Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 3, 1995 TAG: 9501030013
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A reporter can't predict what will happen between the time he writes the story and the time you read it.
Yet, the deal must be done from time to time. Times like today.
It's Wednesday, Dec. 28, and I'm sitting in front of the computer, my deadline pushed up a day because I'm heading out on a tough assignment. Frazzled nerves, cluttered desk, scratching my noggin: that's the picture.
I thought about writing a quaint, sentimental tribute to another Christmas past. But by the time you read this, methinks the day will have passed too much.
So my only other option is to go the other way - and gamble.
You see, my deadline's been pushed up a day because tomorrow - Thursday - I'm to arrive in Jacksonville, Fla. The Gator Bowl - Virginia Tech vs. Tennessee - beckons. My job: to write about the fun and craziness Hokie fans engage in.
Someone's got to do it.
Of course, there is a degree of risk. A Tech grad myself, I'm looking for the big victory, dreading the possibility of loss. Emotion out there on a limb, ready to fly - or be chopped off.
As you read this, you already know what happened in the game. I don't. Not now, not on Wednesday.
I've trod this path before. I apologized once in this column space for my overconfidence - and words spoken about Tech's chances vs. Miami if they beat Syracuse. I know, I know.
Some might remember my ill-fated attempt at printed bluster on behalf of the Hokies, the day before they got squashed by the school up the way in Charlottesville.
Ah, but those were other days. Now Tech - and I, heh heh - are heading to the sunny climes of Florida with 20,000 fans in tow while the University of Virginia and its scanty crowd of backers gets to go to Shreveport.
Sorry, guys, I was there last year. Hope the city finished the construction downtown and got some more lighting.
But, I digress. The issue at hand is not what befalls our unfortunate fans to the east, but what will happen to the team from our school here at home. What has happened, as you already know.
Do you believe in jinxes?
I do.
And more importantly, I believe in the ire of the public, and respectfully, Tech fans' propensity for releasing their frustrations at the L-word ("loss") via streams of spoken and written admonitions.
So, in the interests of appeasing the gods of football; sidestepping the possibility, however slight, of inviting wrath upon myself from superstitious Hokies; and circumventing the hazards of predictive reporting, I write from the perspective of today, Tuesday:
Whadda team.
If you weren't there to see it in person, you must've seen it on television, right?
The score - Virginia Tech ( ) , Tennessee ( ) - could've been worse, but then again, you never know if the ball had bounced another way at an opportune time if it would've been closer.
Ah, to play it again one more time. ... Next year, maybe.
Does that tell the story, or what?
Stephen Foster covers Blacksburg and business for the newspaper's New River Valley Bureau. He doesn't argue when the newspaper tells him to travel south, expenses paid, with the daunting task of covering a party, and he invites all to fill in the blanks above.
by CNB