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National Notebook
Thursday, September 7
Blacksburg burns with enthusiasm



BLACKSBURG, Va. -- There is no ignoring the Hokies here, not even if Virginia Tech football elicits little interest. And that hardly seems possible.

Take a stroll down Main Street and store fronts are dotted with signs of encouragement. Walk into a bar or restaurant, and you can bet on the conversation. Tech talk is everywhere.

This campus in Southwest Virginia is awash in maroon and burnt orange, and the anticipation for the Jan. 4 Sugar Bowl has been building ever since the Hokies knocked off Boston College to cap an 11-0 regular season. The Hokies will be playing for the national championship, against No. 1 Florida State.

Corey Moore
Corey Moore and the Tech defense have their town and school all revved up.

They apparently came out of nowhere, but actually, the Hokies have been around for quite awhile. They have played football since 1892, yet this will be just their 13th bowl game, although it is the seventh straight postseason appearance. (Florida State's football program did not begin until 1947, while the Seminoles are playing in their 18th consecutive bowl game.) Tech had never been ranked higher than ninth in the Associated Press poll before this season.

And fans are loving it. The school's allotment of 16,000 tickets to the Sugar Bowl sold out in a heartbeat, leaving residents and alums scrambling for more.

Paul Torgersen, the school president, has just hung up the phone.

"It was a friend of mine whose husband is a Tech graduate. She said the two of them wanted to go to New Orleans. Could I find two tickets," he said. "I told her to sit tight."

Torgersen is as excited as anyone. In fact, he is so smitten with his school's team, he delayed his retirement by a week -- until after the Sugar Bowl.

"Damn right," Torgersen says with a laugh. "I am going to be president for the Sugar Bowl."

And why not? Torgersen, 67, has been there for all 11 of Virginia Tech's victories this season, stalking the sideline during games, visiting the locker room afterward, attending a few practices. "I get very nervous," he said.

A former engineering professor who first came to Virginia Tech -- the formal name is Virginia Polytechnic Institute -- in 1967, Torgersen loves the football program as much as the those he presides over.

The student body is giddy as well. Some 3,200 tickets were at stake in a lottery that had more than 14,000 students apply. Face value for Sugar Bowl tickets is $85, and Tiffany McPadden was one of the lucky winners.

McPadden, 21, a senior from Newport News, Va. -- hometown of star quarterback Michael Vick, she is quick to point out -- could not pass up the opportunity.

We're bringing the community together, we're bringing the university together. I get about 70 e-mails a day from alumni who want to say they are proud to be Virginia Tech graduates. It helps bring everybody together.
Defensive end Corey Moore

"Everybody is into the football team. That's all anybody talks about," said McPadden, who has been offered $400 for her ticket. "After the Boston College game, the fans tore down the goal posts and carried them through downtown. It was pretty wild."

When not being overrun by boisterous students and the Lane Stadium goal posts, the downtown area is prospering from the Hokies as businesses have seen increased traffic.

"It's been a great thing for Blacksburg," said Roger Hedgpeth, a 1952 Virginia Tech graduate and the city's mayor since 1982. "It's an evolutionary process. The team has certainly garnered some attention over the last few years. But being No. 2 for quite awhile is a whole different ballgame. It's really been great. The interest has multiplied tremendously. You find things such as people who would not normally read the sports section are reading it. It's a great thing."

At the off-campus Tech Bookstore, they can't keep all the Sugar Bowl shirts and hats in stock long enough. "We sell out the stuff as soon as we get it," said Harry Hurlburt.

The best-selling item? Beamer Ball T-shirts.

That would be for Frank Beamer, the former Tech player who took over the program in 1987, was nearly fired after a 2-8-1 season in 1992, and has since taken the Hokies to seven straight bowls.

"This is just a great time for our program," said Beamer, 53, who is 88-59-2 at Tech and 130-82-4 overall as a head coach. "That was a special scene after the Boston College game. To look down and see all the players and coaches who have worked so hard, and to look up at all the fans who have also waited a long time for this day ... all the pride and enthusiasm and excitement ... I'm happy for all of our supporters."

Why is this so special? Well, as Florida State fans can surely appreciate, Virginia Tech followers have long been forced to play the role of poor stepchild to another state school. In FSU's case, it was Florida. For Virginia Tech, it is the University of Virginia, located some 150 miles away in Charlottesville.

Virginia is Thomas Jefferson's University. Virginia Tech, despite a top engineering school and strong reputation in computers, has the stigma of being a place for farmers. Football has helped give the school a different identity.

Beamer has won mostly with players whom schools with bigger reputations didn't pursue. Only once in the past six years -- 1998, when quarterback Vick signed -- has SuperPrep magazine ranked one of Tech's recruiting classes among the nation's top 30. Compare that to FSU, where a class not ranked in the top 10 would be considered a disaster.

The Hokies have a knack for finding talented players who might be missing one of the blue-chip ingredients. Perhaps they are undersized by Division I standards. But they are typically fast and hungry and willing to work.

One of the gems found by Tech is Corey Moore, a defensive end from Brownsville, Tenn., who made recruiting visits to Duke and Penn and went to a junior college before ending up at Tech. This year, he won the Outland Award and Nagurski Award, given to the nation's best defensive player. His counterpart at the other defensive end position, John Engelberger, was a walk-on.

"I think the fans are appreciating what we're doing," Moore said. "We're bringing the community together, we're bringing the university together. I get about 70 e-mails a day from alumni who want to say they are proud to be Virginia Tech graduates. It helps bring everybody together."

Of course, not everyone is so impressed. The attention focused on Virginia Tech is not necessarily for the right reasons, said Henry Bauer, an interdisciplinary studies professor at the college.

"In terns of football and athletics, this is great. But over the last decade or so, academics has not been given the proper priority over things," Bauer said. "I'm also very skeptical about the commonly made statements that big-time athletics is the only way to interest the public or your alumni to get contributions. It would be worth trying to see if that is not the case.

"I think Vick is great. He is a phenomena. I think it's nice that the team has done this. But I think there is almost no relationship between the team and the university. These are students who would not be coming here if it were not for the football program."

There are cynics who would suggest that not even the football program used to attract such students. Success certainly helps. But so does being in a conference like the Big East.

Recruits know that the Hokies will get to play Miami and Syracuse every year in conference play and that winning the league means playing in a big bowl. Tech used to play in the Southern Conference, then became an independent in the mid-1960s until joining the Big East in 1991.

But unless you are Notre Dame, playing as an independent is difficult. For example, the Hokies finished 9-2 in 1983 and didn't even get invited to a bowl.

"The thing that Tech needed was to get in a conference," said former coach Bill Dooley, who was at the school for nine seasons from 1978-86. "I worked like the devil to get in the ACC. ... They've gone to the Orange Bowl and the Sugar Bowl and now they're going to the Sugar Bowl again. Hell, you couldn't even get the Peach Bowl to return your calls some years. We were fighting like hell to get the Independence Bowl."

And the fans would have followed. Bowls love Virginia Tech because Hokies fans are known to travel. Three years ago, when Tech played in a rather meaningless Sugar Bowl game against Texas on New Year's Eve, Virginia Tech fans filled Bourbon Street.

"All of New Orleans was maroon," Torgersen said. "You never saw so many happy people. Those folks down there love us. The Texans came and went the same night. We stayed and partied forever."

For Virginia Tech and fans, it looks like the party is just beginning.

Bob Harig, who covers college football for the St. Petersburg Times, writes a weekly college football column for ESPN.com.

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