Sports Essays

bellview--when in doubt, shoot the three   

Home | Movie Reviews | Video Roundups | Essays | Game Reviews | Subscribe | Mailbag | About | Search

The Life of a UVA Sports Fan

9/9/02

There was a point, midway through the third quarter during the University of Virginia’s August 31st blowout loss against Florida State, where everything about being a UVA fan came together.

The Cavaliers were already down 30-0 to the #5-ranked Seminoles, and UVA had the ball.  They were just finishing up their tenth third down without a conversion (they had none in the game up to this point), and their punter—an unfortunate first-year player named Hagan—came onto the field to punt it away.  So far in the game, Hagan had two 20-yard punts and a blocked punt, which in layman’s terms is like pouring Mountain Dew into your cereal bowl—it just shouldn’t happen during an act so simple.

So, Hagan set up to boot the ball away in a now-meaningless game for both teams, the respective universities, their current students and school alumni.  Hagan trapped a bad snap on the ground, bobbled it twice more, then—thinking that FSU defenders were about to block his kick again, which they were not—took off down the right sideline.

Two ‘Noles came over to tackle the rookie, and in a moment of sheer panic, Hagan tried to forward-lateral the ball to a teammate.

Never mind that Hagan’s knees were already down, meaning that his pass wouldn’t have counted anyway.  Or, maybe you shouldn’t mind that passes thrown past the line of scrimmage are illegal, too.  The real travesty was the throw itself—never has the term “you throw like a girl” been more appropriate, as Hagan’s pitiful toss fluttered harmlessly away and hit the ground.

You see, regardless of what your fancy is on that previous play, as a UVA fan the play symbolized everything about our sports memories—

It can ALWAYS be a little worse than you think.

My first UVA basketball game was like that.  UVA had a great point guard by the name of Cory Alexander.  He had all the skills—good handle, quick moves, good free-throw shooter, and 18-to-20 points a game were guaranteed.  It was his third year with the team and he had put it all together—his pro prospects were looking quite handsome.  My friend Rob and I were joking around with Alexander during pre-game warm-ups, daring him to take deep three-pointers from the corner...and, he was hitting quite a few of them.  In fact, Alexander was one of the few athletes that I met at Virginia that actually made time to just hang out with random folks that he didn’t know because he knew that would get more of them to show up to the actual games.

The first game of the 1993-94 season was an important non-conference matchup with the Connecticut Huskies.  Their money player was Donyell Marshall, a wiry small forward that has gone on to above-average NBA success after being drafted as a junior.  It was a perfect first game for me...until the game started.  Alexander suffered an ACL injury in the first half of the game, and the team never recovered.  They went on to lose by almost 40 points (77-39 was the final, I believe) and our season didn’t go much better than that afterwards.

Maybe I expect too much from my alma mater.  I often forget that there IS an academic institution attached to these sports programs and by all accounts, Virginia is the best public education offered in the country at the university level.  That, though, is what makes the school’s athletic performances so shocking.  How can a school that strives so far to give a person a stellar academic experience fail so often at producing quality teams for those students to enjoy?  Sure, current US National Team coach Bruce Arena showed off the best soccer in the country for years in Charlottesville before taking the US to its best World Cup finish ever this summer.  But, soccer just isn’t my bag.

Basketball and football at UVA, though, were always an obsession for me; those sports still are, really.  I was “that guy” at basketball games, always showing up early to sit in the front row at the men’s games, and for football, I saw every home game while at school.  I lost my voice almost every week of the school year, because of the UVA tradition of playing just well enough to lose...or, as my friend Steve “The Squatter” Baron likes to say even now, “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.”  Seriously, I think that is how UVA raised half of the $1 billion Capital Campaign funds a few years back, by diving in all of their games in ’98 and ’99 to help keep spreads in Vegas at just the right amount for school president John Casteen to make mad cash.

The toughest part about cheering Wahoo is the utter averageness (averagosity?) of our football and basketball teams.  Before George Welsh stopped coaching the football team, they had an 11- or 12-season run with at least seven wins, which only six other teams could claim at the time; also during that time, we had zero outright ACC championships.  (Actual fact—UVA finished no higher than third for its first THIRTY years in the then-eight-team ACC; ESPN’s “Page Two” staff now lists the ’58-’60 Cavs as the 10th worst college football teams of all time.)  Even more shocking (especially in the case of football) was the sheer talent that the football team has had, much of it concurrently—Matt Blundin (ACC record for consecutive throws without a pick), Mike Groh, Shawn Moore and Aaron Brooks at quarterback; Chris Slade (all-time ACC sack leader), Jamie Sharper, James Farrior at linebacker; Herman Moore, Germane Crowell, Tyrone Davis at wideout; Terry Kirby, Thomas Jones, and former Bellviewer Tiki Barber.

