Strangers in Miami

The Virginia Tech football team and coaches do not depend on the kindness of strangers.

In August, pollsters, analysts and prognosticators -- all strangers -- predicted that the Hokies wouldn’t do much this year. Because of recent late-season slides, the loss of key players, and off-season personnel problems, VT was supposed to take a knee in their first season in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

VT coaches and players spurned the strangers and turned for support to their football friends, the fans.

Said Bryan Randall, VT quarterback: We know the fans support us. It doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks. After a couple of close, early-season losses, wins began to pile up. Fans started to wonder: Was the announcement of this team’s death greatly exaggerated?

They seemed to think so as they filled the stadium at home. They went on the road with the team, too. When that road led to Miami to challenge longtime foe the Miami Hurricanes for an outright win of the ACC and the Bowl Championship Series berth, coach Frank Beamer took to the airwaves for the fans’ support. On Hokie Hotline he said, I know it will be rough in the stadium, but go anyway. His plea was plain: We need friends in the Orange Bowl.

Several thousand showed up.

It ended up being a lot rougher on the field than it was in the stadium. Hard hits and takedowns filled the trenches on the line of scrimmage. For more than three hours the battle went on. Fans didn’t have it as bad. Sure, they baked in the South Florida sun, and stressed out when the game was close. Miami can take over a game with a couple of quick touchdowns.

That didn’t happen on Saturday. Neither did the rough time in the stadium. Maybe it’s because Miami and VT football teams and fans aren’t strangers. Maybe it’s because the Miami fans didn’t think they lost to an inferior team. You played a good game. You were the best team, they said, gracious in defeat.

Miami’s players didn’t look different from VT’s, either. I remember a cold, sunny day in the early 1990s when the Hurricanes came to Lane Stadium for a Big East Conference game. Dressed in exotic orange and white uniforms, the players danced and hopped in the chilly sun to keep warm. The receivers had pencil-thin calves; their bodies were lean and long; they were built for speed. Watching them warm up, I realized that Miami had better players than VT did.

At the end of the game this Saturday afternoon, the Hokies won their own championship on this storied team’s historic field. A photo of that win was picked up by the wire services and printed in newspapers around the country. It showed No. 2, Jimmy Williams, a defensive back, carrying a jubilant Frank Beamer in his arms like a trophy. This time you couldn’t tell Williams from Miami’s defensive backs, except for his maroon and white uniform.

The celebration went on for several minutes after the game ended. Then with the field and stadium almost empty except for VT fans who wanted to savor the moment longer, two VT players carried a couple of flags to the center of the Orange Bowl and planted them -- briefly. It was a subdued version of tearing down the goalposts, an act that symbolizes great wins for a school’s program. The players didn’t claim the field as their own, only the final score. Picking the flags up and carrying them off showed the respect the players had for the Miami Hurricanes, a program whose teams have gone to a BCS game every year since 1999, have won five national championships, and have had Heisman Trophy winners on their roster. Their success clamors to be emulated.

Today the two teams are more alike than they were 10 years ago. They recruit the same type of athletes; they play the game much alike. However, on Saturday, the Hurricanes gambled more, blitzing their players numerous times, a strategy a team uses to cover weaknesses. That showed respect for VT. For the first time, Orange Bowl fans showed the same respect to VT fans.

Even those who live in the stucco houses adjacent to the Orange Bowl seemed nicer. These entrepreneurial, blue-collar workers for years have supplemented their income by turning their postage-size yards into parking spaces for those attending Orange Bowl events.

As we were pulling into one yard within sight of the famous stadium, a Hispanic couple came to the car saying, “Don’t park here. They are charging too much! Fifty dollars!”

A couple streets back, a small woman motioned us into her concrete driveway. “We won’t block you in,” she said as her son motioned us to a spot in front of their verandah.

For $25 we parked in her yard, with no cars blocking us, her son watching over the makeshift parking lot dotted with orange trees and surrounded by an iron fence. When we returned to claim the car, the son, a Miami fan, gave us directions to Coconut Grove. “I will check with my mother to make sure the directions are right,” he said.

They were. We only made one wrong turn, evidently a bad one. At a stoplight, a man wearing a Miami Hurricane shirt, jumped from his car and came to my window. Looking at the VT flags attached to the back windows, he said. “You are in the wrong part of town. Be careful. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Where is Coconut Grove? I asked.

“Turn left here and go one block,” he said. “Great game,” he called out as he went back to his car before the light turned green.

Don’t misunderstand me. Miami fans hate to lose; they believe that all big games belong to them. On their post-game show, many called for their coach’s head on a platter. At the same time, they agreed that the game was hard fought between respected opponents.

There’s one more game: the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. To get to the Superdome where the game will be played, you take the street named Desire to River Walk and Canal Street that leads to the football venue where the Hokies have played twice before.

Desire can lead the Hokies to success on Jan. 3.

It won’t matter what strangers say -- the Hokies have plenty of friends.