appro: Great article. I am a product of the Beamer era. Coach B would bring his date to our frat all the time when he was a player at Tech. He grew up 45 miles from where I currently live. I was a season ticket "enjoyer" ???
at the games during the those lean years.
The reason that we all stuck with coach B. was because we all realized that the coach is only one rung in the ladder of success that must be climbed.
The fans took their onus of responsibility along with donors to the football program.
One only has to remember back to those days and see the dismal facilities we used to have. Big time college football is big time money and it takes millions to build a national football power. It takes big money to keep assistant coaches worth their 'salt'. We built a field house for indoor practices, state of the art office complexes and gyms and work out room and dormitories for the athletes. Not only that but the athletic director built the other sports programs into respectable...with the notable exception of the basketball program and a few others...programs.
We still have a long way to go in our other sports programs but with the inclusion into the ACC things will improve in the future.
Tech always was competive even in the sixties against teams like Miami and Fla State and Alabama and Auburn but we would always lose those close ones. It has only been in the past few years that we have won a few of those top 5 or top 10 wins so there is still a lot of respect to be gained and we are notably still aware of our deficiencies in those areas. That is another reason that there is going to be a burning desire to win on Jan. 3rd....to get the respect that the nation ,possibly justifiably, will not give us, to this day.
What Beamer brought us and the main reason that we stuck with him is that there was an awareness that he was one of our own and that he could understand the psyche of the VT football mentality. You can call it Beamerball, or what ever but what it is it can be called the desire to get over all the negativity of being called a cow college, or being referred to as a college out in the middle of nowhere or up in the mountains, or a bunch of country hicks, or bear the brunt of jokes like telling a VT grad by noticing his class ring when he is picking his nose. We still get this stuff from Miami even after beating them 7 out of the last ten times we have played them,,,,always from UVA.....and even now from many of the ACC teams that we have just beaten this year.
But underestimating VT is always the greatest gift that an opposing team can give us. Whether or not Auburn has done so this year is something we will have to wait to see. If they have ...it will not bode well for them in the big easy....
|Gregor |
