Friday, August 31, 2007
Of headaches and Fat Tires
Picking Saturday’s winner a tough challenge.
Doug Doughty
Doug Doughty's UVa Insider is exclusive to roanoke.com and is posted by 5 p.m. Thursdays in season.
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Can’t say I wasn’t forewarned.
About a month ago, I ran into Carol Moon and complained to her that I had her ex-husband to blame for a cross-country trip to Wyoming in late August.
Lee Moon, originally from Roanoke, was the athletic director at Wyoming when a two-game home-and-home football series with Virginia was scheduled.
“Make sure you get out there early,” said Carol Moon, now back in Roanoke. “You’ll have a headache for two days.”
I didn’t have a headache before accepting the recommendation from the Comfort Inn desk crew to try dinner at Wingers, a restaurant up the street.
My fellow assistant sports editor, Steve Hemphill, told me that I needed to try Fat Tire, a beer brewed in Fort Collins, Colo, the home to Colorado State University, Hemphill’s alma mater.
Along the two-hour drive from Denver to Laramie, Wyo., somehow the conversation turned to beer and Richmond sportswriter Jeff White said that microbrews frequently give him a headache.
I don’t know whether Fat Tire qualifies as a microbrew. I’m not embarrassed to say that I had two of them, particularly since we weren’t driving, but here I sit Friday morning with a headache.
It must be the elevation.
It’s funny, but you make the drive from Denver to Laramie and you’d never guess you’re at 7,200 feet. About 10 miles up the road, before you drive into the valley where Laramie is located, the elevation is 8,640.
I’m still trying to figure how we got so high (pun intended). You fly through Kansas into the Denver airport and the only mountains you see are in the distance. You drive from Denver to Cheyenne, Wyo., and it’s mostly flat. There is a steady incline on the 40-mile drive from Cheyenne to Laramie, but you don’t climb any mountains, nothing even to rival the drive up Afton Mountain on the drive to Charlottesville.
There are some stunning rock formations on the way from Cheyenne to Laramie, but enough of the topography. For months, I’ve been saying that Virginia’s season-opener Saturday against the Cowboys -- or “Pokes,” as in Cowpokes -- was the biggest of the seven-year Al Groh coaching or tenure.
Now, I’m not so sure.
The implication is that a loss to 3 ½-point underdog Wyoming would put the Cavaliers in a hole from which they would not recover, or that a victory over the Pokes would put UVa on a path back to the eight- or nine-win level, but this probably won’t be the Cavs’ biggest game of the season.
The biggest game will be the season finale at home against Virginia Tech.
When pundits talk about Virginia Tech’s 2007 team and where the Hokies might finish, the general consensus is that Tech probably will lose in Week 2 at LSU and maybe one other time, perhaps at Clemson or Georgia Tech.
Nobody, especially my estimable colleague, Randy King, is giving the slightest consideration to a possible Tech loss at Virginia in the season’s final week. Never mind that the Cavaliers traditionally have played well at Scott Stadium, where they have beaten Florida State and Miami in back-to-back seasons.
If Virginia were to beat the Hokies, nothing that happens Saturday in Laramie is going to matter. If Virginia were to beat Wyoming and go into the season finale with a 7-4 record, for instance, a repeat of the 2005 Tech-UVa game would have Cavalier fans screaming for Groh’s head.
That was the year that Tech obliterated UVa 52-14 and, while it’s hard to imagine the Cavaliers’ defense ever giving up that points, special teams tend to skew the results when the Hokies are involved.
After saying all summer that Virginia would go 6-6, my prediction in The Roanoke Times’ preseason “tab” was for 7-5. And, that included losses in Week 1 to Wyoming and Week 3 at North Carolina.
It didn’t include a home victory over Virginia Tech, but I figured the Cavaliers to win at Middle Tennessee State and at N.C. State. If they don’t beat N.C. State, I think they’ll go at least 1-2 in ACC road games at Carolina, Maryland and State.
Virginia still has to prove it can win on the road, particularly on occasions like Saturday, when they are slight favorites. I am reminded of last year’s UVa trip to East Carolina, where the Cavaliers lost 31-21, but ECU actually was a 3 ½-point favorite in that game.
The last game I can remember when UVa went off as less than a touchdown favorite on the road – and then won – was at Georgia Tech in 2004. That was the game when Marcus Hamilton intercepted two passes in a 30-10 Cavaliers’ win.
Readers of the print edition of The Roanoke Times have seen that I’ve picked Wyoming to win Saturday, but I’ve been wrong before. As White is quick to remind me, I predicted UVa to lose at Western Michigan in 2003 in a game the Cavaliers’ won 59-16 and I had Duke last year when it lost 37-0 in Durham, N.C.
Maybe I should have asked Carol Moon for a winner Saturday
