As I was in the Scott Stadium press box on Saturday, packing up my laptop while staring at the rain pelting down, I thought: we've now lost to Duke and William and Mary in the same season. If anyone would have told me in 1995, or even 2005, that UVA would lose to a basketball school like Duke, and Thomas Jefferson's alma mater in the same Autumn, I would have told them to call the doctor. Boy, times are tough.
How would you like to be Craig Littlepage, the Board of Visitors, or anyone that works for the Virginia Athletics Foundation? That's a tough call to make for those fine VAF folks:
"Sir, we'd love to speak to you regarding your donation to Cavalier athletics for 2009. Would you like to help make a donation to pay for the shiny-new buyouts of Dave Leitao and Al Groh? We just finished the payment plan for former Coach Pete Gillen's buy-out, so that's good news. Sir? Are you still there, Sir?" Click.
Normally after a Virginia football game I wander over to the East lot and have a couple of ham biscuits and ice cold Budweisers with several of my long-time friends. Win, lose, or draw, we chat about our lives, the game we have just witnessed, and just generally hang out.
Saturday, all I wanted to do was get the hell out of there immediately! As the media van that takes us back to the lot was about to leave Scott Stadium, Danny Kanell, the former Florida State quarterback of the 1995 Seminoles that lost to UVA in on of the best college football games I've ever seen, ran up to the van and got in.
The van driver said, "Hey you're that Florida State guy that we beat in 1995, aren't you?"
Kannell replied, "Yep, I did not remember that game at all till I saw it in the ESPN notes as I was preparing for this game this week" (Kannell was the color guy for the ESPN-360 broadcast crew). He talked a little about his meal the night before at the Downtown Grille, that he had made a bit of video for his kids of the UVA band, and then we both got out of the van and were on our separate ways.
Danny Kannell doesn't remember that game at all. BS! He was 32-67 for 454 yards and 3 TDs in that November, 1995, game in Charlottesville. But, all he wanted to talk about was the wonderfully good steak he'd eaten for dinner last night, and how UVA's campus was incredibly spread out! www.youtube.com/watch
There is knowledge and wisdom to be gained from a very unlikely source here, Virginia football fans. Most Hoos fans I know view that Florida State game as one of the three most important in the annals of UVA football.* But even to the guy that threw for 454 yards, it was just another game, and just another loss. Take 'em with a grain of salt, and maybe a couple of ice cold beers, too. We (Virginia fans) take ourselves a bit too seriously, I think. We aren't an important football school, and never have been.
The season rolls on and continues Saturday in Miami for the Hoos. My prediction Hoos 13 Miami 48. Yuck.
*The other two most important games: Georgia Tech, November 3, 1990 and New Years Eve 1984 against Purdue in the Peach Bowl.
The HooYa! Blog expands upon the content and insights in HooYa! C-VILLE's UVa game-day publication. The HooYa! Blog is written by Trent Thurston, a sports-obsessed Virginia fan who bleeds orange & blue. He and his father, Myles, own and operate Eljo's Traditional Clothes, a UVa staple in Charlottesville for 59 years. Trent traveled with the Virginia Hoops team for six seasons helping out where needed with the radio crew. He thinks every year is the year we will win a national championship in football and basketball.
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