THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 29, 1996 TAG: 9608270405
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: V15 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: College Forecast
SOURCE: BY STEVE CARLSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 185 lines
Virginia Tech athletic director Dave Braine was in a fly fishing shop this summer in Ennis, Mont., when the man behind the counter noticed Braine's Hokies baseball cap.
The clerk had just read about Tech in a preseason magazine. Suddenly, more than 2,000 miles from Blacksburg, the Sugar Bowl-champion Hokies and quarterback Jim Druckenmiller were a topic of conversation in an out-of-the-way town of 773 nestled in the Rocky Mountains.
Football in Virginia has gone national.
The state best known for presidents, hams and peanuts is producing another commodity: college football powers. Though they will never be mistaken for legends like Nebraska, Penn State or Notre Dame, Virginia and Virginia Tech are no longer goobers in the college football world.
Consider the Commonwealth's uncommon football success:
Last season marked the first time Virginia Tech (No. 10) and Virginia (No. 16) were both ranked in the final Associated Press poll, which dates to 1936.
Virginia is one of eight Division I-A programs with seven or more wins each of past nine seasons. The Cavaliers' streak of nine consecutive winning seasons also is an ACC record.
Virginia Tech enters the season with a 10-game winning streak, second only to Nebraska's 25 in a row.
Virginia and Virginia Tech each have been to three consecutive bowl games. The only other state to have two teams in bowls the last three years is Florida - Florida State has been to 14 in a row, Florida five.
``That's putting the state of Virginia in pretty high company, isn't it?'' says Braine, formerly a U.Va. assistant coach and assistant athletic director.
Indeed, and people in high places are taking notice - particularly the power-brokers at TV networks, who can schedule a team right into a recruit's living room. That makes it easier for coaches to get there in person later on.
Last year, Tech and U.Va. combined to make eight appearances on ABC or ESPN. Both will grace ESPN and CBS this season.
Virginia's biggest win last season - a thrilling upset of second-ranked Florida State - was on prime time Thursday night on ESPN. Some generation Xers were extremely impressed.
``There are a couple of guys in our freshman class who came here because of that game,'' Virginia offensive coordinator Tom O'Brien says.
``That shed a new light on their program,'' says Craig James of CBS, formerly the college football studio analyst on ESPN. ``That was a monumental game for them.''
Oddly enough, even a pair of gut-wrenching losses probably enhanced the Cavaliers' image. At Michigan - ``People in the Midwest think Michigan invented football,'' O'Brien says - Virginia lost on the last play of the game. The same thing happened at Texas - ``Where they also think they invented football,'' O'Brien says. The Cavaliers also lost to Tech in the game's final minute.
U.Va.'s ability to play with the big boys last year probably opened more eyes about the program than any season other than 1990, when the Cavaliers spent three weeks at No. 1 in the AP poll, only to finish 8-4 and ranked 23rd.
For Virginia Tech, 1995 was the high-water mark of 102 seasons of college football - a 10-2 record, Big East championship, highest ranking and a spoonful of Sugar. Throw in a win over Miami for good measure.
Think about that: In the same season, Florida State and Miami lose to Virginia and Virginia Tech.
``I don't think traditionally the state of Virginia is thought of as a football state,'' says Rick Catlett, executive director of the Gator Bowl. ``Normally you think of Alabama, Texas, Florida and Michigan, those kind of states are the football powers.
``But wall-to-wall, the programs at Virginia and Virginia Tech are starting to be well-respected. That's what winning does for you.''
Virginia and winning football: The two were rarely used in the same sentence before George Welsh came to Charlottesville in 1982. The Cavaliers managed just two winning seasons in 29 years before Welsh arrived.
``I don't know if the general populous in the state realizes how bad things were here in 1982,'' O'Brien says.
Welsh, labeled ``The Fix-it Man'' in a Sports Illustrated Presents preseason football magazine story, has rebuilt from the foundation up. Before Welsh, Virginia had never been to a bowl game. Under him, they've been in eight - seven in the last nine years.
Who would have believed it possible? Welsh and . . . perhaps only Welsh.
``I expected to win, because I thought I knew how to coach,'' Welsh says matter-of-factly while leaning against a wall in the McCue Center, the $8.5 million football complex Welsh successfully lobbied for.
Virginia Tech soon will have a multi-million dollar football complex as well. Tech expects to break ground in November on a $7.4 million, 40,000-square-foot facility.
It's a tangible sign of where Tech's program has come in a short time under head coach Frank Beamer, who was backed up against a wall just four years ago. Assistant head coach Billy Hite says Beamer was ``pretty close'' to getting fired in 1992 after a 2-8-1 season. Some assistants were let go, but Beamer was spared.
Beamer inherited a program in 1987 that had occasionally been a regional power and appeared in three bowls in the '80s, but rarely made a national splash. He also inherited a program racked by NCAA probation.
He went 24-40-2 his first six seasons, and the patience of the administration and alumni began to wear thin during the 1992 debacle.
