Won, and Lost
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
(Mark 8:36, KJV)
JACKSONVILLE — I’m tired of this. I’m tired of walking out of a stadium, or turning off the television, and trying to figure out how to defend the indefensible rather than celebrating a hard-won team victory. I’m tired of the adulation, the array of jerseys in Dick’s, and the kid gloves from the coaching staff. Most of all, I’m tired of being embarrassed by someone wearing our colors and our logo.
We should be talking about yesterday’s Virginia Tech win over a tough Louisville team. We should be praising Cedric Humes’s 113 yards and a touchdown and the Hokie offense’s zero-turnover performance. We should be congratulating junior offensive lineman Brandon Frye, who replaced injured senior Jimmy Martin and stood his ground against Louisville’s national defensive player of the year Elvis Dumervil, and freshman corner Brandon Flowers, who stood in for Jimmy Williams after a completely meritless ejection and made it seamless for the Hokie defense. They earned the ink.
Instead, we’re talking about Marcus again. In the second quarter, he got up from a Dumervil tackle after a nine-yard gain, took a quick look around to see if any officials were watching, then stomped on the back of Dumervil’s leg. It was a completely classless act, easily akin to UVa’s Brad Butler’s October cheap shot on BC’s Matthias Kiwanuka. Vick compounded his error postgame by lying that it was accidental and about apologizing to Dumervil: Frank Beamer sent him over to the Louisville locker room to do so; Vick then told reporters Dumervil “definitely” accepted his apology, but Dumervil and Louisville coach Bobby Petrino both said they never saw him.
Two Virginia-based writers, the (Newport News) Daily Press’s David Teel and the Roanoke Times’s Aaron McFarling, had good columns out early ripping Vick and pretty much everyone on the coaching staff but Vick’s position coach Kevin Rogers, who had the guts to call the play what it was:
“There’s no place for it in the game. It hurts him. It hurts our program, and it’s frankly just embarrassing.”
The likely reason Rogers felt able to speak out is that he’s not one of Frank Beamer’s boys, like the rest of the staff: Rogers was offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Syracuse and Notre Dame before coming to Blacksburg. Rogers has said he enjoys VT and his job here and isn’t looking to change jobs, and with his pedigree, odds are he’s gotten feelers. That further validates Rogers and his opinion in my book; he’s shown loyalty to Tech where it was neither owed by him to us nor personally beneficial to him. Would that Frank Beamer had backed Rogers’s comments up.
And that’s the bigger problem, one demonstrated clearly in 2003, suppressed in 2004 under Bryan Randall’s leadership, but back now: we’ve sold out. We have become that which we once hated: a win-at-all-costs program. I commented at Eric’s place yesterday that Beamer’s act now sounds a lot like Bobby Bowden’s 1999 defense of Peter Warrick’s shoplifting spree: “It’s not like he shot the President.” Now the same fans that took Dillard’s bags to the 2000 Sugar Bowl are wearing #5 jerseys and making excuses. It wasn’t acceptable then, and it isn’t acceptable now.
Most of all, I’d just like to be proud again. Walking out of the Orange Bowl Stadium in December 2004, I was proud to wear maroon and orange — and even after that Sugar Bowl, despite the loss. I wish I could have felt the same yesterday.
3 January 2006 / 14 Comments / Tags: football