DATE: Thursday, September 25, 1997          TAG: 9709250612

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Tom Robinson 

                                            LENGTH:   67 lines

HOKIES FANS GIVE A CRITIC MORE OF SAME

My new pen pal, a Virginia Tech football fan who happens to be Russian, advised me in a lengthy e-mail the other day that ``there is no point in beating the dead horse.''

I have taken this to heart. I will write no more on the Hokies' dead horse of a schedule, as I did last week, except to refer to the pointed response the column received from a herd of hacked-off Hokies.

``You are an (not a very nice name),'' declared one who signed his note, ``Love, An Unobjective Hokie Fan,'' though I suspect he didn't really mean the ``love'' part.

Meanwhile, it's been a month or more since my boss called me a ``nitwit,'' ``loser,'' and ``low-life'' all in the same week, so that made me feel right at home.

Suffice to say that casting aspersions toward a school that has long nursed real and perceived media slights, local and national, is not the best way into a Hokie's heart.

More than two dozen Techsters wrote or called to rip me for:

Criticizing a state school.

Not explaining why Tech's schedule is so weak.

Insidiously boosting the despised Virginia Cavaliers by attacking Tech.

Being born.

``(Virginia Tech) has been trying to get games against some bigger-name schools,'' wrote one correspondent. ``. . . These name schools don't want to come to Blacksburg and get their butts kicked by the best team in the Big East.''

I don't doubt the strength of Tech's team. My envisioning the Hokies' going 11-0 and playing in the Fiesta or Sugar Bowl should have said that.

The blasphemy came in suggesting that a perfect regular season would be tarnished by Tech's receiving no consideration for a ``national championship'' bowl game because of its schedule.

``Instead of promoting a great opportunity for Virginia sports fans, you would rather discredit a great achievement before it even happens,'' wrote Dave Reynolds of Greensboro.

As for the schedule, there are plenty of reasons and/or excuses for why these things turn out as they do. However hard Tech tries to book more real games - and here we go again, I guess - maybe it needs to try harder.

Sorry. There are my pro-U.Va. leanings leaking through - which should interest the U.Va. people who grilled me recently for suggesting that the Cavaliers move some basketball games to Norfolk instead of Richmond.

``Since ... we are routinely covered in the state media by U.Va. fans (yourself included), we don't set ourselves up any better by scheduling soft,'' confided Sandy Cormack.

``It's plainly obvious you're card-carrying Wahoos,'' wrote another staff here at the Cavalier Daily.

Before I forget, one respondent had a question, which I quote verbatim and answer forthwith:

``is there a class that they give in journaslisn school ... to sport writers to be so negative about anything good.''

That's a funny thing. The journaslisn classes were always filled every time I tried to sign up, which was disappointing because I always wanted to be a trained journaslist.

Fortunately, I took a lot of English and speling classes. Which is good things to lurn, too.

However, I do want to thank the one anonymous Tech fan who offered me a fall-back position.

``Being close to the seashore,'' wrote Mr./Ms. Hokie, ``the salt air has obviously shrunken whatever brain you ever had.''

So that's why I keep losing my Wahoo membership card.

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