It's a game mostly forgotten in Hokie football history. No Virginia Tech fan ever reminisces fondly of the 45-23 whipping the Hokies received at the hands of a Tennessee team led by a quarterback named Peyton Manning, in the creeping fog at the 1994 Gator Bowl. It was the biggest stage the Hokies had played on at that point in their history, and they flopped miserably. This game was a miserable experience all the way around, so, hey ... what say we relive it?

The Hokies finished the 1994 regular season 8-3, but it was very different from the 8-3 record they had posted just a year earlier. Tech was ranked 15th in the nation in the coaches' poll and 17th in the AP poll, but the truth is, they were fading fast.

Tech had started ranked 21st in the country, based on a 9-3 record in 1993, an Independence Bowl title, and 14 returning starters, including senior quarterback Maurice DeShazo. DeShazo had directed a high-powered offense in 1993 and had thrown 22 touchdowns against just 7 interceptions. DeShazo's 22 TD passes still stand as a Virginia Tech single-season record, despite the advent of 12-game seasons and conference championship games that have seen the Hokies play as many as 14 games in one season.

But 1994 was a different story. At the end of 1993, Tech offensive coordinator Rickey Bustle had left the Hokies for the same position at South Carolina, and the Hokies hired well-traveled and well-respected Gary Tranquil to replace Bustle.

The Tranquil experiment went poorly, to say the least. Under Tranquil's system, DeShazo took a huge step backwards, throwing just 13 touchdowns against 13 interceptions in 1994. DeShazo hit rock bottom in the last game of the 1994 season, against Virginia in Blacksburg, when he threw five interceptions and directed a Tech offense that turned the ball over an incredible eight times in a 42-23 humiliation.

As soon as the final whistle blew on the 1994 regular season, Tranquil departed Virginia Tech to join his "old pal" Nick Saban at Michigan State. Saban had taken over the reigns of the Spartans, and one of his first moves was to offer Tranquil $115,000 a year to be his offensive coordinator, well over the $68,000 a year Tranquil was making at Tech.

Tranquil offered to stay through the bowl game, but Frank Beamer told him "thanks, but no thanks." Beamer spoke highly of Tranquil as Tranquil exited the program, but the truth is that Tranquil was not going to be missed, then, now, or ever. Billy Hite took over the OC duties after Tranquil left, and Beamer took over playcalling responsibilities for the bowl.

Beamer said the plan was to simplify the offense, put in more option -- which DeShazo excelled at -- and give DeShazo more freedom to ad-lib when the play broke down. (See, Stinespring critics: the strategy of ad-libbing after the play breaks down comes directly from the head man and harkens all the way back to 1993 and 1994, when he fell in love with DeShazo's scrambling ability.)

But the offense wasn't the only Tech unit that was struggling. The defense, in its second season of leadership under high-octane defensive coordinator Phil Elmassian, was starting to wear down. Star linebacker Ken Brown was suffering from a bad hamstring, and the rest of the defense was simply suffering from fatigue and a lack of experience.

The building blocks of what would be a stellar defense in 1995 and 1996 were in place, led by stud defensive end Cornell Brown, but they were still young, consisting mostly of sophomores and juniors. Ken Brown was the only senior.

Life under "Elmo" was intense, though, and the defense was on its last legs. In the last three regular season games, the Hokies gave up 100 points and 1,232 yards, as Tech lost two of their last three games.

Despite all this, the Hokies finished second in the Big East at 5-2 and earned their first-ever Gator Bowl bid, their most prestigious bowl bid to date. It was Virginia Tech's second bowl bid in a row, the first time in program history Tech had gone to a bowl in consecutive seasons.

Hokie fans brushed off the late season fade and snapped up bowl tickets, burning quickly through their original allotment of 8,000 tickets, requesting 6,000 more, and snapping them up, too. Eventually, the Hokies sold 18,010 tickets to the game (per the January 6, 1995 edition of The Hokie Huddler.)

