Friday, September 05, 2008
When did orange become so powerful?
Beamer faced midnight challenge
Doug Doughty
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In conjunction with the ceremony at which his University of Virginia jersey was retired last Saturday, Ronde Barber joined his twin brother, Tiki, in raising a “Power of Orange” flag for the first time.
The flagpole is located between the Scott Stadium and the United States flagpole and UVa would like to turn the flag-raising process into a tradition involving former UVa players or celebrities.
That raises a question that has crossed my mind several times over the years:
What, exactly, is the attraction to the color orange and who would consider it powerful?
As a poster on one of the UVa fan sites wanted to know, if orange is so powerful, why does Virginia usually wear blue?
Virginia Tech fans can also participate in this discussion because, at one time, orange was the Hokies’ principal color.
My impression is that Virginia Tech’s rise toward the upper reaches of college football coincided with the gradual disappearance of orange in favor of maroon. When that matter was posed at the SEC Roundtable today, the four Hokies in attendance said the transition had occurred around 1993.
I think it’s safe to say that 1993 was a watershed year for the Hokie program, which had gone 2-8-1 in 1992.
I remember sitting around a late-night gathering in the tower of the Homestead, where reporters had met for an annual golf tournament and were joined on that occasion by five-year Tech head football coach Frank Beamer.
“Win two games again next year and you’ll be able to play golf all you want,” a saucy Randy King, then The Roanoke Times’ NASCAR reporter, told Beamer.
Two years later, Beamer was going to the Gator Bowl and King was there to cover him.
Most historians have traced the Tech turnaround to changes that Beamer made to his staff, not without some prompting from then-athletic director Dave Braine. Also, the Hokies started recruiting better, eventually getting a larger share of the state’s top prospects than once-dominant UVa.
The move to Maroon wasn’t responsible for that, but coaches are superstitious by nature. Beamer wasn’t about to go back to the orange.
The guys at the roundtable today pointed out that other schools have been successful with orange as their color. Many people would place Tennessee among the top 10 football programs in the country and the Volunteers wear orange.
Texas’ color “burnt” orange, but I don’t know if that counts. Clemson wears orange, but maybe that’s one of the Tigers’ problems. Aside from the national title that Danny Ford won during the early 1980s, the Tigers underachieve more often than not.
I was reading through some posts on the Denver Broncos’ board and came up with the following: “I think the Orange looks awesome but you can’t deny it’s bad luck.”
When Virginia breaks out the orange jerseys, it’s mostly for basketball. It’s not a matter of whether the color looks good or not, but it just strikes me as soft, squishy like the fruit.
I can’t say I was paying attention March 26, when the Virginia athletic department introduced the “Power of Orange” T-shirt as the official 2008 football team T-shirt. All-American Chris Long was pictured in the advertisement with the following quote:
“The ‘Power of Orange’ is when the opponent at Scott Stadium feels like they can’t breathe because there’s so much pressure, so much atmosphere, noise and energy,” Long said. “It’s late in the game against Florida State two years ago. It’s anytime you can remember when you can’t hear yourself think. To me, that’s the ‘Power of Orange.’ “
I’m not about to minimize the contributions of Virginia’s crowd in some of the Cavaliers’ biggest wins. No ACC team had more home victories from 2001-2007 than the Cavaliers, not counting victories that Virginia Tech and Miami claimed before expansion, but I don’t think it had anything to do with what the fans were wearing.
The official T-shirt was one thing. Other schools do that. Virginia Tech has Orange-Effect and Maroon-Effect T-shirts. This week, VT fans are being asked to wear white. But, the “Power of Orange” flag and flagpole? That was a little much.
See if Virginia beats Southern California first, and then decide whether or not you’ve started a tradition.
Last week’s results: Of the 488 Notebook Plus readers who responded, 309 or 63.3 percent said they preferred Republican candidate John McCain to the Democrat, Barack Obama, for President.
