Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 28, 1993 TAG: 9311280085
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: jack bogaczyk
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Then, Arkansas made the Cavaliers feel like a million, which is the team payoff in dollars, at the Carquest Bowl.
The Cavaliers, ranked as high as No. 15 this season and 6-1 a month ago, found their only bowl hopes in someone else's hands Saturday evening. Then, perhaps that's appropriate, because UVa certainly hasn't grasped how this game is played in the last month.
Virginia got an Arkansas victory at LSU to keep the Tigers from qualifying for the Carquest. UVa made a deal Wednesday to fill the Jan. 1 berth if LSU lost. That's like waiting that late to buy your Thanksgiving turkey.
There are two reasons UVa found itself desperately seeking a holiday date for the second consecutive 7-4 year. First, coach George Welsh's team crashed physically, if not emotionally. Then, with the Cavaliers starting to commit too many turnovers, the biggest fumble came in the athletic director's office.
Last year when Virginia skidded in November, athletic director Jim Copeland didn't continue to woo the bowls. Then, when UVa won at Virginia Tech to finish 7-4, only the Copper Bowl, in Tucson, Ariz., was available. That long trip admittedly was a long shot.
This season, Copeland has no excuses. Virginia finished tied for third in the ACC and couldn't get one of the league's four bowl berths, even though fifth-place finisher North Carolina State lost its last game by 59 points in the same state in which it will go bowling.
Welsh's Cavaliers lost at N.C. State and Clemson, the two teams they were battling for the league's spots in the Peach and Hall of Fame bowls. After the Wolfpack beat UVa, State athletic director Todd Turner clearly outplayed Copeland in the bowl game.
While Turner was selling what would be a 7-4 team to the Hall of Fame, Peach and - just in case - the Carquest and Independence, Copeland failed to initiate much contact with bowl officials.
Who says? The bowls.
An executive with one of these games said, "Todd Turner has touched all the bases with all of us." Meanwhile, Copeland couldn't even get to first base, and then last week he struck out with the Alamo, which took 6-5 Iowa. Turner, meanwhile, repeatedly phoned the bowls, telling them how many fans the Wolfpack would bring.
At the same time, Copeland was telling reporters, "I think it would be wrong for our schools [in the ACC] to get in a bidding war with each other on a bowl that had to take one of them, and I don't think that's happened."
There was no war, because for a war, there have to be two sides fighting. This was just a well-conceived, aggressive campaign by Turner, himself a former UVa athletic administrator. The bowl process is the most political in college sports. A school needs to sell itself.
Would former UVa quarterback George Allen have been elected Virginia's governor if he hadn't campaigned? So, what's wrong with Copeland, a former UVa offensive lineman, doing some stumping for his team? Virginia played in five bowls from 1984-91, but we're not talking a football tradition like Notre Dame, Penn State or Alabama.
When he handled the interview process for basketball coach Terry Holland's successor like a grenade, Copeland was labeled "a football guy." You'd have a hard time selling Welsh on that now.
While Turner was running an end around past Copeland, Virginia Tech athletic director Dave Braine took away part of UVa's option game before Copeland got his wakeup call from the Hall of Fame. The ACC had a school in the Independence Bowl two of the past three years and was talking with the Shreveport, La., game about a spot for its fifth team this season.
When Braine made a declaration of Independence on Nov. 13 for the Hokies, then 7-3, it took away a potential landing site for the Cavaliers - because the bowl wasn't going to replay our state's Division I-A rivalry.
And while Copeland fiddled, Welsh burned.
The Carquest saved face for Copeland, and saved UVa from being the only I-A program to finish 7-4 in 1992 and 1993 without a bowl bid. This season, there are 32 bowl-eligible schools already with seven victories among the eight major I-A conferences and independents. Until Saturday night, the only two without bids were UVa and 8-3 Cincinnati, where the last 43 years of tradition include a condemned stadium and no bowl dates.
Maybe Copeland finally has learned you can't deal cavalierly with the bowls. And maybe he should buy one of those Razorback Hog Hats and wear it to the Carquest, too.
by CNB