When you’re covering a game as a sportswriter, you’re taught from the very first time you step in a press box to never pull for a specific team. “No cheering in the press box” is an old and timeless saying you’re supposed to abide by.

But there are no rules against pulling for a good story line. That’s what I was doing Sunday, since I seem to have the bad habit of being drawn like a magnet to teams that perpetually give me hope, then break my heart in the end.

Sunday, I got my wish.

The next Super Bowl will feature the matchup between two quarterbacks I wanted to see. The old man versus the young gunslinger. Experience versus youth. 80s rock versus hip hop. A QB that runs like a pregnant cow (even though he throws like a machine) versus a QB that runs like a gazelle. A ’67 Chevy versus a Tesla.

Tom Brady versus Patrick Mahomes.

I’ve never been particularly fond of the Patriots, but being part of the “old man” demographics, I feel obligated to pull for Brady. There are several reasons for this, and one is past memories of so many really good quarterbacks who had their day in the sun, then were dumped on the NFL scrap heap to finish off their days with other teams in less than stellar conditions.

Memories of Joe Namath only a few years after pulling the greatest Super Bowl upset ever in a Rams jersey is kind of depressing. Same with Johnny Unitas in a San Diego Chargers one. How about Kenny Stabler going from the ultimate Oakland Raider to finishing his days getting the heck beat out of him as a Houston Oiler?

Some weren’t all that bad, although I still do a double take when I see Brett Favre in a Minnesota Viking jersey or Joe Montana in Kansas City Chiefs colors. They did well, but never made it back to the big game. Only four QBs have gone on to another team – Brady, Peyton Manning (Colts and Broncos), Kurt Warner (Rams and Cardinals) and Craig Morton (Cowboys and Broncos) – and made it back to the Super Bowl.

Just hearing Craig Morton and the Broncos in the same sentence makes me thirsty for an Orange Crush.

So much for a fun, peaceful Saturday afternoon, thanks to Virginia Tech’s basketball team.

The Hokies went up to Syracuse for a noon game and simply got bludgeoned by the Orangeman, losing 78-60. They had one of those days where they completed the grand slam of things you try not to do, as they didn’t shoot well, didn’t rebound well, didn’t play very good defense and threw passes that ended up in the scorebook as turnovers.

One or two of those you can survive. All four? Somebody warm up the bus.

It’s just one game in what has been a wonderful season, so I don’t know that it’s time to get too concerned. They've got good players and a great coach, and these types of games happen. But their strength has been balance: Naheim Alleyne, Hunter Cattoor, Jalen Cone and Tyrece Radford have all shown they can step up when needed and bury a 3-pointer. When that’s not working, they’ve had an inside game with depth too, as when a team doubles leading scorer Keve Aluma, Justyn Mutts and David N’Guessan can score and rebound just as well.

No longer are the Hokies a team that live by the three or die by the three. No longer are they a team where if their primary big man gets in foul trouble, the inside game goes in the round file. There’s depth, and it’s not just a big person coming in. It’s competent depth.

All of that was hard to see today. Syracuse figuratively punched Virginia Tech in the mouth from the very beginning, playing extremely physical against the Hokie bigs. The bigs then became like a quarterback that’s been hit on his last 7 passes. They played tentative as if they were bracing to get hit again, and it seemed to really affect Aluma.

He came into the game averaging close to 15 points per game and over 7 rebounds, but finished Saturday in Syracuse with only 2 points and four rebounds. There were missed shots normally made, missed dunks, and a general hesitation that led to indecision on whether to shoot or pass.

As one of the 10 commandments of basketball clearly states, he who hesitates is lost. Or at least prone to missing a shot or committing a turnover.

I know I’ve been hammering this “small world” theme the last couple of days, but I experienced something yesterday morning that is on my mind, and makes me want to talk about it one more day.

I had dropped by a bulletin board for a website called Techsideline.com. I used to be a regular there for a couple of years, but lost interest two years ago. I had written this story Thursday, and since Cindy and Jean Farmer were probably well known to many there, I thought I would post the story for all to see.

There were replies to the story, which brought back more memories, which sparked more replies from me, which brought back more memories. After an hour or two, I realized I was having conversations with 15 to 20 people who I’d never met, whose real names I’ll never know, yet people who shared mutual friends with people I’ve known all my life. They even shared memories of some of the very things I remember warmly, and even one mentioned I was the Resident Advisor in his dorm.

Small world, indeed.

It kind of reminded me of the television show “Justified” (no, we didn’t shoot each other) that was based on a short story by Elmore Leonard two decades ago called “Fire In The Hole.” If you haven’t watched the series, it went on for years and was very enjoyable. It chronicled the exploits of Raylan Givens (the good guy) and Boyd Crowder (the bad guy).

