So I recently relocated my cache of old Virginia Tech football films. Several bowls, several big regular season games, even a few blow-out vs. inferior teams.

But as regular season games go, they do not get any bigger than this one.

Recall that Frank had only managed to massage his first two seasons in Blacksburg to the tune of a very meager 5 wins.  To be blunt; there were more than a few whispers and one parking-lot petition that said Frank was in over his head; and the VT had hired the wrong man for the job.  To put things further into prospective; consider that we/VT had been outscored by a collective 564 to 379 margin over Frank’s first two season in the 24060 (Blacksburg zip code).

(roll you mouse over an pics to find your bourbonese Easter Eggs)

This was a must have game. We were 2-1-1 coming in, and we desperately needed a program turning point. We found it to the North-East, right off of I-79 North vs. west virginia.

Generic impressions of VT football in retrosight:
The one thing that struck me extremely hard is the level of frontline talent that we/VT fielded on each side of the line-of-scrimmage,  even way back in 1989.

Eugene Chung and William Boatwright on offense. Scott Hill, Jimmy Whitten and Al Chamblee on defense. That’s 5 legit all-conference talents right there folks. 2009 via comparison has Worilds, Render and maybe one or two other legit pre-season all-ACC candidates. But lets take a closer look at each one of these frontline stalwarts off of the 1989 squad:

1. Chung was a 1st round 13th overall New England Patriot draft pick and played five very effective seasons on Sunday in the N.F.L. The first Korean baller to ever do so. Nuff’ said.
2. Boat’ is still the best G I’ve ever seen at Tech. Insane power-lifting numbers of spine breaking proportions. A weight room legend in the Back-Squat among other lifts; but Blessed with extremely quick and nimble feet for packing such a wallop. Point in fact, I still rate Boat’ as superior to Chung. Which is saying no small thing.
3. Whitten is as rough and tumble as they come. When Jimmy asks you for your wallet in a dark alley; you go ahead and hand him your watch just in case. An extremely scrappy player to put it mildly who had a fine career at De at VT thanks to one word: hustle. Or maybe two words: Dentist. (i.e. Frank’s tooth)
4. Al was something of an impoverished mans Robert Brown in stature. Above average quicks, pursuit, and strength, but nothing off the charts. A yesteryear Orion Martin if yo will. Kinda a B- letter-grade player all around; but that was pretty special for in 1989 for us.
5. All Scott did was set a single season Tackling Record (177) for 1989 that still stands. Mr. Hall  is easily one of the most underrated Hokies of the Frank Beamer era. A play maker vs. mutually the Run or the Pass. Tackles For a Loss, Sacks, batted passes and the likely leader in assisted tackles. A 1989 Dt that would start for us even in 2009; and would likely be our best Dt even today.

The other overall vibe that struck me was twofold and thus … first up, we did have some quality players here and there in 1989. We were much bigger and more physical under Frank; as Coach Dooley had many early to mid 1980’s football teams that looked downright high-school ‘ish in fact. But our quality of talent was spotty at best and our depth was virtually non-existent.  We had two very good frontlines (see above) and then we had about one guy at every other level on defense (Jock Jones at Lb and Jon Granby in the secondary)  or position on offense (Will Furrer at Qb, maybe 1 Wr, Vaugh Hebron at Rb) who could play for us today. The rest of our squad was thin. Without naming names … I’d even go so far as to estimate that 1989 had a handful of starters who would not even scratch our 2009 3-deep or travel for any Away games.

The Game:
Career back-up Cam Young was unspectacular yet extremely efficient for all but the 3rd Quarter both throwing and running for several nice gains on wvu.  The running part caught wvu off guard all day long. Including the sneaky silent count slap-triggered quick-count Qb Sneak Cam pulled off in the 3rd for 8 yards right up the gut. 1989 may have been the last time I’ve seen that in fact. As Nobody and I do mean nobody on the offense moves except the hiking arm of the center and the Qb himself. Kudos to the keep away VT offensive game plan that rolled the game-clock all afternoon and therefore baited #9 major harris into forcing the issue to the tune of 3 turnovers on the day. Thanks to his love affair with hitting the BIG-play at any and all costs; while foregoing taking the what the Hokie defense was giving him underneath. major went on to commit one fumble and throw 2 picks that fueled our 9-zip halftime lead over 9th ranked wvu. (recall wvu had played Notre Dame for the MNC just the year before) Our first half was nothing fancy. Short to medium gains on offense with ball-control special teams that generated  good field position which afforded us three short-field drives for our 9 points. Two of the drives were able to penetrate the wvu red zone; but they went no further. Vaughan Hebron had an excellent first 3o minutes both running and catching the ball. Tony Kennedy was solid at Rb, and Marcus Mikel and Myron Richardson had numerous YAC (Yards After the Catch) thanks to extremely suspect arm tacking from wvu downfield all day long and a couple of nifty open-field shakes out of Mikel himself.

