Season Tickets are Here!

I got my season tickets in the mail the other day. Geez, the waiting's getting hard now! The tickets have photos on them, like they did last year. Included in the packet was a wallet-sized schedule featuring Brian Edmonds' shovel-pass touchdown against Syracuse in Lane Stadium last year. Oddly enough, that's different from my other wallet-sized schedule that I picked up in the Tech Bookstore, which shows Cornell Brown rushing the QB (taken during the WVU game last year).

Anyway, here are descriptions of the pictures on the tickets, for those of you that don't get season tickets:

1. Tech vs. Rutgers: Ken Oxendine bursts through the line against the Scarlet Knights.
2. Tech vs. Temple: Myron Newsome, Brandon Semones, and an unidentified Tech player bury Owl QB Heny Burris.
3. Tech vs. Pitt: Danny Wheel (it's #90, which I believe is Wheel's number) takes down a Pitt returner on a special teams play. I know it's a special teams picture because I can see Tim Wade, the long snapper, in the background, and #90 is making the tackle in the foreground.
4. Tech vs. SW Louisiana: Druck fires a pass from the pocket. No other players are in the picture.
5. Tech vs. ECU: Cornell Brown has just arrived at ECU QB Marcus Crandell, apparently a little too late. Cornell has his mitts around Crandell, but Crandell has just released the ball, and both players are looking down field
6. Tech vs. WVU: Brian Edmonds breaks into the open field against WVU.
7. Tech vs. UVa (ugh): Cornell Brown wrestles Mike Groh of UVa (ugh) to the ground, proving once again that being a Wahoo is a waste of time and a losing proposition.

Are you ready for some football?

Hokies in Strange Places

Here's a couple of unexpected Hokie sightings that I've experienced in the last few months, both of them because I'm a Primestar satellite TV subscriber. Primestar features about 15 amateur sports channels from around the country, which means I get to see a lot of Home Team Sports - like channels.

The first sighting happened last year in late January/early February. I happened upon a University of Texas sports show, a glossy, MTV-like production that covered UT sports. I hung around, waiting to catch their spin on the Sugar Bowl, and naturally, they skimmed over it, preferring instead to show the "good time the team had on the streets of New Orleans" (hmph. Must have been before the game).

Anyway, they showed some people throwing a string of beads from a balcony on Bourbon Street, down into a crowd, where a tall young black man caught them easily (the shrimps around him never had a chance) and put them around his neck. I took one look at the guy and just about fell out of my chair. It was Ace Custis! On a University of Texas sports show!!

The other sighting occurred a few days ago. I was thumbing through my Primestar programming guide for August 1996, and I happened to skim the table of contents, which I never do. They had a little block in their table of contents, saying something about "College football season kicks off this month!" The block included a photo of a football player in action.

Again, I just about fell out of my chair. The player was Maurice DeShazo! Nearly two years after completing his career, he's pictured in the Primestar guide! Go figure. There was no caption on the picture, and they had nothing to say about Tech or anything like that. They just needed a picture, and they dragged one of Maurice out of mothballs somewhere. Weird.

In Case You Missed It

Here's a few things that you could have seen elsewhere but might have missed:

• One of the questions I've gotten here at Hokie Central is "Why can't the Hokies recruit a big man for basketball?" where you define big man as 6-10+. Well, The Roanoke Times reported something the other day that will make every Hokie who has ever asked that question excited. I quote Doug Doughty: "Tech insiders say coach Bill Foster is close to a commitment from a 6-11 European who would be willing to come (to Tech) this fall, but the certification process can be so complicated for foreigners that Tech won't push to have him declared eligible before the 1997-1998 season." Let's hope it develops, folks. Europeans are always skilled passers and ball-handlers, but whether or not this mythical man would be enough of a bruiser to compete in the rough-and-tumble A-10 remains to be seen. Still, I'm willing to take that chance, aren't you? Too bad he'll probably never get to play with Ace Custis.
• Remember the touchdown I told you Bryan Still had about a week ago? Turns out he doesn't remember it. He got clobbered on the play, got a concussion, and can't recall theTD. Now that's a heck of a catch! And I had the gall to say he had questionable hands....
• The preseason polls are out. The AP poll has Tech at 16th, and the CNN/USA Today poll has the Hokies 15th, with the following comments: "DE Cornell Brown is a force. Underrated QB Jim Druckenmiller has smarts, savvy, and a linebacker's build." For the complete polls, go to my links page, visit the USA Today, and poke around until you find the polls. By the way, the AP ranking is Tech's highest preseason AP ranking ever. That's nice, but I heard a quote the other day that you might want to keep in mind: "Pre-season polls are like perfume. They smell good, but you don't want to swallow them." And Beamer actually said, "It's not where you start the season, but where you finish it." That's our lovable coach Beamer. Cliches are cliches because they're true, I guess.
• I just saw Green Bay Packer and former Hokie receiver Antonio Freeman catch a 64-yard bomb for a TD against the Steelers with about a minute to go in the first half of their Sunday night preseason game. Freeman was wide open behind the D and hauled the pass in easily. This followed a play in which Freeman had dropped a 15-yard pass that hit him in the gut. I guess Antonio figured 15 yards wasn't worth it, and he wanted the whole thing.

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