Hokies Hijack Huskers

When trying to come up with a name for Virginia Tech's incredible last-minute comeback against Nebraska last weekend, Sage and I decided the title of this post should have been the headline in the local newspaper. Instead they went with "Hokies Shuck Huskers Upset Bid". Weak. Anyway, sorry for the late update of last weekend's game, but Fall is my busy season. We were in Blacksburg to see the Hokies play Nebraska, and this is our story.

Friday morning arrived way too early and we headed out to Logan to catch our Jet Blue flight to Raleigh-Durham. Like last year we determined that the best way (meaning cheapest – not necessarily easiest) to get to Blacksburg is to fly to Raleigh and drive the 3 hours to Blacksburg. Last year this meant driving over an hour to Manchester to fly Southwest, which required changing planes in Baltimore as well. But this year we discovered Jet Blue, which flies out of Logan (only 30 minutes to get to) AND is non-stop to Raleigh. Win-Win. So that’s what we did.

On the way we stopped in High Point, NC to visit a John Coltrane statue. Coltrane is one of my favorite jazz musicians, and one night while mindlessly surfing Wikipedia, I was reading his page and it mentioned how there was a statue of him in High Point, the city where he grew up. Considering High Point is on the way to Blacksburg, how could we not stop?

Coltrane's music is one of My Favorite Things.

After the stop, we drove on through the rainy weather to our cabin in Max Meadows, VA. We decided to get a cabin for this weekend when, after only finding bad motels 30 minutes from Blacksburg available for the game, we did some searching on cabins. We found this one in Max Meadows for basically the same price as those motels, and while it’s probably an hour from Blacksburg, we figured it was worth it since we’d be there for 2 nights anyway. The cabin was nice, pretty secluded, and had a small pond and hiking trails right off the back yard. It was for sale actually, and based on the information on the house listing, it has 185 acres on the side of a mountain, “good for hunting”, and runs for $825,000. (We won't be making an offer.)

Cherish the cabin.

Because the weather still looked crappy we ate dinner at the cabin instead of heading to Blacksburg. We expected to see deer come out to the back yard/pond at dusk, but I think the dreary rain kept them away.

Saturday morning there still weren’t any deer, so we had a quick breakfast and headed on up the road to Blacksburg. Tailgating was already in full effect by 10:00 am, and as we found a spot in our lot we noticed right next to us the sweet tailgate set-up we saw in Atlanta Labor Day weekend.

The sweet tailgate setup.

Instead of acting friendly and trying to weasel into their tailgate we walked downtown to a couple bookstores and VT gear shops. Along the way we saw plenty of Nebraska fans, which had me worried a bit. I had heard that Nebraska fans love to travel, and because of that this was going to be one of the most sought-after tickets of the year. We saw scalpers asking for $200 a ticket, and I’m sure some were going for more than that. Everyone who went to Lincoln for the VT/NU game last year mentioned that Nebraska fans were easily the nicest, most accommodating fans they ever met, and we should really return the favor. So every Husker fan we went by we made sure to greet them with a “Welcome to Blacksburg!” Every Nebraska fan we talked to mentioned how nice and welcoming everyone was, which was great to hear. (To read more about the Nebraska fan’s comments, see this article which has a lot of comments received from Huskers after their trip. My favorite: Walking into the game, I enjoyed the dialogue of a Husker fan telling a Tech fan in jest “Don’t give me any more beer! I can’t handle another Tech fan inviting me to their tailgate.”)

After the shopping we went to Mike’s where we had cheeseburgers and drank beer.

Mike's is known for serving their burgers upside down.

My favorite part of Mike's: pitches of Yuengling are less than $4.00.