In the second half wvu completely stymied all but three of our drives; holding us to negative yards or 3 and Outs. One of those other 3 drives yielded the winning Mickey Thomas fieldgoal, and another ended on Myron Richardson being stripped from behind at the wvu 5 yardline. wvu recovered or Myron would have at least sniffed the endzone.  major harris did engineer two scoring drives to begin the second-half of play; to his credit. And the wvu defense was much more aggressive, in particular at the LOS as mike fox terrorized our 2nd unit OLine before going on to play for the Giants with L.T. But after that Frank and D-cord Mike Clark (praise be to Strat Man) readjusted the infamous Wide-Tackle-6 and more and less contained major harris for the remained of the game.  Only 20 yards allowed good for only 1 first down to close the slow after the harris touchdown throw. The hidden gem is that this reversed the field position edge that wvu had temporarily won. Which including a drive killing sack by Jock Jones midway through the 4th quarter with the game in the balance. This was critically necessary; as we did not have the offensive firepower to upset wvu on long fields. Though we did hold major harris to a season low of 123 yards of Total Offense (passing+running).

Even though our Hokies did win 12-10 on the strength of Mickey Thomas straight-on leg courtesy of his sizzling 4 for 4 day in FGA’s, this game was testy, emotional and hard-hitting throughout. But it was also marred by the worst  hometown no-call in recent Black Diamond Trophy memory. Early in the 4th quarter right on their own 6 yard line, wvu called a right-handed roll out to the wide side of the field and to major harris’ right-handed throwing arm.

But the Virginia Tech defense had other plans and flushed major harris back against the grain away from his scripted roll-out and any eligible Wr’s. Archie Hopkins, Randy Cockrell and Jimmy Whitten did everything but mug major harris trying to get major harris to the ground before the major managed to sling a backwards over his shoulder 15` Hail Mary downfield on what unconditionally had to be an intentional grounding call about halfway deep into the wvu Endzone. A blind man could see it with his cane; it was that atrocious of a no-call that robbed us of a Safety. Only an ineligible wvu OLineman (#72) was anywhere near the ball. No other err was within 10 yards of the play and no pass catchers were within 30 of this pitiful throw. But up in morgantown that’s a whistle malfunction folks. Just ask Pitt 2007 how 20-20 hometeam myopic the zebras can up up there.

Eye in the Sky:
The more things change the more they stay the same. Or not so much as several dearly departed signature retro things caught my eye. Among them…

• Where have you gone old-school Bike neckrolls? Either cylindrical, or horned; you just do not see these shoudlerpads accouterments any more.
•  Where were  the preemptive interior Linemen knee-braces (to prevent roll-ups)? You only saw guys wearing the metal hinges after the fact in 1989. They were not even issued in VT nor wvu customized colors. We had Red and Blue ones, wvu’s were all black.
• The absence of the superimposed 1st-down Yellow-Line was none too fun. I was only sure once regarding 1st-down yardage on a near thing. That was only because a Cam Young scramble went out of bounds where I could see the Chains.  Today’s yellow first-down width of the field made for TV marker is a wonderful addition indeed.
• Finally, and I don’t wanna hit this too hard. But than again; nor am I Marry Poppins, and I have no spoonful of sugar because I don’t eat sweets. There is one redundant element in our road trips to wvu. To fire away at point blank range; that would be the yearly dialogue between our ballers and the Stands up at mountaineer field. Sean Lucas, Jock Jones, William Boatwright and numerous others exchanged something other than Hallmark greeting cards with the wvu faithful; and the intensity of said exchanges only grew as the game wore on. I heard how bad this was in 2005. I just watched how bad it was in 1989 pre an offer that we could not refuse from the A.C.C.  Indeed … “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” -George Bernard Shaw-

What needs the most work for VT to make another A.C.C. run? VT special-teams. Mistake after mistake and Saunders release is not getting any faster. VT defensive tackling and pass coverage. Arm tackling galore and more mis-communications than old StarTac phones. VT pass-blocking. TT is gonna get killed and then where will the VT offense be? View Results  Loading ...

Recap:
Easily the biggest win of the pre-Bowl era from any Frank Beamer coached VT football team. The first Hokie win in mo-town WV since 1977. A defensive masterpiece that sewed major harris up if there ever was one. Further and on a lighter note … it was interesting to see Frank Beamer with zero snow on top and a very lean drink of water named: “Shane” wearing acid-washed jeans caddying for Frank’s patch-cord to his pressbox headset along the VT sidelines. Fun to see the Hokie football players and Staff melt totally down right on the wvu football field after taking such an upsetting 9th ranked old gold and blue scalp. In what is still one of the larger VT regular season post game celebrations ever.

Virginia Tech=12, #9 wvu=10

“LETS GO!”

“HOKIES!”

b’street.

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