ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, December 27, 1995 TAG: 9512270089
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: NEW ORLEANS
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
The nickname for this city speaks only a half-truth for Virginia Tech's first appearance in a traditional New Year's bowl game.
``Big'' it seems to be. ``Easy'' it isn't.
``It's extremely important how we play here,'' Hokies coach Frank Beamer said Tuesday before his team's first Sugar Bowl practice at Tulane University. ``I don't think there's more pressure on anyone in a bowl to play well as there is on us.
``Maybe Florida and Nebraska [playing for the national championship in the Fiesta Bowl]. That's a different pressure.''
The 13th-ranked Hokies' opponent Sunday night has been here and done that. Not only is Texas tied with Tennessee in bowl appearances (36) - behind only Alabama and Southern Cal - but the Longhorns also are playing their 24th traditional New Year's date.
Surely, the Hokies (9-2) want a school-record 10th straight victory, but considering where they've been and where they are, what's most important is playing with precision and pizzazz.
Tech is a two-point underdog to the ninth-ranked Longhorns (10-1-1). Not only will the Louisiana Superdome be filled, the game will be televised in prime-time without football competition.
Let's be honest. Think back five years ago, when Beamer's program seemed to be swimming up the Mississippi. Had anyone said then that the 1995 Hokies would be playing in a bowl in Louisiana, it figured to be in Shreveport.
Interestingly, as the Hokies and 'Horns went through their first workouts Tuesday, the local populace seemed as intrigued by the Independence Bowl as the Sugar.
It isn't because the Tech-Texas matchup is only the second Sugar Bowl without a Southeastern Conference team since 1950. It's because LSU is in the Independence Bowl for the first time, meeting Michigan State on Friday.
The Independence Bowl, in its 20th year, got its first sellout - in only a week. The Sugar loves its matchup, too. Each school sold its allotment of 17,400 tickets.
Tech athletic director Dave Braine figures Hokies numbering in the ``mid-20s [thousands]'' will be in New Orleans. Texas ticket manager Mike Bos said the 'Horns could have sold 50,000 seats, if available.
The Hokies will be playing to prove they belong in the bowl alliance. Big East champions or not, the notion that a Miami without an immediate bowl sanction would have sent Tech to a second straight Gator date isn't misguided.
The difference between what is and what might have been, however, is bigger than the $2 million difference between what Tech will keep from its Sugar date and what Syracuse, as Big East No.2, keeps from the Gator.
``When I first started out in the program, I guess there's no way I saw us here, in a game like this, now,'' said J.C. Price, the Hokies' All-Big East senior defensive tackle.
``I was just hoping I could be one of those guys who would get it started, to put the program in position to be in one of these two or three years from now. That's what I saw. I'm not saying we don't deserve to be here. With what we did, we're where we belong.''
And the Sugar Bowl officials made sure welcome mats were everywhere for the Hokies. After all, Tech is trying to build a reputation. New Orleans already has one.
Only 48 hours before the Hokies' charter flight landed at New Orleans International Airport, a tourist from the coalfields of Southwest Virginia was shot and killed.
Connie Reasor, 33, an elementary school special education teacher from Dryden, Va., was killed in broad daylight Sunday as she and her parents were taking photos at St.Louis Cemetery - only eight blocks from the Superdome.
Two armed men stole Reasor's purse. Police said the woman and her mother began chasing the men, who shot the tourist in the chest. Police have no suspects.
Thousands of Hokies are headed here this week. A Christmas Eve murder certainly puts a football game in perspective, even in the city that care forgot.
LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines KEYWORDS: FOOTBALLby CNB