Happy New Year, blog dawgs. What a tremendous day of college football! Without question, the coolest day of every year in my book.
 
Virginia had its heart broken, but that was a fun game to watch. Some of the things Simpson does are just silly, and I took the afternoon to appreciate one heckuva career by Chris Long.
 
Yes, I know those Cavaliers are your rivals, Hokies, but Long is an animal. Rarely have I ever enjoyed focusing on a defensive end for an entire game the way I did today.
 
Well … not COMPLETE focus … since my remote was going back and forth between that fantastic Tennessee-Wisconsin finish and the shootout between Florida and Michigan.
 
What was that about the Big 10 not having the speed to run with an SEC team? Yeah, well, I’ve been of that belief for some time now, too. But I’m just not sure that’s fair.
 
NOBODY, though, was as fast as Gator Percy Harvin. He was wicked good today, and I’m glad I got to cover him in high school (before I took over the Tech gig four years ago). If it weren’t for Tebow being on his team, I’d think Harvin has to be a Heisman finalist before he’s done.
 
Mark my words, though: Harvin will do more in the NFL than Tebow.
 
But ENOUGH of all this non-Hokie stuff, huh? That’s not what you came for, is it? You want the latest on the battle of the birds, right?
 
OK … well … that jet ski injury to Vince Hall’s knee will leave him listed “questionable” for Thursday night’s game. I expect he’ll play, as does trainer Mike Goforth, but he sat out today’s practice.
 
Other than that, the team is healthy. And no one violated curfew last night celebrating 2008.
 
So now it’s time to talk about Tech’s offense. I’ve got a story running tomorrow on offensive coordinator Bryan Stinespring, who took a lot of heat in the first half of the season, but has begun to reap some deserved praise down the stretch.
 
The Hokies’ offense is not only no longer a liability, in some games it has become a legit threat – even the REASON Tech has won. It’s been awhile since that could be said.
 
I know Stiney pretty well, and he’s a pretty emotional guy … and I can tell you that the struggles of the offense were hard on him. And rip him though you might, he works tirelessly trying to be good, and make his players good.
 
It seems that work is paying off.
 
Here’s a little preview of tomorrow’s story, with a complete transcript of my Stinespring interview, as well as a couple of his players talking about their coach and some other things related to the Orange Bowl match-up.
 
I’ll be back tomorrow with more. Until then …
 
*** OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR BRYAN STINESPRING
 
ON SEAN GLENNON LOOSENING UP WHEN HE CAME BACK FROM HIS DEMOTION: “Sometimes you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders. This arena we play in with the lights and the cameras … there’s already that pressure that surrounds this game. I think Sean Glennon taught us all something. He had fun. He enjoyed the moment, enjoyed the opportunity.”
 
ON THE TWO-QB SYSTEM: “It’s not an easy venture. I can assure you of that. But it forces you to try to stay a little bit ahead in a series, from snap to snap. It forces you to do that. In some regards, that’s a benefit. The further you can stay ahead, the better off you are.”
 
ON GLENNON SAYING STINEY WAS MAYBE BETTER NOW CALLING PLAYS BECAUSE IN THE TWO-QB SYSTEM HE HAS NO TIME TO SECOND-GUESS HIMSELF: “I think when you call a play, you’ve got to concern yourself not only with the play that you’re calling, but the defense you’re calling it against. And in the back of your mind you have to be keenly aware of what you’re asking each individual on your offense to be able to do. What task are you asking them to perform? So if there’s any type of concern or questioning, I think you’ve got to take all those into account. When you take all of those things into account, it can be a little nerve-racking back there sometimes. When we got healthy up front and had the two quarterback situation, you have to call the play. And I think the scripting part of it has helped, because it’s getting the play in, the quarterback in, the situation in. When you’ve got it going that way, you’re not so worried, ‘Can a right guard do this, left guard do that, tight end do that?’ You’ve got to call the play and go.”
 
ON SOME OF THE EARLY PERSONNEL ISSUES AFFECTING HIS PLAYCALLING IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE SEASON: “You had to be careful early in the season, because every time we were going to drop back and throw it and spread the field, we had issues with protection.”
 