Good food, great price, fun place. A couple of Nebraska fans showed up as we were leaving, and we mentioned how much they’ll love it, and they said, “Well, everyone has told us to come here, so it must be good!” After lunch we walked through campus and the drill field before dropping off our loot at the car. By this time the lots were really packed and the tailgating was in full effect. We had some time to kill, so we headed to the stadium to grab some free drinks at The Bear Tailgate Show (don’t ask), then waited for “The Walk”, where the Hokie Players walk up the street. Sage got her photo with Hokie Bird, which is always a rare treat.

Hokie Bird likes Sage's shirt.

But he has to wait in line for the port-a-potty just like everyone else.

Soon after we were in the stadium, checking out our new seats. That’s right – I said new seats! Faithful readers of this blog will remember how Sage and I had our seats moved, from where we sat our first 6 seasons (in section 5), down to the other end of the stadium in section 17 in 2005. I have blogged at length about how aggravating those seats were: Too close to the visiting fans/band; too many kids running around; too far from the Hokie Vision and Marching Virginians; and too many people sitting when they should be standing. Since 2005, every year when I renewed I put in a request to please move our seats back to Section 5. Every year I’d get the UPS package and be hopeful we got moved, and every year we’d be back where we started. Since our move to Massachusetts I’ve still requested the move, but because we only get down there for 2-3 games a year, it wasn’t that big of a deal any more. So of course, what happens this year? We got moved to Section 5! As we got to our new seats, we noticed something else – we were closer to midfield! Whereas our original seats were about the 5 yard line, and last year we were at the goal line, now we’re around the 20 yard line! WIN-WIN-WIN.

The crowd started filtering in as we watched warm-ups. (Another benefit of section 5 – the team warms up right in front of you! No more having to watch Miami or BC players instead of VT.) There were a few Nebraska fans scattered around us, but not too bad. We struck up a conversation with the elderly couple who sat next to Sage. The woman had a son-in-law (or something like that) who was an assistant coach at Nebraska, and she was a big fan. Her husband, however, was a VT grad, and this was his first game since he graduated over 50 years ago! Before the game we were lucky to witness another flyover, this time it was 3 F-18 fighter jets.

Photo courtesy of Russian Hokie.

And what a game it was. The Hokies scored a TD on their very first possession...and then did basically nothing for the next 2 1/2 hours. The offensive woes are really worrisome on this team, and there were some nasty comments in the stands for Offensive Coordinator Bryan Stinespring. But then, just as all looked lost and the Hokies had to go 88 yards in the last 2 minutes, Tyrod Taylor made 2 HUGE plays: A 81 yard completion to Danny Coale who had slipped past his defender, and a great touchdown pass to Dyrell Roberts after scrambling around for what seemed like 2 hours. If you missed the end, here it is in less than 2 1/2 minutes.



After that, it was all over except for the celebrating. The students rushed the field, and since our seats are now right in front of theirs, they came streaming down from behind us, jumping over the stands to make their way down. The elderly woman next to us looked scared for her life, but I urged them on. (The VT alum who hadn't been to a game in over 50 years looked happy as could be. I told him, "For not seeing a game in over 50 years, you picked a helluva good one to come back to!" He agreed whole-heartedly.)

And really, after that ending, trying to make the rest of the weekend sound interesting would be a losing proposition. (And after a week has gone by, I'm not sure if I remember it all anyway.) We headed back to the cabin to watch some other games before heading back to Raleigh the next day for our flight out. We did stop by Wake Forest in Winston-Salem, just to kill some time and to buy a shot glass. It's pretty nice, and the main quad/lawn area was quite lovely -- although the students toilet-papered all trees for some reason. Maybe it was the big victory over Elon the day before.

I think that I shall never see,
Toilet paper as lovely as a tree.

And that was it. I really wanted to do my weekly football updates this year, but there just isn't enough hours in the day. Maybe I'll do something at the end of each month. The Hokies have a big game today against Miami -- a loss today and VT could pretty much kiss the ACC Championship goodbye. A lot is on the line so early in the year, and the Hokies have to come to play. LET'S GO HOKIES!