ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, January 1, 1996 TAG: 9601020115
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: HOLIDAY
COLUMN: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: NEW ORLEANS
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
There's no counting the number of Hokie hangovers this morning.
Let's just say they're of Texas-sized proportions.
In an upscale neighborhood where Virginia Tech football supposedly didn't belong, the Hokies ripped up the rug, tore into tradition, bounced off the walls and still managed to leave a very good impression.
The Hokies bowled over more than a rich alliance as Big East champions. In the 62nd Sugar Bowl, Tech won more than its 10th game of a season on the field for the first time in a century plus of history.
It won respect.
This wasn't some game with a garden tool as its sponsor. If the Sugar Bowl isn't the granddaddy of them all, it's at least a great uncle.
In their first trip to one of the traditional New Year's bowls, the Hokies first had to tackle their own anxieties. Then, in one of those games in which college football's bluebloods usually play, Tech produced a typically blue-collar 28-10 crunching of ninth-ranked Texas.
And even Hokies coach Frank Beamer admitted it wasn't one of his team's best games, even though it was the program's finest hour.
The Hokies' defense kept Beamer's team from self-destructing in the first half. And many more Hokies than Bryan Still will long remember his last game.
Still won the Miller-Digby Award as the game's outstanding player. He became the first receiver to win the honor since Oklahoma's Tinker Owens grabbed it 23 years earlier.
His 60-yard punt return for a touchdown for Tech's only first-half score was apropos on a team on which special-teams play has been, indeed, special.
Besides that play, however, the Hokies struggled until they finally managed to stretch the Longhorns' defense.
A low-scoring game often becomes one of field position, and the Hokies just didn't have any in the first 40 minutes.
Texas was giving up plenty of real estate, but it was all at Tech's end of the dome's Mardi Grass. In the first half, the Hokies didn't go deeper than the Longhorns' 45 except on Still's punt return. You'd have thought Tech was trying to get past massive Texas mascot Bevo, standing in one corner of the arena.
Tech had only nine plays on the Texas half of the field in the first 30 minutes - for minus-1 yard. There were five incompletions, a Longhorns interception, a Texas sack and two punts.
And when you're playing a Top 10-ranked team, you can't keep fumbling opportunities. Tech bobbled a kickoff, dropped several passes and lost a fumble in the first half alone, not to mention six penalties.
Still - in more ways than one - it was close.
Maybe the Longhorns didn't realize it at the time, but when backup running back Marcus Parker knifed across the goal line for Tech's first offensive TD, the last chapter of this pulsating piece of Hokie history had been written.
Tech owned the fourth quarter all season. In 12 games, the Hokies allowed only three fourth-quarter touchdowns, all when they had leads of at least three touchdowns.
By then, Tech's defense was trying to figure out how to wedge that banged-up lunch pail signifying the unit's work ethic into the silvery Sugar Bowl trophy.
Bevo had exited the building, and many other Longhorns had, too. The twentysomething-thousand Hokie fans in the dome were rolling in the aisles - and they hadn't yet been to Bourbon Street for New Year's Eve.
Texas' ``BMW offense'' got a flat. The Longhorns managed only 226 yards, 59 below the Hokies' defensive average for the season.
One of the reasons these Hokies' victories weren't always pretty is that's how they win. Resiliency and toughness don't always make for a pretty picture. And great teams find ways to win even on not-so-great days.
It was a huge night for the Big East in the Big Easy. And for those Hokies who managed to get to sleep Sunday night, it must have been with Sugar plums dancing in their heads.
Tech will finish the season as the highest-ranked team in school history. When the bowls are through, only the Nebraska-Florida winner in the Fiesta Bowl will have a longer winning streak than the Hokies' 10.
The Hokies will recall a sweet season and sweeter night in many ways for many years.
Just a Still photograph wouldn't do it justice.
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: DON PETERSEN/Staff Dwayne Thomas picks up first-halfby CNByardage against Texas during Sunday's Sugar Bowl in New Orleans.