarantee this is the first time Tennessee's ever been anywhere they've been outnumbered," Philpott said. "They're so mad, they don't know what to do."
Quaffing a beer with his wife and thousands of elbow-to-elbow Hokies at the rally, Philpott sported a sweat shirt signed by the entire Tech football team. It seems a Tech cheerleader he lent it to on a jaunt earlier this year to Syracuse (where Tech lost) repaid with the autographed package.
His lucky shirt, yes? "After tomorrow," he asserted.
Just ask Brian Davis, who graduated in 1990 and is serving in the Army in Kansas. He and his dad hit the road after celebrating the holidays with kinfolk in Pennsylvania and watching Tech beat Tennessee on Wednesday night.
In basketball.
Davis hasn't been to a football game since the old college days.
"I said to my sister, 'I haven't got anything to wear,''' and finding Tech paraphernalia in the Midwest is a daunting task.
She got him a Tech sweat shirt - maroon, of course.
While many of the Tech faithful made their way from Virginia down Interstates 77 and 95, Davis took the low road from Knoxville, Tenn., along Interstate 75 - an infiltrator of the enemy fan route.
"I left my only sticker at home," he said. So he flaunted the shirt in the window on the way. "That was half the fun."
You could ask the little girls wearing their "Beamer's Buddy" sweat shirts, or the grandparents dressed in parachute fabric jumpers or the sorority sisters "having so much fun we can't even see."
Or you could take one look at Billy Payne.
A trumpet player in the university band, Payne played his instrument with lips painted black and looked out from behind a made-up mask of death. "I'm serious about the game," he said.
He thought about painting his face maroon and orange, but with Tech about to engage in arguably its biggest game ever against an opponent who was favored to win, Payne figured a stronger statement was in order.
Win or lose, tread softly, Tennessee fans.
by CNB