``I knew we needed more wins,'' Beamer says. ``Anytime you don't know how you're going to take care of your family the next year, there's uncertainty. It was a stressful time, a tough time.
``I didn't work any harder the next year than I had the previous year. Things just kind of fell into place.''
Tech's place in 1993 was the Independence Bowl, followed by the Gator Bowl in '94 and then the Sugar Bowl win over Texas, the program's defining moment.
``When I was small, I could have never envisioned it: Tech going to a major bowl game and Virginia beating the No. 2 team in the country in the same year,'' says Tech senior linebacker Brandon Semones, a native of Salem, Va. ``If you'd have told me when I came to Tech we'd be in the Sugar Bowl, I'd have probably laughed at you.
``Yeah, right, after a 2-8-1 season.''
Tech is 27-9 since.
``I think they've solidified themselves and they're on track to be year-in and year-out at least an eight-win football team,'' James said.
Bowls and polls are as much a part of the two programs now as the ``gobble call'' after a touchdown at Tech and students wearing ties to Virginia's Scott Stadium.
``Now the kids we recruit don't know how bad Virginia was,'' O'Brien says. ``All they remember is the last few years, when we've been winners.''
So how did moribund Virginia and anonymous Virginia Tech turn perhaps the toughest trick in college athletics - rebuilding a football program?
For starters, they got the right guys for the job.
Welsh, 63, had a track record. He worked similar magic against all odds at the Naval Academy, where no one has been able to win since he left.
Beamer, 49, was a favorite son, a Tech football player in the late 1960s who toiled on a pair of Liberty Bowl teams coached by Jerry Claiborne. It was a feel-good alumnus-to-the-rescue hire.
Both coaches have longevity, which usually means solid programs.
Only seven current head coaches have been at the same Division I-A school longer than Welsh's 14 seasons in Charlottesville. Only 15 coaches have longer tenure than Beamer's nine seasons at Tech.
``If you went through the top programs in the country year-in and year-out, there's just not a lot of turnover,'' Beamer says.
``The stability factor has been important,'' Welsh says, adding that his assistants ``know the high school coaches in the state and neighboring states. That's important.''
They kept in-state players in state.
At one time, it would have taken boarder guards to stop the exodus of top Virginia prep talent. Hite remembers the 1976 North Carolina team, on which he served as an assistant, that started 14 Virginians.
Now it's cool to go to school in Virginia for home-grown football talent. Witness the likes of Virginia's Terry Kirby, Chris Slade, Tiki and Ronde Barber and Virginia Tech's Maurice DeShazo, Cornell Brown, Ken Oxendine and Bryan Still.
They made shrewd decisions.
Virginia's high admission standards made it difficult to compete. The entrance standards were dialed back a bit for some athletes.
Tech was independently unwealthy for years, but football-only admission into the Big East has been like winning the lottery. With it came revenue sharing, TV exposure and a better sales pitch to recruits: You could play in a major bowl game here.
``They would have died on the vine had they not been able to get in the Big East,'' says Bill Dooley, who preceded Beamer as the Hokies' coach. As an independent, Tech was shut out of the bowl picture with a 9-2 record in 1983, and a 10-1-1 '86 team could do no better than the Peach Bowl.
So Virginia Tech and Virginia football have reached the big time, right?
Not necessarily. West Virginia coach Don Nehlen can attest that nothing is automatic. His team entered the bowl season undefeated and with a shot at the national championship in both 1988 and '93. Two years after each near-miss, the Mountaineers posted losing seasons.
``Our program, when I went there, they were happy if we could tie somebody,'' Nehlen says. ``Then we got pretty good and went to four or five bowls, and now I'm a bum if we don't win every game.''
The chasm between solid programs and the elite is still immense. Perhaps the only team in the last 10 years to bridge that gap and join the entrenched traditional powerhouses is Colorado.
Virginia and Virginia Tech's recent exploits are impressive. Nebraska's and Florida State's are awesome - the two-time defending national champion Cornhuskers have been to bowls 27 consecutive seasons, and FSU's ranking among the top four in the final AP poll for nine consecutive years is unprecedented.
So is the fan interest programs like that generate, while U.Va. and Tech fans sometimes could be described as tepid.
Warren Swain, the former voice of Virginia football who this year will call Nebraska games, said he has been ``bowled over'' by the magnitude of Cornhusker football. One day he was in a convenience store in Lincoln, Neb., when he overheard two women discussing a Nebraska backup offensive lineman.
``One woman said, `Have you looked at his time in the 40 and how much he bench presses?' '' Swain says. ``Out here, it is really a passion, it's a religion.
``In Virginia, it's not there yet, but they're working at it.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
George Welsh photo, left, by Joe Mahoney/Associated Press. Frank
Beamer photo, right, by Alan Kim/Landmark News Service
KEYWORDS: SPECIAL SECTION PREVIEW by CNB