Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, September 23, 1994                   TAG: 9409240047
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG                                 LENGTH: Medium

WAS TECH LOOKING AT FUTURE?

West Virginia's visit to Lane Stadium for the ESPN prime-time show wasn't just a meeting of Big East Football Conference rivals. It certainly was more than just two programs from neighboring states passing and running in the night, too.

That's because the Mountaineers, deep in a valley this season, will climb back. They have tradition. They have a reputation. They have an all-sports membership in the Big East.

That's precisely what the Hokies want. It's what coach Frank Beamer's program needs to be all that it can be. Besides a bowl bid and poll position, that is what the Hokies are playing for every week this season.

This isn't only about Tech hoping to be this season what WVU was last year. One season doesn't a program make.

Tech began this season as a one-year wonder. Nationally, most wondered just what the Hokies had and who they were. Quarterback Maurice DeShazo was mentioned as a Heisman Trophy candidate, but you really didn't hear that beyond his backyard.

West Virginia lost too much from its perfect regular season and another bowl implosion, and anyone who knew football realized WVU didn't have as much talent as Tech. And that's where the comparisons stopped.

That's because the national media and television networks look differently at these Big East rivals, and it doesn't matter where they are in the conference standings.

Not long after its 1993 Independence Bowl triumph, Tech began lobbying hard for a spot in the Kickoff Classic. The season-opening game barely returned the phone calls, and West Virginia got a berth against Nebraska, although Tech was a better team.

It's about name recognition. Coach Don Nehlen's program commands an entire state's attention as the only Division I-A program in West Virginia, and that's something Tech can't have, particularly as long as Virginia is winning.

Accomplishing what West Virginia has is realistic for Tech. That's because UVa has produced similar results. George Welsh's program has played its way into television's perennial plans. The Cavaliers had two games scheduled for ABC telecasts before this season even began.

West Virginia has played in the national championship picture twice in the last six seasons. Nehlen has had only two losing seasons in 14 years. The Mountaineers have averaged a bowl appearance every other season over the last decade and they figure to figure among Big East contenders most years.

They have the largest on-campus stadium in the Big East. And behind one of the stadium's end zones, WVU has the league's best facilities in the Puskar Center that houses the football offices, an academic center and one of the nation's largest weight rooms.

The Hokies need a new and larger weight room, locker room, and accompanying facilities, and the more Beamer wins, the more realistic that possibility becomes. If Tech accomplishes what it should this season, then it shouldn't be long before the earth moves behind Lane's turkey-calling scoreboard.

West Virginia sells more than 30,000 season tickets. The Hokies fans gobbled up only 12,500. How can Tech sell itself to the TV networks when it can't sell itself to its own alumni and fans?

The game Thursday night was only Tech's third appearance on ESPN. West Virginia has made 16. WVU has made 19 network TV dates since the start of the 1988 season.

From last season's final AP Top 25, only two teams without NCAA sanctions failed to make a regular-season TV appearance - Kansas State and Virginia Tech. While WVU began this season with three locked-in CFA telecast games worth more than $1.3 million, Tech had only Thursday night's game as a certainty.

Tech was the highest-ranked team in the preseason poll without an assured or projected ABC national or regional game in the first six weeks of the season. Sure, WVU has a telecast advantage over Tech in that it has for years played teams from the TV-saturated Northeast, but the Hokies are playing in their league now, too.

That's why a victory last Saturday at Boston College was much prettier to the Hokies than it looked on the field. Tech won on the road, against a good opponent, as an underdog, on regional television, in a major media market.

When's the last time that happened? Probably never in 100-plus years. That's why West Virginia's visit on another CBS - Chris Berman's Station - was so big.

To be a West Virginia, it takes more than to beat a West Virginia.

The Hokies shouldn't need an aircraft to fly to Syracuse next weekend for their first over-the-air network game in 11 years. The site may be the Carrier Dome, but where the Hokies really are playing is in a land of opportunity.