The short story’s first sentence is “they had dug coal together as young men…” and the book launches into a fast-paced adventure where each tries to kill the other. Despite that, they still sort of remained friends, something that boggled the minds of every other character in the story and television show.

On the book’s last page, one character asks Raylan why that is. He answers with the final words of the story: “I thought I explained it to you. Boyd and I dug coal together.”

Thursday, I posted this story about what a small world it’s been for me in the universe that is Virginia Tech athletics.

It ended up being read by quite a few people, and I got several emails in response. They all had the same request: Post the pic of Cindy Farmer and Mike Young in high school.

Sorry, can’t do that.

On a closed subscription site, maybe that could happen. But we’re out in the open for everyone to see, and while I have no issue with someone grabbing a picture of my dog talking into a microphone, or a big ol’ sandwich I just made, a prom picture is a little more personal. There's no way I could control where that pic went, so I’m not posting it.

But I will post one pic related to that story. Over the years I’ve been needled by a few friends when I’ve told the story because I did not put together Cindy and her Mom Jean having the same last name. In my defense, I’d like to point out I thought Farmer was Cindy’s married name, not her maiden name, so the fact that those two had the same last name did not register.

That hasn’t stopped a few wise cracks about all that from time to time. Take back in 2014, when Virginia Tech was playing Cincinnati in the Military Bowl in nearby Annapolis.

Cindy and her oldest daughter came up from North Carolina for the game and they sat near me and my old friend Doug during what ended up being a 33-17 Virginia Tech win. They had taken a shuttle over to the Navy stadium before the game, and since their hotel was on our way back to Ashburn, I told them to forget the shuttle and I’d give them a ride.

Walking back to the parking lot to get the car, we passed the sign you see in the picture above. Of course one of us said “you related to that Farmer too?”

Some stories, you see, just seem to live on forever 😊

If you’ve been a sportswriter AND a sales guy in your life, you’ve told thousands of stories.

I know I have, and I’ve never written about the one I’m about to tell. But it is by far my favorite, plus the next time someone says “it’s a small world,” this will now be the standard you’ll have to compare it to.

It’s no secret I’m a big Virginia Tech sports fan. I was a student there in the 70s and worked my way through school covering Tech sports for a small weekly called the Blacksburg Sun (they went to Wednesday and Sunday editions when I was there and gave us shirts that said “Blacksburg Sun: Now Doing It Twice A Week.”)

It was there I got to meet many people, but my favorite was basketball coach Charlie Moir. He answered all my questions, gave me all the access I could ever want, and even invited me along with the writers from much bigger papers for dinner when we were on the road.

Big stuff for a 20-year-old.

To get any access in college sports back then, the main gatekeeper was the head coach’s secretary. Charlie’s was a very nice lady named Jean Farmer, and I was extremely lucky she liked me. If she liked you, you could call just about any time and she’d find Charlie. If she didn’t, odds are you’d hear about him being in a meeting.

Over the next few years between the Blacksburg Sun, Roanoke Times and newspapers in Martinsville and Lynchburg, I would deal with Jean quite a bit. Her, Charlie, many of the players and Sports Information people Wendy Weisend and Dave Smith are among my warmest memories of that time in my life. 

Fast forward about 20 years.

I don’t participate in social media any more, but I have some young friends who do. One of them sent me a screen shot of something Virginia Tech Co-Defensive Line Coach Darryl Tapp tweeted yesterday, and on one hand, it made me happy Tapp was bringing awareness to a problem that’s been brewing for quite some time.

On the other hand, it made me somewhat wary, because he can’t do anything about the problem alone. The tweet kind of made it seem like he was.

Tapp’s a great guy originally from the Tidewater area, and he tweeted “To the former OG Hokies and my Hokie Brothers PLEASE HIT me up in my DMs. VT will FOREVER be YOUR HOME. WE WANT YOU BACK AND NEED YOU BACK. Sincerely, Not A Random Guy. This is your brother.” Then he finished it with 17 turkey emojis.

It made me smile, as I thought “finally.” It has always been my thought as a career sales guy that some of the recruiting issues in major places like Tidewater and Richmond have been because of a lack of work building the necessary relationships with coaches, former players and the people on the ground who can make or break you. It’s hard work, takes time, and does not give you any sort of instant gratification.

But that was Frank Beamer’s edge for many years. He had the same assistants for most of his 28 years and they worked certain geographic areas hard. Coaches knew the Hokie assistants because they were in the schools frequently, not just to scout a player, but to build a relationship for when there was a big time recruit down the road they hoped to steer to Blacksburg.