What little talent the basketball teams have had, they have usually squandered away.  This is really shocking on the women’s side.  About four months ago, they showed the Final Four game back in ’91 between UVA and Tennessee.  I thought back to the teams that Dawn Staley and Tammi Reiss ran, and I am still baffled over how a team this good couldn’t win a national championship.  The team was fucking loaded—if they had started the WNBA in 1993, they would have had to create a team in Charlottesville and field an entire roster of UVA players, they were that good.

The men’s team had a similar run in the early 80s, when they had—in terms of awards and sheer domination—the Greatest Men’s College Basketball Player of ALL TIME, Ralph Sampson.  (You can send me all the hate mail you want on this one—the facts don’t lie.  You don’t “get lucky” and win the Naismith Award three times.  THREE TIMES!!  He is the only man to ever do it.  He owned college hoops during his run, and yes, he was a total bust in the pros.  And, don’t even try that “you have to win championships to be considered great” horseshit; Jordan was destined to be the Greatest Men’s Pro Player of All Time whether he won a ring or not.)  Usually, though, the recruiting for the men’s team is atrocious—in fact, I would argue that for one season, UVA had the worst starting center in the history of starting centers in college basketball—Chris Alexander, a player so horrifically bad that for his HIGH SCHOOL TEAM, he averaged a mere 13 points a game in New Jersey.  For someone to average only 13 points a game for a public high school at 6’8” and still find a Division I college at which he could earn starter minutes is truly an anomaly...but, there we have UVA recruiting for you.

Another great thing about being a UVA fan is that for a handful of contests each year an opposing athlete has their career-best game against the ‘Hoos.  Back in ’93, when Charlie Ward won the Heisman Trophy, all of the major networks would show one highlight from Ward’s season when pumping an upcoming FSU game.  That highlight, EVERY SINGLE TIME, was this incredible 50-yard TD run that Ward had against UVA with him scoring and finishing in the middle of the end zone, getting mobbed by teammates.  Nearby, a couple of stray UVA defenders looked pitiful as we were getting beat once again by the ‘Noles.  Perfect TV fare.  My brother reminds me every bowl season that former Miami defender Tremain Mack—aka, Tre Mack—got drafted in the first round of the NFL draft after having an All-American game in the 1996 CarQuest Bowl.  In fact, I even found the link for the game recap:  http://virginiasports.ocsn.com/sports/m-footbl/archive/va-m-footbl-96carquest.html  Man, we gave that game away!

As much anger and pain as I have stomached over the years, UVA typically has One Great Victory per season; in 1995, we just happened to have two:  beating Kansas to advance to the Elite Eight (but, remembering rule #1 above about something worse always happening, we followed this win with a loss to Arkansas and “that fat kid”, who hit a half-court three-pointer at the halftime buzzer before going on to score like 15 points in the second half)...and, what might be the Greatest UVA Football Moment Ever, the 33-28 win over FSU for the ‘Noles first loss in ACC competition.  This was also the only time I have been somewhere where I literally thought I would be trampled, maimed, or set on fire because of how wild the crowd eruption was upon completion of the game.  (For those of you lucky enough to have been sitting at home the Friday before Labor Day, they replayed the game on ESPN Classic...damn, what a game.)

But, I must go on, and it gets tougher.  Sitting through the next game, hoping that this might be the one that turns everything around...Hey, I’m young, right?

 

Random Low Points in UVA Sports History over the last ten years, courtesy of Bell & Longer Community Trust (Chuck, early happy 48th birthday...hehehe):

• UVA’s triple-overtime loss to Georgetown in the first round of the 2000 NIT...at home:  Hard Vice

• Illinois 63, UVA 21 in the 1999 MicronPC Bowl, the only time I have ever used profanity for 240 consecutive minutes while inventing the term “fucking shit-fucker”:  Hard Vice

• Losing to eventual national champ Maryland this year by a mere four points after Maryland made 96% (25 of 26) of its free throws:  Hard Vice

• UVA’s 1997 home loss to Duke, when Steve “Bitch” Wojciechowski hit two free throws after dribbling the length of the court with a stopped clock and UVA subs waiting at the scorer’s table:  Hard Vice

• UVA 28-0 over Clemson at halftime of the 1992 football matchup; final score?  Clemson 29, UVA 28:  FUCKING RIDICULOUS

 

justin@bellviewmovies.com