ROANOKE TIMES 

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

DATE: TUESDAY, November 14, 1995                   TAG: 9511140076
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

HOKIES & 'HOOS

NOT SO terribly long ago, anybody advancing the notion of conference championships for either, let alone both, of the state's major-college football teams would have been hooted down as an impractical dreamer.

Yet in fact rather than idle fancy, Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia stand atop their respective conferences, the Big East and the Atlantic Coast, and are assured of no worse than ties for first regardless of what happens in their conference competitors' remaining games. As for the Hokies and 'Hoos themselves, they have only each other to play, in a game on which much will ride - but not conference standings.

Talk about remarkable seasons. Who, after the Hokies' early-season losses to Boston College and Cincinnati, would have predicted an 8-2 record with one game to go?

As for the Wahoos, their narrow 21-18 victory Saturday over Maryland was typical of a season that saw too many harrowing last minutes, yet brought UVa's record to 8-3.

Both teams enjoyed their biggest games a week earlier, when then-No. 24 UVa defeated then-No. 2 Florida State and then-unranked Tech defeated then-No. 20 Syracuse. After this past Saturday's games, UVa moved up to 13th in the Associated Press poll, 12th in the USA Today-CNN poll; Tech now ranks 20th in the former poll, 18th in the latter.

For Tech, this is only the second conference championship in 102 years of playing football. For UVa, it is only the second football championship in the nearly half-century history of the ACC.

All of which, irritatingly, may be lost on the postseason bowls. By virtue of their records, conference affiliations and the arrangement between the bowls and college football, Tech and UVa will play in bowls. But to the extent they can under that arrangement, the more lucrative bowls are said to look askance at the Virginia schools - Tech because the university's home media market is relatively small, UVa because of fears the university will attract too few of its own fans to a bowl game.

If you're surprised that considerations of lucre would enter the scene, you don't know your sports. Conference championships for Tech and UVa are news; money's inordinate role in big-time college athletics is not.

Still, the stuff that college football used to be about - alumni bragging rights, player pride, fall rituals, just plain fun - hasn't vanished entirely. For that, forget the postseason bowls: The big game is Saturday, when Tech meets UVa. For true Hokies and Wahoos, an Orange or Sugar could hardly be sweeter than winning the game against each other. 


 by CNB