It’s what you have to do when you are not Alabama, Notre Dame, or some brand name that can come in, sweep you off your feet and get you to change your mind on the strength of one visit. You build trust, and instead of finding yourself selling a commodity where the highest bidder wins, you end up selling a program, an experience, a family to join.

Tapp seems to be realizing that with this tweet. But Darryl, my man, you’re not getting it done with a tweet, a text or an email. That’s not selling. That’s casting out 100 lines on the ocean and hoping some fish bites on a couple. Anyone can do that.

Now’s when the hard part starts.

It’s not unusual for me to call out the name of The Almighty when watching Virginia Tech sports, particularly in the final minutes of a close game.

But it is unusual for me to be reminded of a Bible verse when watching Hokie basketball.

Last night, as Virginia Tech was routinely beating Duke in basketball (something I don’t ever recall typing before), I started noticing more and more not just how good some of the players are, but how they seem to be improving from game to game.

It’s the benefit, I believe, of a well-rounded group of players with depth, and a coach who teaches them, believes in them, and lets that make mistakes to learn from.

The Hokies have had good teams before, but even in the Buzz Williams era, it was 2 or 3 players, mostly wing players, who lived and died by the outside shot. Buzz never seemed to like big men in his offense, so he didn’t recruit them much, and when he got one or two, he didn’t play them much with the exception of Kerry Blackshear. Opposing teams knew who they had to stop, and it’s a lot easier to rattle a shooter from the 3-point line than stop a strong inside player 3 feet from the rim.

But not this team. They have a bucket full of big men, and it’s not just Keve Aluma. Justin Mutts can run the floor, block a shot and then hit a 3-pointer. David N’Guessan can too. Cordell Pemsl and John Ojiako are injured, but they have proven they can be just as physical in the middle. As a result, it’s not one big man on the team battling a tall, slow walk-on in practice. These guys are getting after each other and pushing each other every day.

As Proverbs 27, verse 17 notes, “as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”

You could tell by the end of Alabama’s first touchdown-scoring offensive series, Ohio State was in trouble last night.

Alabama is going to lay 50 on these guys, I told my faithful dog Maggie, the WonderBeagle.

Since she had chosen to take Ohio State and the points, she immediately got down from my lap, and as you see in the picture to the right, kneeled down and prayed I was wrong.

Her prayers - and Ohio State’s -  were not answered.

Part of it was certainly the tremendous athletes Alabama has, but Ohio State had great athletes too. Yes, the Buckeyes also were missing a key player in injured running back Trey Sermon, but he wasn’t playing defense.

The part that caught my attention, however, was how Ohio State approached playing defense against this powerful offense. It looked pretty predictable, and made Alabama’s drives look relatively easy. ESPN, as it does in national championship games, provides multiple feeds for the game, including a “film room” with coaches, and they did not appear impressed.

Former Auburn coach and UNC defensive coordinator Gene Chizik noted Ohio State was playing so much one-high safety, Alabama’s offense could pretty much pick what they wanted to do. Liberty Coach Hugh Freeze, who knows a thing or two about offense and has actually beaten Alabama as a head coach, echoed that by saying you could see clearly what Ohio State’s defense was going to do when you came to the line of scrimmage.

Alabama’s hard enough to beat when you DO confuse the quarterback; letting him easily see what he’s facing is just inviting a boat race. It creates a situation where I kind of thought Alabama QB Mac Jones was just having a ho-hum night, making throws that were good, but nothing spectacular. Then you realize he threw for 464 yards and 5 touchdowns while completing 80 percent (36 of 45) of his passes.

Ho hum, indeed.

Twenty-one years ago today, I woke up in a rather modest hotel in Slidell, LA, packed up my things, and my friend Bob and I began the long drive back home to High Point, NC.

It was the morning after Virginia Tech had played Florida State for the National Championship, and the previous 24 hours had produced memories that at the time we knew would – and have – lasted a lifetime. But we were both silent and a bit sad.

We had come so close to watching Virginia Tech realize the pinnacle of college football. We both gone to VT from 1974 to 1978, so we had a clear appreciation of where the program had been and where it was that morning. We also knew that this specific moment in VT football history – at least what it meant to the two of us – was never going to happen again.

“You think,” Bob said as we crossed the Mississippi state line, “that there will come a time where all our fans are spoiled and anything less than this will be a disappointment?”

It was a fair question that we talked about for many miles. When the Hokies beat Texas in the Sugar Bowl four years earlier, I sat out on my deck a few minutes past midnight, light rain falling, smoking a Cuban cigar I had saved for a special occasion. I was a newly minted Dad, as my 8-month old daughter was sleeping inside, my alma mater made it all the way to a big name contest like the Sugar Bowl, and they didn’t just show up and act happy they were in the game. They fell behind, then stormed back and had actually WON.

