University of Virginia Library

Relief Pitching

Come On
Down,
Sweet Virginia

By John Markon

BEFORE EVERY FOOTBALL GAME begins there's
always a coin toss. Preceding Saturday's North
Carolina-Virginia encounter in Chapel Hill I thought there
should have been two of them. One, of course, to decide the
usual issues as to which team should kick and which should
receive and another, held somewhat in advance, for which
team should wear the jerseys with "VIRGINIA" stamped on
them. Believe it or not, ACC champion Carolina had more
Virginians on their squad than the cellar-dwelling Wahoos.

The Tar Heels, you see, have tapped into a mother ode of
talent in this state that Virginia has tragically ignored for too
long. Northern Virginia and the Tidewater area have long been
turning out excellent football players and, excepting George
Blackburn's foray into Hampton to pick up Harrison Davis,
none of them come here. Instead, the University under
Blackburn and Lawrence regimes has offered to grab their
players from the wilds of Pennsylvania, Ohio and what could
be called a "Route 29 Corridor" running own the central part
of the state with branches running into the Richmond area and
down Interstate 81 into the Southwest Corner.

THERE ARE PRESENTLY no starters on the Wahoos
from the Northern Virginia area and only one, Davis, from
Tidewater. What a waste this is. The North Carolina team we
faced Saturday had five. Among them were names like Er
Hyman, an All-ACC candidate at defensive tackle. Tom
Embrey, a fine sophomore linebacking prospect, and Nick
Vidnovic, the quarterback and architect of the win. After the
game, Vidnovic, a resident of Falls Church, bubbled over with
enthusiasm and support for the Carolina program.

"I'm really very happy down here," he said "I just can't
say enough about the program. When I was recruited they told
me they liked my punting but weren't able to promise me
anything. Now I'm the starting quarterback. I couldn't be
happier with my choice or with the game" Vidnovic went on
to say that UNC always seems to play "just as well as it takes
to win" and that spirit among the Tar Heels was high for the
game with the Cavs. "I played in Northern Virginia, you
know," he went on, "and it was pretty important to me and
some of the other guys. Virginia? Aw, they were OK but
weren't anything spectacular."

STARTERS FROM TIDEWATER? North Carolina had
three of them, all possible All-ACC picks. Included here are
defensive end Gene Brown, linebacker Mike Mansfield (the
game's leading UNC tackler) and guard Ron Rusnak, an
All-Conference pick from last season. In his six seasons at
Carolina Coach Bill Dooley has turned around a struggling
program, and, more importantly, has established two solid
recruiting bases in Virginia and his own state. If you look at
his roster, you can see that he sees little need to look
elsewhere for anything but the best prospects.

Dooley's accomplishments are made even more remarkable
in face of the scandal growing out of Bill Arnold's practice
field death last year. Stories came out of Chapel Hill about the
allegedly brutal nature of Carolina practices and the
slave-driving tactics employed by Dooley. A group of ex-Tar
Heel footballers formed a committee to get to the bottom of
the affair UNC went to the trouble of setting up their own
committee and absolved Dooley of blame after lengthy
investigating. The ex-athletes called it a cover-up. I prefer to
believe the official story of the incident but two facts are
certain; first, that Dooley practices suddenly became milder in
tone and second that he went out and had another banner
recruiting season in Virginia.

IF YOU EXAMINE the top-flight football programs
around the country you'll find that all of them rely on a solid
home-state base. In some cases (Nebraska, Arizona State, etc.)
the state isn't really populous enough to stock a football team
with hot prospects but you can rest assured that if there's a
17-year old halfback in Nebraska that's any good, Bob
Devaney will get his mitts on him. What I'm saying is not that
we should lower standards by admitting unqualified in-staters
but that we should make an effort to grab the qualified ones
away from Carolina, N.C. State, West Virginia and the other
leeches tapping into our supply. We don't have to rush up a
class of jocks a la Virginia Tech, we just have to fight harder
for the Vidnovics and Rusnaks.

Our policy of heavy-reliance on Ohio and Pennsylvania
boys is, I think, doomed to failure for one reason. In these
states we get the players that Ohio State, Michigan, Penn
State, Notre Dame and that bunch have rejected or didn't
locate. This still leaves us some good hands but we haven't
been able to drag enough depth out of "coal country" and the
greater Cleveland area to complement the Sullivans, Belics and
Billy Williamses. If it's a matter of money I think we ought to
find it somewhere.