ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, September 4, 1996 TAG: 9609040081
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: JACK BOGACZYK
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
With seven games at Lane Stadium, Virginia Tech's home crowds this football season might be reminded of the Woody Hayes era in the sport.
Go 3 yards, and you'll see a cloud of dust.
After building their program to nationally ranked status and dribbling back to basketball respectability, the Hokies are constructing even more.
Apparently, the folks in the Jamerson Athletic Center are taking the phrase ``blueprint to success'' literally.
Meanwhile, what visitors to Lane this season will see is dirt, and lots of it. They just hope tailback Ken Oxendine is as busy a bulldozer as some of the others in the vicinity.
``I don't call it a mess,'' said Tech athletic director Dave Braine on Tuesday. ``I think of it as progress.''
In the next two years, the Hokies will spend about $17 million on athletic construction, and it's only just begun.
That doesn't include the university's addition of a recreation complex that will include an artificial-turf field the football Hokies will use for practice in future years.
``Those are private funds,'' Braine said of the athletic construction, sounding like he's running for office.
The most familiar project - because football coach Frank Beamer seems to mention it in every conversation - is the two-story Merryman Center, which will be attached to Jamerson.
Of the $7.4 million needed for the project, $6.6 million has been raised or pledged, and groundbreaking is scheduled in late November, with completion scheduled a year later.
Long before Tech moves its football trophies, sports medicine center and weight rooms into Merryman, however, other projects will be done deals.
Tech is spending $3.6 million for a new roof on Cassell Coliseum. Although they missed out on recruiting Michael Johnson long ago, the Hokies are building an outdoor track - something they haven't had for more than a decade.
The track - featuring the same MONDO surface on which Johnson sped to Olympic history in Atlanta - will surround a new soccer field. That $1.7 million complex will be located between Southgate Drive, Rector Field House and English Field, Tech's baseball park.
After a 12-year wait, English Field finally is getting a press box/concessions building. Yes, the longtime lean-to press box that resembled Grandpa Walton's woodshed is gone.
``They smashed it to smithereens,'' said baseball coach Chuck Hartman, sounding as happy as he would be announcing a recruit with a 95-mph fastball.
The track's surface could be poured by later this month, depending on the weather. Between the field house and Lane Stadium, where Spring Road used to head toward the coliseum, a $500,000 softball complex will be ready sometime next spring, during the season.
Inside the field house, Tech is spending $600,000 for new artificial turf and $480,000 for a new indoor track, replacing the one Tech bought used from Madison Square Garden 15 years ago.
Next year, Lane Stadium gets a $1.9 million upgrade to its joints and concrete. This season, the public address system and about one-third of the wooden bleachers are new, totally funded by alumni gifts.
The Cassell roof, Lane refurbishing and a new football practice field are only part of what will be paid for by a $6 million bond, payable from athletic operations at $600,000 annually over 20 years.
Not so long ago, Tech could only have dreamed of such construction and paying the bills. However, its success, particularly in football, has enthused contributors to dig deeper.
Tech's victory over Texas in the Sugar Bowl may have been the first bowl triumph by a Big East Football Conference champion, but it isn't the biggest deal for Tech's program; the Hokies' admission to the Big East was and still is.
Although Tech still would prefer to be in one conference for all of its programs, there's no question what the Big East has meant to the school's athletic profile. Tech wouldn't have played in the Sugar, or the Gator Bowl the year before, and maybe not even the Independence Bowl in 1994, had it not been in the Big East.
``The thing you don't see and you can't always put on paper is what football success, and men's basketball to a lesser extent, has meant to all 21 of our programs,'' Braine said.
There is some tangible evidence of it in the mud, the changed traffic patterns and the not-quite-Hokie orange cones that dot these fields of dreams.
Through television and bowl payouts, Tech received $5.125 million last year - almost one-third of the football bucks passed out by the Big East.
Of the $1.6 million profit (after travel expenses) from the Sugar, the Hokies have put $1.1 million toward construction. And they intend to keep building. Baseball lights and Lane skyboxes are on Braine's wish list after the Merryman facility is completed.
Never before have the Hokies enjoyed mud-slinging quite so much.
LENGTH: Medium: 93 linesby CNB