Thursday, November 08, 2007
Ex-UVa coach raises eyebrows with WFU cap
Relationship with Grobe goes back 30 years
Doug Doughty
Doug Doughty's UVa Insider is exclusive to roanoke.com and is posted by 5 p.m. Thursdays in season.
See Doug and Randy talk sports every week with the Sports edition of the TimesCast
Recent columns
How many former Virginia football coaches and distinguished football alumni could have walked into Scott Stadium wearing a Wake Forest cap this past Saturday?
Not George Welsh, not Dick Bestwick, not Don Lawrence. Those are the three living former Virginia coaches, although none of them played at Virginia.
Only Sonny Randle would have dared to walk the Wake sideline in WFU attire.
“There ain’t too many people like Sonny Randle, I believe,” said Randle, who played at Virginia from 1956-58 and coached at UVa from 1974-75. “I don’t know whether that’s good or bad.”
It was during Randle’s term as Virginia head coach that he began a long association and friendship with Jim Grobe, an ex-Cavaliers’ linebacker who has served as Deacons’ coach since 2001.
Grobe, who also coached under Randle at Virginia and Marshall, didn’t give Randle the Wake Forest cap that he wore on the Deacons’ sideline Saturday. Randle brought the hat from his Shenandoah Valley home.
“It would frighten you if you saw all the Wake Forest stuff that I’ve got,” Randle said. “I’ve had that hat. That’s my favorite hat. Coach Grobe had the exact same [WFU] hat on.”
Randle, who does radio commentary for the ACC game of the week, asked for an off day Saturday so that he could go to the Virginia-Wake game.
“I saw [UVa athletic director] Craig Littlepage before the game,” Randle, 70, said. “He said, ‘Sonny, I’m telling you one thing: If we take a picture of that, you could be in big trouble around here.
“Then, he laughed. I think anybody who knows my relationship with coach Grobe, they understand what my deal was last week. I got some abuse but that’s all right. It was all in fun, so I don’t mind.
“If they gave me a Virginia hat, I’d wear it for any game other than Wake game. No question about that, but you know how close I am to Jim Grobe.”
On the ACC coaches’ teleconference Wednesday, Grobe chuckled at the nerve of Randle to go into Scott Stadium and stand on the opponents’ sideline with a Wake Forest cap.
“I think he stayed safe,” Grobe said. “He stayed on our side, where he was out of the line of fire. He was probably pretty smart along those lines.
“He loves the University of Virginia but he also supports me. I think he had mixed feelings at the game. It makes me feel good that he cares so much about me. I know he jokes all the time that I’ve gotten him fired a few times as a player and a coach.”
Randle was captured in his WFU hat by television cameras Saturday.
“As soon as I saw it, I thought, ‘Here we go,’" said John Shuman, the head coach at Fork Union Military Academy, another of Randle’s alma maters. “Sonny’s that way. Turmoil surrounded him wherever he went.”
Randle was fired at Virginia following a 1-10 season in 1975 and vowed never to return, although there has been an effort to welcome him back to the family in recent years. He said he was pulling for Wake Forest’s Sam Swank to convert a 47-yard field goal that went wide in a 17-16 Cavaliers’ victory “but it was a win-win situation for me,” he said.
The commentator in Randle has been surprised by the Cavaliers’ ability to put together an 8-2 season after going 5-7 in 2006.
“The key for them is [defensive end] Chris Long,” Randle said. “I think he’s kind of kept the troops together and kind of rallied them. He’s a helluva player, but he’s a hell of an everything.
“They could have lost a couple [or] three of them if it wasn’t for him. He does it all. He’s a great, great player and a super young man. It just seems like he’s the lightning rod.”
Randle was always a lightning rod, too.
“Yeah, well, I don’t think I was the right kind of lightning rod,” Randle said.