Life was good. And I knew how lucky I - and every other Hokie who was as passionate about the team as I was – was to experience it. The days of 3-win seasons and never being mentioned on the national sports scene seemed over.

“Everything runs in cycles,” I answered Bob. “I guess it will depend on how long they’ve gotten used to experiencing this kind of winning.” I then pointed out we’d see pretty soon because anyone who was a freshman in 1995 was now either graduating or was about to. They’d seen two Sugar Bowls, an Orange Bowl, a Gator Bowl and a win over Alabama in a Music City Bowl.  An 8-win season – the high-water mark for us when we were students at VT - to them might be considered a disaster.

We both agreed that the way things were going, there were going to be a lot more years before that ever was going to be a problem. Heck, we came within a quarter of winning it all. Mike Vick was going to be back the next year along with a lot of other players. All the publicity was going to allow us to bring in even better recruits. If we could just have 2 or 3 more really good years, we might even get a chance to get our ultimate goal, which was to one day be in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

“We’ll be back next year,” Bob said, and I agreed. We should.

I have to admit, I couldn’t help noticing several moments during Virginia Tech’s big upset of No. 3 Villanova last night and then not think about the contrast between the football and basketball programs.

Those moments illustrated a lesson I hope Virginia Tech’s athletic administration has learned.

The first came late in the game when the Hokies were rallying. Television cameras caught the Virginia Tech bench, where Coach Mike Young was briefing his players on what he wanted done during the timeout. The players were engaged, excited, listening. Young was full of energy, but controlled, as if teaching a class and both coach and player alike were excited about what they were learning.

The second came after the game. Young immediately took the blame for a key play that occurred in the final seconds. Keve Aluma was supposed to miss the second shot of a one-and-one; he tried, but it banked in, so Villanova had one last chance. There were 1.3 seconds left so the odds Villanova could pass the ball inbounds and make a shot were slim to none. The only chance was to run the baseline, slip one of your players in front of the defender while he’s watching the ball, and draw a charge.

That’s what happened to the Hokies’ Justyn Mutts. A foul was called, Villanova made both ends of the one-and-one and the game went into overtime. Asked about it after the game, Young was quick to say “I failed to coach my player [Mutts] on one of the oldest tricks in the book and it almost cost us."

This was not a case of Young using the press to confess his coaching sins to the world. Young is a sharp and experienced coach who is not only good at coaching X’s and O’s, but is just as good managing and motivating people. He knew people might criticize Mutts for that play, and he was having none of it. He immediately drew the arrow toward himself, deflected all criticism from the player and heaped it all on the coach.

Which is what great coaches do.

Well, here we are, back at the crossroads.

We knew we’d be back here one day. As we watched the rocket ship take off under Frank Beamer, enjoyed the streak of bowl games, the long streak of wins over Virginia, even the decades-long streak of not having a losing season, we knew nothing would last forever.

But last night it officially did. The end of the streak of not having a losing season ended two years ago. The 15-game streak over UVA ended last year. With a 45-10 loss to Clemson last night, there will be no bowl game. The 27-year run is over.

Every brick Frank put together to build the foundation of the football program is now gone.

That it has happened so fast is maddening. That it is Justin Fuente who has fired up the flux capacitor and taken this program back to where it was in the 1980s is stunning. After his first two seasons, he was doing so well fans were afraid he might leave. He won 19 games in those seasons, said all the right things, and executed the transition between Frank and his program flawlessly.

But last night’s game was a microcosm of what has happened since. You could see flashes of what a great coach Fuente could be in the first quarter; he employed personnel in different roles, showed different formations defenses couldn’t study on film, and made bolder calls on offense that for a moment, had Clemson back on its heels.

This fired up an already well-prepared team, as they realized the improbable could be possible. It was 10-10 late in the second quarter, and despite having to create their own energy in an empty stadium, the Hokies were showing a national television audience they weren’t going to roll over and fulfill the 23.5-point beating oddsmakers had predicted.

But Clemson then scored to make it 17-10 in the final minute. The Hokies got the ball back with relatively decent field position at the 32, one run got them to the 36, and another advanced the ball to the Clemson 43. For a second I thought there was a mistake, as my television showed the clock continuing to run through all that, with Khalil Herbert’s 21-yard run going out of bounds with only two seconds left in the half.

It was no mistake. Fuente told his offense to run out the clock despite having three timeouts left. Had he just used one, he probably could have kept running the ball and ended up in field goal range. As it was, they threw a Hail Mary that was caught at the one, and the half ended with no time on the clock.