ON PLAYERS BEING AS KEY TO AN OFFENSE AS THE SCHEMING: “You’ve got to put your players in position to be successful. Whatever you’re asking a guy to do, is he good enough to do those things? And as the season progressed and certain things developed for us, we were able to press on the gas a little more. At first, we had to proceed with a little bit of caution. Going into the Duke game, we felt like it was time to go ahead and push on the gash, go play the rest of this season like we expected to play the beginning of the season: play with confidence.”
 
ON HOW FULFILLING THIS SEASON HAS BEEN: “I think as a staff, we’ve gotten more satisfaction from this year than any before. The opportunities earlier in the season to start pressing, lose confidence were there. Things weren’t working out. There was frustration. And I’m proud of the fact that we were able to hang in there, keep pounding away. We were able to find a way to keep everybody together and not panic. And to see it unfold and you can say, ‘Boy, we got better!’ .. that’s a good feeling for any football coach.”
 
ON WHETHER THIS IS HIS BEST COACHING JOB: “I’m proud of the way we were able to keep our football team, our offense in a position to continue to practice with a purpose and to hold it together. I think it was a nice job of coaching from a lot of people. More than just x-ing and o-ing.”
 
ON IGNORING THE PUBLIC CRITICISM EARLY ON: “It’s not ignored. I don’t hear it. If you think for one second that anyone on this staff is going to sit behind a computer and click on a message board … no way. I won’t waste a minute of my life looking at that stuff. It’s not a part of my life, and I won’t let it be. But I was upset because I knew how much better things could be. I didn’t need anyone else to tell me.”
 
ON FRANK BEAMER, HIS BOSS BEING THE ONLY ONE HE NEEDS TO PLEASE, AND WHETHER BEAMER EVER VOICED DISPLEASURE: “Is there times I felt like he wasn’t pleased? Sure. But I wasn’t either. I don’t think anybody was. But we’ve been successful before. It was a tough stretch when we were struggling. But it hasn’t always been that way. The focus was what do we need to day in and day out, to be good again. We’ve done this a long time, and there are going to be some peaks and valleys. That valley we got in, we got in it pretty deep early in the year. But that just made the climb a whole lot better.”
 
ON SOME OF HIS PLAYERS SAYING THEY NOTICED THAT THE OFFENSIVE STRUGGLES EARLY WERE GETTING HIM DOWN: “I didn’t realize they knew. I tried to make a conscious effort to always be upbeat. But, yeah, it did wear on me. I tell them all the time that my goal is to put them in position to be successful. And when they’re not, I hurt, because I know they hurt. This year, we were supposed to be better. When I look at those guys and all the questions they had to answer … For a while, everyone involved with that offense felt like our first name was What’s Wrong With. Because every time you picked up the paper or turned on the radio, people wanted to know, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ They were questions that could have fragmented us.”
 
ON WHAT KIND OF HOURS HE WORKED DURING THOSE DAYS: “7 a.m. most days to about 11 most nights. Wearing myself out? No. But I can tell you this: I wasn’t leaving any stone unturned to get things fixed.”
 
ON HOW MUCH IT MEANS, THEN, TO SEE THIS RECENT SUCCESS KNKOWING ALL THE STRESS AND HOURS AND STRUGGLE THAT WENT INTO IT: “I’m proud of our players. I can’t emphasize this enough. When I talk about how proud I am, it’s not about being proud of myself. I’m proud to witness a group of guys hang in there through a tough time and continue to believe that we’re closer than what we’re showing, that we’re traveling a road leading to better things. There were a couple bumps in the road, a few wrong turns, a flat tire or two. But now that we’ve gotten here, boy, was the trip worth it.”
 
*** WR JUSTIN HARPER
 
ON HIS COORDINATOR, BRYAN STINESPRING: “People are always going to give the coordinator heat when things are going wrong. He’s always called the same plays, and it’s always been up to us to execute and make the plays. Stinespring, he’s always done things the same. Lately, we’ve just been making the plays.”
 
ON WHETHER HE THINKS STINEY IS A GOOD Xs and Os COACH: “I think so, but when we’re not getting it done as players, he doesn’t look too good. But right now, 40 points a game, you know he’s on an all-time high. So we’re just trying to keep this rolling for him.”
 
ON THIS GROUP OF SENIORS: “We feel like we’ve left our mark, but this is the game right here. This would be our first BCS victory. So what better way to go out than to have a helluva game against Kansas.”
 
