Finally over Bill Brill

Doug Doughty knows how to put a burr under a Virginia Tech Hokie fan’s saddle. He can do it with two words: Bill Brill. Doughty used that unspeakable name seven times in his “Virginia Tech, Welcome to the Atlantic Coast Conference” column in last Thursday’s Roanoke Times.

Doughty also included Brill’s “Welcome to the ACC” message. As usual, there wasn’t much welcome in it. Said Brill: Tech will not win an ACC championship in my lifetime. I imagine that a lot of Hokies reacted the way they did the 30 years that he was sports editor of The Roanoke Times. They squinted their eyes, tightened their lips, clinched their fists, and muttered under their breaths.

That’s the Hokies’ default reaction when they hear Brill’s name, because he never has had anything good to say about Virginia Tech athletics. His vitriol was unexplainable, going far beyond some people’s explanation that he was an ACC fanatic. It would have been better if he had ignored the VT athletic program all together, for his stained view of anything related to it did not bode well for the athletic teams getting noticed outside the area. Reading his stuff over the years, you would think that VT had done something personal to him, like burning down his ancestral home and pillaging his fortune.

His latest criticism says the vendetta still thrives. Instead of saying that the ACC would be a challenge to Tech athletic teams, that it might be a long time before any conference trophies would find their way to a Jamerson Center showcase, Brill made it personal -- it won’t happen in my lifetime, he said.

Doughty gave the Hokies two options: get angry or get even.

I remember the first time I got angry. It was my first year out of college, when I became a Hokie fan because I married one. We even subscribed to The Roanoke Times (even though we didn’t live in the area), just to read about the football and basketball teams.

One Sunday morning, after a quality VT football victory, I turned to the sports page knowing Brill had to find something good to say this time, even if it was only how well a certain player performed, how large the crowd was, or how pretty the cheerleaders were. I found the same-old, same-old: a few negative words smothered by column after column of spin about a losing ACC team. That’s when I did something for the first time and the last time: I wrote to a reporter, telling him how strongly I disagreed with his viewpoint.

Writing was more difficult then than it is today. In a time before personal computers and e-mail, I had to write longhand on lined notebook paper. It was a two-page, single-spaced epistle, which rhymes with missile, which exactly mirrored my bellicose mood. I told Brill about the good things happening at Tech that he was overlooking, like improved facilities with Lane Stadium as an example; a growing fan base; a competitive football team that was going to bowl games under Coach Jerry Claiborne; and an exciting basketball team that filled Cassell Coliseum and went to an NCAA tournament. Then I canceled my newspaper subscription.

After that, I rarely read Brill’s column. Sometimes when someone would repeat what he had written, the bristly feeling would rise again. That feeling was replaced with glee when he retired and moved to North Carolina to be in the heart of ACC country and with the Duke Blue Devils basketball program, in particular. Brill wrote at least two books about the team, and he also writes columns for the Official ACC Web site.

When I read Doughty’s column on Thursday, I looked for the old bristly feeling to rise at Brill’s new barb. Nothing happened. This Hokie fan had gotten over it. He hadn’t.