His son Travis was a first year defensive end for the Wahoos. My greatest memory though of the event was running into Christiansburg High and Emory & Henry all-time great Mike Griffith at the UVA party. This was the UVA team that handed Florida State its first ever ACC loss. I was in attendance and the Hoos beat Georgia 34-27 on a last minute kickoff return for a TD by 150 pound Petey Allen. Thankfully, the Father realized the significance of the moment and seemed not to mind being ignored. We were a good 6 beers in during the early part of the third quarter when my friend’s priest stopped by for a visit. I remember watching the game in West Virginia with one of my law firm colleagues, a fellow Hoo. One of the early highlights of George Welsh’s remarkable coaching career at Virginia. The Hoos dominated Purdue with 3 tremendous running backs – Howard Petty, Barry Word and Antonio Rice – and the “Magic Man”, Don Majkowski, at quarterback. In fact, it came 15 years after Neil Armstrong’s walk. My Wahoos’ first ever bowl game, an event that most thought 10 years earlier was less likely to occur than man walking on the moon. This loss almost ruined my Christmas season, particularly since my Cousin Bobby was at Ole Miss and did not share my love for the Gobblers). It apparently perturbed the Rebels mightily, as the game went downhill from there, although the Hokies had a 17-0 lead until an ill-fated onside kick failed. This was perhaps the only completion of Kincaid’s career ! This piece of trickery was referred to as the “swinging gate” in those days. So, Tech lost the 1966 Liberty Bowl to Miami 14-7 (the first Hokie game ever televised I believe – I remember watching from my parents’ den) and the 1968 game 34-17 to Ole Miss (I vividly remember Tech running a trick play on the second play of the game, with quarterback Al Kincaid acting like he was tying his shoe and snapping the ball to Radford High’s own Kenny Edwards, who went about 60 yards for a touchdown. Unfortunately, the Hokies’ offense during this period was as uninspiring against quality teams as the defense was noteworthy for its fanatical effort. I was a junior high age football player during this time and tried to model myself after these stalwarts. Jerry’s teams were packed with over-achieving, reckless defenders like Frankie Loria (a Clarksburg kid, 2 time All-American, and the subject of a prior column), Frank “his own self” Beamer, George Foussekis, Clarence Culpepper, Dan Thacker, and Mike Widger. These bowls have to be considered together, as they represent the high water marks of Jerry Claiborne’s very successful career at Virginia Tech. People in our area talked about the “time Tech went to the Sun Bowl” much as the Spaniards must have talked about “the time Columbus discovered America”. This first ever “bowl appearance” for VPI became mythical, since the Hokies did not get another bowl bid for 20 years. The fact that VPI lost 18-6 is totally irrelevant. Each team received the whopping sum of $9,438 per Wikipedia, and the game was played on a frozen turf with 3 inches of snow on top. Legend has it that one of the Sun Bowl Committee members was a Tech alum and got the Hokies the bid after the prior rejections. The Blacksburg boys were third pick to oppose an 8-2 Cincinnati Bearcat team, the first two, Hardin-Simmons and Texas Tech, turning down the chance to spend New Year’s 1947 in freezing, blustery El Paso. Amazing for its symmetry, not it’s excellence. The Gobblers, as they were then known, were coming off an amazing regular season with a record of 3-3-3. Historic because it was Virginia Tech’s first ever bowl. So I am going to do a list of the most memorable (to me) bowl games of my lifetime (or before). Given the time of the year, this is my “bowl game column”. So every now and then I like to do a sports piece in his honor. Dan died a couple of years ago, but his legacy lives on through his daughter Sally Jenkins, an accomplished sportswriter in her own right for the Washington Post.ĭan lived the life I would have liked to have had, covering America’s great sporting events with humor and passion and enjoying life to the fullest while laughing at it. His books are must reading for sports fans of my generation. Most recently he wrote his autobiography, Life its Ownself. Dan also wrote about a dozen raunchy and irreverent sports novels, the best known of which is Semi-Tough, published while I was in college. My first ambition was to become the next Dan Jenkins, an iconic Sports Illustrated writer who covered college football and professional golf for SI for a quarter century.
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