ON WHETHER THIS CLASS IS TECH’S BEST EVER: “Oh, yeah. It’s not even a cocky thing. I always say to the older guys that were here before us, ‘There’s not too many classes that can say anything to us. We’re two-time ACC champions – yeah, y’all helped us with that – but we’re also the winningest class in the history of Virginia Tech and we have a chance to win the first BCS game. This senior class has a swag and we’ve had swag since freshman year. We’re going to carry it into this Kansas game.”
 
ON WHETHER THIS CLASS NEEDS TO ACTUALLY WIN THE GAME TO CEMENT ITSELF IN SCHOOL HISTORY: “Definitely. We’ve got to win this game. Me and Xavier always talk about it. We can’t just get here. We need to win or it won’t seem right. We’re going to win this game to top our four years off.”
 
ON THE PROGRAM STRUGGLING IN THE TWO SEASONS BEFORE THIS CLASS CAME IN: “We had some great senior classes when we got here that laid the foundation for us. It was just a matter of us taking it to the next level. Now we’re trying to lay the foundation for the new young guys, show the our ACC titles and that we won 10 games every year, so why can’t they?”
 
*** WR EDDIE ROYAL
 
ON THE RECEIVERS TAKING NOTE OF THE CHANCE TO GO AGAINST AQIB TALIB, THE JAYHAWKS’ STAR CORNER: “It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be good to match up against an All-American. It lets you really see where you’re at. You never know if you’re really the best unless you play against the best. So this is a good opportunity for all of us to go out there and show everybody that we are true playmakers.”
 
ON THE GROUP OF SENIOR WIDEOUTS LIVING UP TO THE HYPE FINALLY THIS SEASON, ESPECIALLY LATE: “Maybe it hit us that we better take advantage of these last few games, because this is it. I don’t really know what was the turning point in our careers, but I’m happy it’s happening now. This is the best season I’ve been a part of – just the way the team came together and rallied around each other after a couple of tough losses.”
 
ON WHETHER THIS IS THE BEST CLASS IN SCHOOL HISTORY: “I think so. We’ve got a lot of great athletes, a lot of NFL prospects. And you just look at the wins and you can tell this is one of the best classes ever.”
 
ON THIS CLASS TAKING THE PROGRAM BACK TO THE TOP AFTER TWO SLUMPING SEASONS BEFORE THEY CAME IN: “I don’t think it ever fell off. You look at those teams and they had so much talent. It was just something went wrong. And we knew we were going to have a talented group my freshman year. We just had together as a family. And we had a great leader in Bryan Randall to pull us all together.”
 
ON HAVING THOSE ROLE MODELS AS FRESHMEN: “Oh, definitely. You had Bryan Randall on offense and Jim Davis on defense. Two real leaders and competitors, guys that you could really learn from them how to win and how to carry yourself. We were lucky to have them.”
 
ON OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR TAKING SUCH RELENTLESS HEAT AND NOW GETTING SOME LOVE: “He’s a great coach. He’s done a great job of keeping us together. The offensive line was a key part, and we had some injuries. But now everybody’s healthy and you can really tell in the play calling. I don’t think you can ever really blame a coach. The coach isn’t out there playing. It’s the players. Whenever somebody blames the coach, I don’t’ agree with it. It’s the players.”
 
ON WHETHER HE THINKS HEAD COACH FRANK BEAMER MAYBE FREED UP STINESPRING TO BE MORE CREATIVE WITH THE OFFENSE THIS SEASON: “I don’t even know what it was. The main thing for us was whether the offensive line was healthy. Could they maintain a block long enough to let the quarterback look down the field. He’s always had a lot of faith in us. He told us just to be patient, that our time would come. It’s come now, and he was right in the end.”
 
ON WHETHER THE OFFENSE IS SUDDENLY FUN TO PLAY IN: “This year has definitely been the most exciting. You go out there and never know what’s going to happen every play. We’re throwing it around, taking deep shots a lot. It’s an exciting offense, the type of offense I love playing in.”
 
ON WHETHER STINESPRING IS UNDERRATED MAYBE: “I definitely think he’s an underrated coach. These last few games have put him on the radar, but if anybody’s still got questions, just tune in to the bowl game.”