ON SATURDAY I flipped on my television hoping to watch a little college football, and though our contest with Wyoming barely qualified as such, I found a match-up worthy of my attention in the Virginia Tech--East Carolina game. Watching those gaudy maroon and orange uniforms fly about the field evoked a familiar feeling of revulsion in the pit of my stomach, a feeling I quickly repressed in light of last April's shooting. I found myself wondering, "Can I still root against Virginia Tech, or has their newfound status as a de facto 'America's team' made antipathy for them a football faux pas?" The answer is that we still may and ought to root against Virginia Tech sports, so long as we continue to show love and support to the individual Tech students..
Saturday's football opener focused quite a bit of attention on the events of last April. In the words of the Associated Press, the Virginia Tech football team played the game for more than the assembled fans; They played it also in tribute to the "32 Hokies who weren't in Lane Stadium." The same article referred to the game as "almost an afterthought" given the emphasis placed on the tragedies in a pre-game ceremony. Special guests, including Governor Tim Kaine, attended the game, meeting students and even appearing on the ESPN broadcast to discuss the shooting and the game. The largest gathering of students since that horrific day, the game provided a chance for the Virginia Tech community to mourn together and then to bond again as a community.
Many articles on sports Web sites such as ESPN.com spoke of a need for the football game and the football team to heal the scars left on the Tech community. Certainly Saturday demonstrated the ability of athletics to serve as a unifying force not only for Virginia Tech, but also between competing schools. East Carolina University donated $100,000 to Virginia Tech' Hokie Fundin a gesture of incredible generosity.
Here, students and the University community as a whole demonstrated a great deal of official and unofficial support for the students impacted by the Tech shooting, as anyone who attended the April 17th memorial vigil will attest. Individual groups also created impromptu memorials, wrote letters to the families of victims or raised money for them. Without even taking into account the countless personal contacts University students had to console or comfort their friends at Virginia Tech, the community's response could not be seen as anything other than positive.
How does our role as Virginia Tech's rival fit into this? Part has already been filled by our being among the first to reach out to our brothers and sisters downstate. I know I do not speak for myself alone in being touched and impressed by the maturity and power of the responses of University students in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy.
But we serve another purpose as well. Other students quoted in an ESPN.com article spoke of a desire for a return to normalcy. While this is obviously in some regards impossible, we have a way we can help. Normalcy in football means competition. It means treating one game just like any other game. It means the team playing its heart out and receiving the support of its home fans.
Normalcy is the Hoos-Hokies rivalry, and there's nothing like a good rivalry to instill a sense of unity in a body of students, as well as in the wider Virginia Tech community. As we host our rivals later this fall, we can help them by letting them know we support them, but also by treating them normally while remaining sensitive to standards of decency. I wouldn't be surprised to hear a cheer for the Hokies when they enter Scott Stadium, and I would hope that we would cheer for their fans in attendance. But I see no reason for that support to carry over to their football team once it sets foot on our field.
Will some things change? Yes. In my experience, our games against Tech have been marked by nasty (but admittedly funny) signs denigrating the Virginia Tech student body. That will change. I doubt any chants of "safety school" will echo through the stadium, and I do not expect to focus this year on the various transgressions of former Virginia Tech athletes. Instead I would hope to see our student body focus on supporting our team, and showing respect and love to those Virginia Tech fans in attendance. As long as we show our love and support to individual students, a dirty little secret like hoping their football team loses cannot counteract a rivalry so firmly cemented through personal bonds..
Robby Colby's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at rcolby@cavalierdaily.com.
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