Blacksburg, Va. – Blacksburg is nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge and Allegheny mountains, only a long punt from the West Virginia border but a long drive from anyplace of note.
Tucked into the backwoods of southwest Virginia, Blacksburg can be reached only if you know where to look.
Follow Interstate 81 south five hours from Washington, D.C., and you can be mesmerized by the golds, yellows, oranges and maroons of the Shenandoah Valley’s spectacular rolling hills and pass right by the turnoff. This is an unlikely place to find a major-college football power. After all, until the mid-1990s, you had more reason to visit for the changing colors than college football in the fall.
That all changed when the son of a Virginia highway engineer, growing up in tiny Hillsville, Va., an hour from here, had a dream of turning his state’s engineering school into the best football school in the country. When the former Virginia Tech cornerback returned to his alma mater in 1987, he had a plan.
“I said when we came here, if we can keep the best players in this state coming to Virginia Tech, we’ll play for a national championship,” coach Frank Beamer said. “I take great pride in that. I’m from Virginia. And that’s the foundation of this football team.”
Beamer sat Thursday in his palatial office adjacent to the Merryman Center, Virginia Tech’s state-of-the-art grand entrance to its athletic department. He looked outside his office to two plush practice fields next to 65,115-seat Lane Stadium, which is expanding for the umpteenth time, this time with skyboxes equipped with fireplaces.
Yes, Virginia Tech has blossomed from a century of mediocrity. This school went to one bowl from 1947-65, never drew 50,000 fans for a game until 1980 and never ranked higher than 15th until 1994.
Yet Saturday, at 5:45 p.m. MST, the unbeaten Hokies (8-0, 5-0 Atlantic Coast) will take their No. 3 ranking against No. 5 Miami (6-1, 3-1) to remain in the national title hunt.
Of Virginia Tech’s 24 starters, 21 are from Virginia. That’s a state of 7 million supplying a potential national champion, one that played for the title in 1999 and has been to 12 consecutive bowl games.
“I’ve been recruiting this state for 36 years,” Hokies recruiting coordinator Jim Cavanaugh said. “The state of Virginia has always had great football players. What has changed with Virginia Tech is we’ve done a great job of keeping the great Virginia players home.”
Remember North Carolina linebacker Lawrence Taylor? He’s from Williamsburg, Va. UCLA safety Kenny Easley? He’s from Chesapeake, Va. How about North Carolina running back Amos Lawrence? From Hampton Roads, Va. Recruiting analyst Tom Lemming says the Tidewater area of Portsmouth, Norfolk and Hampton, with only 1.5 million people, is the fourth-richest recruiting ground in the U.S., behind only Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston.
However, the road to hosting ESPN’s “GameDay” wasn’t as easy as the surrounding rolling hills. Put K2 in Virginia and you have Beamer’s early years. Predecessor Bill Dooley put the school on probation and cost Beamer scholarships his first two seasons.
“All of a sudden the university said, ‘Look, we want to upgrade our academics,”‘ Beamer said. “We don’t want a deficit in the athletic department. We want to schedule better teams. Then all of a sudden the NCAA said do all this with fewer scholarships. That’s the situation we came into.”
Six years later, Beamer had two winning seasons and was coming off a 2-8-1 year in 1992.
Then-school president James McComas called in athletic director Dave Braine and asked, “Do we need to get rid of our football coach?” Braine, now AD at Georgia Tech, said no. He instead pushed more money into the program for Beamer to hire better assistants.
That winter, Beamer signed the best player in the state, a linebacker from Lynchburg named Cornell Brown.
“Cornell could’ve gone anywhere he wanted to go and he came here,” Beamer said. “So it did say things are in place there. These guys are close to winning.”
Brown opened recruits’ eyes to Blacksburg, and so did Tech’s affiliation with the new Big East football conference. The state’s top players started pouring in. Then Cavanaugh saw something in an option quarterback in Newport News who was overshadowed by a mediocre team and by future North Carolina quarterback Ronald Curry, who played at Hampton.
Michael Vick quietly signed with Virginia Tech, and three years later the Hokies were in the Sugar Bowl playing Florida State for the 1999 national title. His little brother, Marcus, will lead the Hokies on Saturday night.
Beamer, the 1990s Big East coach of the decade, has built the Hokies on a lightning-quick defense and game-changing special teams. In Beamer’s 222 games, Virginia has blocked 105 kicks, and the defense and special teams have scored 100 touchdowns.
The defense, made up nearly entirely of Tidewater players, leads the nation in scoring defense (9.1).
“Nasty defense. That’s what stood out,” said senior defensive end Darryl Tapp about signing here.
“You don’t really hear too much about individuals on Virginia Tech’s teams. Like other teams like Miami and Florida State, they had standout players. But Virginia Tech was a bunch of no-name guys working hard.”
The Hokies know that unless there’s a major change in the BCS computers, or second-ranked Texas or top-ranked USC loses, they may go unbeaten and be left out of the Rose Bowl, the site of this season’s national title game.
Yet optimism is thick in this beautiful land. The Merryman Center features a glass case that’s the most visited spot in the room. It’s empty. It has one sentence:
“This area is reserved for the national championship trophy.”
