THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 17, 1995 TAG: 9511170351
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TOM ROBINSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 120 lines
Was it the ``detected slugging?'' Was that it? Is Caius Hunter Carpenter - Virginia Polytechnic Institute's controversial star halfback who was banished from the 1905 game against Virginia for taking a retaliatory poke at a Wahoo - the granddaddy of this passionate grudge between the schools?
Yeah, you're right. Maybe not.
But it sounds good.
Way back when in the rivalry that marks the 100th anniversary of its inaugural game Saturday in Charlottesville, Carpenter's crime was ``detected slugging,'' according to a newspaper account of Nov. 5, 1905.
Not only was the guy a seventh-year player, eligibility rules being somewhat flimsy back then, word was Carpenter also had been a pro.
He refused to sign an affidavit before the game denying the taint of professionalism but was allowed to play anyway. And in his lust to beat Virginia, he got the last laugh.
Carpenter spearheaded VPI's first victory after Virginia triumphed eight times to begin the series. He scored on a 2-yard carry, and near the end of the 11-0 victory he broke away on a long run.
The jaunt ended with Carpenter punching a would-be Virginia tackler then departing the field, victory secured.
That night, the Norfolk branch of Virginia's alumni association sent a telegram to Virginia's captain, congratulating the Wahoo 11 for ``a game fight under notoriously unfair conditions.''
So unfair in Virginia's estimation, apparently, and so rife with hard feelings that the series was called off for 18 years. When finally a generation had passed and the teams deigned to meet again in 1923, Carpenter presumably did not play.
Still, it seems he had helped set a standard in a rivalry whose approaching scent this year might be more appetizing than ever.
Could Carpenter even comprehend it? His boys, now the Virginia Tech Hokies, enter ranked 20th by The Associated Press. Virginia's Cavaliers come in 13th in the same poll.
It is the third year in a row in which both teams kick off as Top 25 teams. But this 77th meeting is the first that will pit a probable ACC co-champion, Virginia, against possibly the outright Big East titlist.
``Well, they either had to grow or stand still,'' says Carroll Dale, a former Virginia Tech All-American receiver in the late '50s who went on to win three NFL championships with the Green Bay Packers.
Suffice to say each school has grown remarkably into a football power - Tech surviving NCAA sanctions in the early '80s, Virginia shaking its skeletons, including a 28-game losing streak from '58 to '60 and a decade of torpor in the '70s, before George Welsh's miracle construction job began in 1982.
Along the way, each school has included the other on its schedule, uninterrupted, since 1970. That was preceded by a three-year break due partly to Tech's dominance in 12 of the previous 14 games.
That was the only other series sabbatical aside from the war years of '43 and '44 and the Carpenter-inspired rift.
And what a series it's been:
Since 1970, the series is tied 12-12-1. It was all Tech from '80 to '83, however, including a 48-0 wipeout of Virginia in '83 that was the most lopsided result in the rivalry's history.
In '84, though, underdog Virginia won a 26-23 thriller in Blacksburg that helped catapult the Cavaliers to their first bowl appearance ever.
Overall, Virginia Tech holds a 37-34-5 advantage. That includes Tech's undefeated streak of 10 games between '28 and '37, the longest streak of its kind in the series.
There have been two scoreless ties, '31 and '35, three games decided by one point - the most recent Virginia's 14-13 win in '87 - and 22 games decided by six points or fewer.
There have been 28 shutout victories, accounting for 37 percent of the results.
``I remember (Virginia Military Institute) and Virginia were our big rivalries in the state,'' says Dale, 57, now the athletic director at Clinch Valley College in Wise, Va. ``But I guess U.Va probably was more of a rival. It meant more to us.''
And so much more now. Leaner days at VMI have dropped the Keydets from Tech's schedule. Meanwhile, Virginia-Virginia Tech has only become bigger and better.
It used to be movable, this series. Thirty-two games have been played in Charlottesville. Twenty-one have been held in Blacksburg. The others have been held in Richmond, Roanoke or Norfolk, 23 in all.
From '40 to '63, only one game was held on campus - the '53 meeting at Virginia. But it's been renewed on campus each time since, almost exclusively on an alternating home-and-home basis.
The last of three consecutive games at Norfolk's Foreman Field, the only three played in Norfolk, took place in 1942.
Tech and Virginia had split the previous two games before Tech took the finale 20-14.
As 6,000 fans watched in ``spotless weather,'' the news report read, Tech held a 20-0 lead after three quarters. Joe Foltz, the ``Petersburg Express,'' had rambled for a 68-yard touchdown before Virginia rallied in the fourth period.
That game by all accounts ended gentlemanly. But stories abound, from Carpenter on through the years, of one side or the other getting their licks in - from the questioning of manhood and intellect to the swinging of fists to just plain rubbing it in.
As in '89, when Tech coach Frank Beamer had a tooth knocked out trying to break up a postgame scuffle.
As in '90, when Tech's 38-13 thrashing of Virginia, which had been ranked No. 1 earlier that season, stayed lit up on the Lane Stadium scoreboard for days.
As in '91, when Virginia accused Tech of playing dirty, even though Virginia had won 38-0 on a day Beamer called ``a bitter, bitter way to end the season.''
And don't the rest of the '90s and beyond promise more good stuff?
It is all intriguing enough that now there's even a book about the series - `` 'Hoos 'n' Hokies,'' by Roanoke Times sports writer Doug Doughty and Roland Lazenby - where no less a man than Caius Hunter Carpenter, member of the National Football Hall of Fame, comes to life. In all his spit and vinegar.
A more fitting forefather no rivalry ever had. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Norfolk Public Library photo
U.Va., en route to an 8-1 season, ran all over Virginia Tech in the
1941 game at Foreman Field, 34-0.
by CNB