This was an impressive accomplishment, given that Virginia Tech sold just 12,280 season tickets in 1994 and averaged just 46,383 in attendance at six home games, which included just one sellout (Virginia: 53,157, including temporary bleachers) but no other capacity crowds.

On the heels of 7,000 tickets sold to the 1993 Independence Bowl, the 1994 Gator Bowl helped establish Virginia Tech's reputation as a great traveling fan base.

All this was going on at the same time that hated rival Virginia was struggling to sell tickets to their Independence Bowl matchup with TCU. At one point, the Hokies had sold over 15,000 Gator Bowl tickets, and Virginia had sold just 200 Indy Bowl tickets. And no, that's not typo. The Hoos were superior on the field that year, but they were getting soundly trounced at the ticket office.

At the close of the 1994 season, the Tennessee Volunteers, Tech's opponent in the Gator Bowl, were going on the opposite direction as the Hokies, and fast.

Tennessee started the season 1-3 under Phil Fulmer, in his third year as head coach. Their top two quarterbacks suffered early season injuries, and with seven games left in the season, the Vols turned to a freshman named Peyton Manning to be their starter.

Time has demonstrated what a great quarterback Peyton Manning is. In 1994, he led a resurgence in Tennessee's season, guiding the Vols to a 6-1 finish, making them 7-4 for the season. In their last two regular season games, Tennessee destroyed Vanderbilt and Kentucky by a combined score of 117-0.

Playing behind an offensive line billed as the best in the country, Manning closed the season with a flourish, completing 43 of 66 passes (65.2%) for 484 yards and 7 touchdowns in UT's last four games. Tennessee also featured running back James "Little Man" Stewart, who became Tennessee's all-time leading rusher that season with a career total of 2,890 yards.

The Volunteers were unranked, but they were one of the hottest teams in the country, and oddsmakers installed them as a 7-point favorite over the floundering Hokies. It turns out that was a little conservative.

In 1994, the city of Jacksonville was building a football stadium for their new NFL franchise, the Jacksonville Jaguars, scheduled to start play in 1995. The city tore down most of the old Gator Bowl stadium following the 1993 Gator Bowl game and built a new structure on top of remnants of the old one. The project took over a year, of course, so the 1994 Gator Bowl had to be moved to another venue.

The Gator Bowl festivities were still hosted in Jacksonville, but the 1994 game was played at the University of Florida's Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, "The Swamp," in Gainesville, 70 miles away. The problem is that 40 of those miles had to be traveled on Highway 301 in Florida, which was under construction that caused delays.

I remember sitting on a bus ... in traffic ... and taking forever to get to Gainesville. I remember arriving at the stadium late, grabbing some free food from a booth run by Outback Steakhouse (who sponsored the Gator Bowl back then), and scrambling to my seat, just in time.

Then I remember getting pummeled by the Vols. This game was never in doubt.

Last night, I pulled out my copy of the 1994 Gator Bowl and watched it. The screen I watched the game on last night was a pipe dream back in 1994, existing mostly in the minds of engineers: a 42-inch high definition LCD flat screen, manufactured by LG, a company that didn't even exist in 1994. (LG was called GoldStar until 1995.)

Everything else about my game watching experience was strictly old school.

The game was recorded on a VHS tape, and I plugged it into Panasonic VCR that I have connected to my LG. Every fast forward and rewind operation was accompanied by clunking and whirring the likes of which you don't hear from DVD players and DVRs.

The game was broadcast on TBS on December 30, 1994 -- my 30th birthday -- and the production quality was, to put it mildly, sub-standard compared to today's broadcasts. With Australian-themed Outback Steakhouse as the sponsor, the bowl broadcast started with an opening in which supermodel Rachel Hunter (a New Zealand native, so she's got the accent) glared into the screen and growled ... something, I don't remember what. It was so cheesy and embarrassing that I immediately blotted the details from my memory as soon as it was over. I remember what she looked like, of course; I just don't remember what she said.

