We are……Virginia Tech

Just something I wrote on the Virginia Tech shootings. I wish I had more of an intro, but it was hard enough writing this….College football isn’t just the biggest thing in Bristol, TN. For a lot of people, it’s the only thing. Bristol, which is situated only an hour and a half away from Blacksburg, right on the Tenneseee – Virginia border, you always heard about Virginia Tech. At King College, where I spent two years, everyone talked about either Virginia Tech football or Tennessee Volunteer football. Not only that, but the high schools on the `Virginia side’ all talked about the Hokies. Of course, the Tennessee side kids all talked about their Volunteers. On the Virginia side, every Saturday during the autumn, people wore orange and maroon, showing support for their Hokies. On the Tennessee side, wore the orange of the Volunteers.

For the last few years Bruton Smith, the head of Bristol Motor Speedway, the 160,000 NASCAR stadium just 15 mins drive from Bristol’s centre, has been talking about laying down a football field over the infield and staging a Virginia Tech – Tennessee football game, sending tongues wagging in the bars of State Street.

“It’s not a game anyone in this town would miss,” says Scott Ellis, a local from the area who’s a Virginia Tech fan.

But after a psychopath killed 32 on Virginia Tech’s campus in Blacksburg on Monday, the imagination went from screaming with 200,000 others to the 23,000 souls on Tech’s campus screaming for help.

“You would never think anything like that would happen on any campus but especially not in Blacksburg and not at Virginia Tech. The community and Virginia Tech go hand in hand. It’s inconceivable. I still am in disbelief. My time there was some of the best years of my life.”

Justin Hamilton, safety, Cleveland Browns, Virginia Tech alum

Up in Bristol, Hokie football has always been something that even if you loved or hated. Not being from the area, I simply stuck to the middle road of Penn State. In 2005 at Bristol Motor Speedway prior to the Food City 500, I was privileged to meet Frank Beamer, the Hokies’ football coach. We spoke about football – and particularly about that year’s bowl game which had seen the Hokies lose to Auburn – and I blamed the refs. He didn’t. “That’s football,” he said, a veteran of many coaching decisions.

Now, Coach Beamer is not only a spokesman for Tech’s athletic department, but also a spokesman for 20,000 plus kids and millions of more families and alums.

“It’s such a beautiful campus. It’s such a nice place and everyone is so friendly there. It’s just so hard to imagine what’s going on. I’m looking at the pictures I’m seeing and I’m just trying to imagine me walking across campus and seeing this going on. I just can’t see it. I’m not worried about the reputation right now of Virginia Tech, but it IS a tremendous place to go to school. But that big thing is that everyone’s thoughts are with the families and close friends. And you feel for the people that aren’t involved and don’t know and are wondering: “Is my daughter OK? Or is my son OK? I’ve got friends there and you just hope they are OK. But I don’t know.”

Shayne Graham, kicker, Cincinnati Bengals, Virginia Tech alum

When they played football at Virginia Tech, Michael Vick and D’Angelo Hall were both gods on campus. After the worst school shooting the United States has ever seen, Vick and Hall are mortals like the rest of us, trying to work out why a guy would gun down tens of his fellow students.

“My thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones in this terrible tragedy. It is my hope that the university community can pull together to help the students pull together to help the students cope with this senseless and unfortunate ordeal,” Vick said through the Atlanta Falcons website.

Hall added on the same site: “Words cannot describe how I feel. Everyone who knows me understands the affinity I have for Virginia Tech.”

For now – and rightly so – Virginia Tech football, which means so much for the fans , students and anyone associated with it has been suspended. It’s not time to get drunk and celebrate a practice game. Not right now.

But when the season does start for the Virginia Tech Hokies at home to East Carolina, Lane Stadium will go from the place where people sat and remembered the death of 32 students to the place where people for three hours in the fall to forget.