Frank Beamer was only 48 years old in 1994, and folks, he looked a lot younger. Building a program like the one Frank has built at VT takes a lot out of a man, mostly just years from his life. Frank was thinner with much darker hair back then, and his only nod to his age in this game was a comically large pair of glasses he wore to aid reading a play chart. Bud Foster, who was just the inside linebackers coach back then, was sporting some pretty big goggles himself.

The Hokies wore all-white uniforms, with their classic maroon helmets with orange and white striping. Those helmets were mothballed after the 1997 season. Tennessee's players looked bigger and more athletic, not just because they were, but because they wore big shoulder pads and jerseys with cartoonishly large numbers. UT's jerseys looked like practice jerseys, garish and cheap.

The Hokie coaches were sporting sharp-looking orange and maroon jackets made by Starter, back when Starter was a hot, Nike-like company that had cutting-edge design and charged $100 for their jackets, expensive stuff back then. Starter could command the price, because they had the buzz. Years later, Starter went bankrupt, and over time their name and their brand were bought by Nike, who now funnels Starter products through Wal-Mart, where Starter apparel goes for a lot less than a $100 a pop. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. I still have my 1995-era Starter jacket, though.

In rewatching the broadcast, the bells and whistles we've gotten used to in sports weren't there: there was no continuous display of clock and score, and no yellow line to show us where the first down marker was.

But the most startling thing was the lack of commercials. Every commercial break was one minute long, whether it spanned a change in possession, a timeout, or even a break between quarters. One minute, I kid you not, with the exception of one break that took a minute and a half. I know this because my VCR remote has a one-minute skip feature on it, and I had to press that button just once when they cut to a commercial.

The fat TV contracts of the modern era have come with a price, and that price is more commercials, probably double what we used to have in game broadcasts, if this game was typical of its day.

Those are the things I noticed before the opening kickoff and throughout the game. What I noticed during the game was how good Tennessee was, and how they manhandled Tech.

Three years ago, in anticipation of the Chick-fil-A Bowl against Georgia, I waxed poetic about Tech's 1986 Peach Bowl victory over NC State in an article titled "Peach Bowl" Invitation Brings Back Memories. That article was a fond look back at Tech's first-ever bowl victory. The article contained a detailed recap of the game.

This article will contain no such "detailed recap." This is one of those "It was 45-23, but it wasn't nearly that close" kind of games.

Here are the salient points of the game:

• On Tech's second play from scrimmage, DeShazo threw an interception right into the chest of Tennessee linebacker Tyrone Hines. Had Tines not been there, another Tennessee defender was waiting right behind him to pick the pass off. The pass was so bad that fifteen years later, I'm still trying to figure out to whom DeShazo was throwing it. Tennessee drove 27 yards for a TD and never looked back.
• Tennessee scored on five of their first six possessions, including a five-play, 93-yard masterpiece in which Peyton Manning demonstrated his considerable talent, threading the needle twice and also completing a 42-yard bomb. The Hokies managed to sneak in an 80-yard drive of their own at one point, but in the early going, the Tennessee offensive machine was unstoppable.
• Late in the first half, DeShazo had another turnover, carrying the ball like the proverbial loaf of bread on a scramble and fumbling it at the Tech 32. (I never carried a loaf of bread like that, by the way; my mother would have yelled at me. These days, my wife would yell at me.) Tennessee punched it in and took a 35-7 lead.
• Gradually, the Hokies fought back, scoring a field goal (35-10) and touchdown (35-16, due to a missed extra point) to claw their way back into it. With 25 seconds left in the third quarter, Tech receiver Bryan Still got behind the Tennessee defense, and DeShazo hit him in stride with a bomb at the UT 20 that would have gone for a touchdown to make it 35-23 ... except Still dropped the ball.
• That was Tech's last hurrah. Tennessee drove for a touchdown, picked off DeShazo again, and drove for a field goal to make it 45-16 with 9:41 left.
• The final ten minutes of the game are notable for the appearance by a backup QB named Jim Druckenmiller. Druck was sharp as a tack, completing his first six passes for 98 and yards and leading the Hokies on an 80-yard TD drive to make it 45-23. The touchdown was meaningless, but Druckenmiller's performance was a hint of things to come.

As I recall, we had no delusions at the time about who we were. We knew Tennessee was a much better program. The 1992 season (2-8-1) was fresh on our minds, and we didn't have any notions about being any sort of college football powerhouse.

The manhandling that Tennessee dealt the Hokies was a surprise in no way. Just three years earlier in the Gator Bowl, Oklahoma had mauled Virginia 41-14, at a time when Virginia was a better program and was beating the Hokies on a regular basis. We knew that when you stepped up on the big stage, the competition got better, and we might get whooped. We did.

It was demoralizing, but it wasn't unexpected, and the thrashing we got didn't send shockwaves through us like, say, the 48-7 beatdown at the hands of LSU in 2007.

Coming out of The Swamp that night, we faced a long drive back down Highway 301, and we faced uncertainty. We had no clue what the Hokies were about to embark on, starting in 1995. We didn't know that the next five years would bring three conference championships, a Sugar Bowl win, a national championship appearance, and a bolt of lightning named Michael Vick.

Our only clear vision was into the past, not the future, and the Virginia Tech football past wasn't particularly distinguished. For all we knew, Maurice DeShazo and his buddies had just ushered in -- and out -- the high point of Virginia Tech football.

We now know what the 1994 Gator Bowl was. It was simply the inevitable one step back at a time when the Tech football program was taking two steps forward. This has been the cycle ever since Frank Beamer started taking the Hokies to bowl games in 1993. The tack of the program is generally in the right direction, but there are years where you have to pause and catch your breath. 1994 was such a year, as was 1997, 2003, and 2006.

You can't win 'em all, and the 1994 Gator Bowl was one we definitely didn't win. Tennessee was better. A lot better.

The last fifteen years have brought us profound changes in Hokie football, college football, and the world in general. In some ways, 1994 doesn't seem like long ago, but there is virtually nothing that remains the same, with the obvious exception of Frank Beamer roaming the sidelines as the head coach.

We've seen huge advancements in Hokie football and Hokie athletics, most notably an ACC invitation, multiple conference championships, and multiple BCS bowl invitations and wins.

We've watched the Internet, just a fledgling engineering tool in 1994, grow to something that reshaped the world. It definitely reshaped my world; I make my living from it now.

We've watched the economy go into recession twice since 1994, a small one in 2000 and a big one today. We've watched the Twin Towers fall, another event that reshaped the world.

We've witnessed the deaths of 32 Virginia Tech students in a senseless, violent act on April 16th, 2007.

On a personal level, since 1994 I've gotten married and bought a house, and my wife and I have had three children. I've watched my mother die of cancer earlier than I expected she would leave the world. (I remember she and my dad went to that 1994 Gator Bowl, their first bowl trip together.)

I reflect on all this and wonder if the 1994 Gator Bowl has any relevance any more. Does that loss, as painful as it was at the time, make me want revenge on Tennessee? No. The loss was tough, but it doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme. It didn't slow down the rise of Tech football. Gary Tranquil hurt the Virginia Tech football program in 1994 way more than Tennessee did.

But there's one way in which the 1994 Gator Bowl is still relevant. That game was a rude introduction to SEC football, and the Hokies were clearly outclassed by a bigger, more physical SEC team. That little bugaboo hasn't gone away, with recent losses to LSU and Alabama in which Virginia Tech was not as talented or as physical as the team across the line of scrimmage.

From that standpoint, this game is very relevant. They're still Tennessee. They're still in the SEC. We still have a lurking fear -- admit it -- that Virginia Tech is not quite good enough for that level of football. It's yet another chance to step up on a big stage and knock off a team with the tradition of Tennessee.

Much has changed since 1994, but that has not. That remains the same.