The 2012 Sugar Bowl

11

INSIDE A FOOTBALL GAME

“Stay out of the French Quarter on New Year’s Eve,” the police officer was saying. “There’s a reason New Orleans is called Sin City. Don’t matter how big or strong you are. Bad things could happen tonight. Don’t let bad things happen to you.”

The Virginia Tech football family—players, coaches, trainers, sports-medicine majors, video crews—was gathered at the center of the Superdome, where the NFL’s New Orleans Saints perform, to prepare for the Sugar Bowl, one of college football’s premier events. Along the sidelines, some Virginia Tech boosters and donors were present, many with their children—young boys and girls tossing footballs and posing to have their pictures taken with the team in the background. The playing surface at the Superdome has a silver glint, as if flecks of Christmas tinsel were embedded in the turf. Football teams seeking public recognition have installed blue turf, red turf and fields with alternating stripes of color. Considering the money coming into football, it may be only a matter of time until some team has a golden playing surface.

Frank Beamer looked on as two NOPD officers addressed the players on New Year’s Eve 2011. The French Quarter was an easy walk from the Hilton Riverside, where the Hokies were staying. Beamer had asked local law enforcement to put the fear of God into his players about the difference between Blacksburg, Virginia, and New Orleans, Louisiana. Liquor is everywhere in New Orleans, leading to frequent inebriated brawls. Bars open onto the streets with walk-up cocktail windows, hard stuff is for sale in pocket-size bottles at any CVS. In New Orleans, schools and churches probably sell liquor. And whiskey is the least of the city’s hazards. Cops consider it a fine night if all that happens in the French Quarter is public drunkenness and scuffles. Only too happy to drop in on a visiting football team, officers regaled players with grisly accounts of crimes they’d worked on past New Year’s Eves.

That night the team would watch a movie and have a fourth meal together. As midnight approached came an “optional” walk to a Mississippi River esplanade to watch fireworks welcome the New Year. Everyone attended the “optional” walk, which went in the opposite direction from the beckoning French Quarter and Harrah’s casino, where high rollers were handing their Bentleys and Porsches over to valets about whose driving records they knew nothing. Fireworks, then a 12:30 a.m. bed check. DO NOT LATCH YOUR HOTEL DOORS, read an instruction sheet handed to players.

Old trick: one guy sneaks out, the other guy stays behind with the door latched. When a coach comes for bed check, the door will only crack open a bit. The wingman says, “We’re both in bed, coach.” The Virginia Tech coaches know this trick, perhaps having tried it themselves back in the day. Doors must remain unlatched.

Several assistant coaches have master keys to the Virginia Tech room block and check players randomly through the night. No one sneaks out, though the sounds of revelers in the French Quarter on New Year’s morning drifted seductively toward the hotel. In football as in the military, sneaking out to look for drinks, parties and women makes for a great story at a get-together years hence. But if caught now, you are in trouble.

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THE VIRGINIA TECH ENTOURAGE TRAVELED to New Orleans a full week before the 2012 Sugar Bowl—the bowl bonus the Hokies were at that point enjoying for the nineteenth consecutive year. The Hilton Riverside was the fanciest hotel many of the players had been in—chrome and neon lobby, a stream of beautiful people in town for the New Year’s Eve rowdiness the cops warned of. Virginia Tech was out of session, so no studying. Bowl week was nearly a vacation.

Of bowl destinations, New Orleans ranks first among college football players because it combines a desirable locale with a walkable downtown. Miami, where the Orange Bowl is played, is known for South Beach nightlife; Pasadena, location of the Rose Bowl, for the trendiness of Southern California; Scottsdale, host to the Fiesta Bowl, for high-end resorts and striking Arizona girls. But Miami, Pasadena and Scottsdale require cars, and what college student can afford to rent a car? In New Orleans, the visitor is fine on foot or using the trolley.

By the second day, Logan Thomas had already located all the hungry-guy locations within a short walk of the hotel: Arby’s, McDonald’s and the original Popeyes. Some of the country’s finest restaurants have Cajun chefs; New Orleans dining prices are intended for expense-account travelers. Team members started the bowl week with money in their pockets. By the third night, many were tapped out. Collin Carroll, the long-snapper and sports columnist for the Virginia Tech college newspaper, had just published on ESPN.com an opinion piece arguing, “Bowl games are way more pleasure than business.” Carroll thought the New Orleans accommodations and bowl-sponsored activities lavish. He experienced no backlash from teammates since his comments were that antiquated written-word stuff. If he’d been interviewed on ESPN TV and the clip posted on YouTube, his teammates would have watched on their smartphones and given him a hard time.

In his commentary, Carroll noted that for the New Orleans week, each Virginia Tech player received travel, room and four meals daily, plus $450 total as per diem and about $500 in gifts—apparel and electronics—from the host committee. Not princely but not pauperdom either. Carroll calculated that at the in-state cost of Virginia Tech tuition and assuming strict observation of NCAA practice-time rules, through their college years Hokie scholarship football players earn $38 an hour, tax-free. Not the NFL but not a bad deal.

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DESPITE THE BED CHECKS AND other safeguards, during the vacation-like period that preceded the Sugar Bowl, things went wrong. Before the Hokies even departed for New Orleans, their starting placekicker, Cody Journell, was booted from the team. Journell had been arrested for breaking and entering; he would later be cleared of serious charges. But a policy Virginia Tech blandly calls the Comprehensive Action Plan mandates, among other things, that an athlete who is arrested be suspended until such time as he or she may be cleared. Though an arrest is only an accusation, not proof of wrongdoing, Virginia Tech errs on the side of caution.

Journell’s suspension meant the backup placekicker, fifth-year senior Tyler Weiss, who had never hit a field goal for the Hokies would kick against Michigan in prime time. On New Year’s Day, with the city sleeping off an epic hangover, Weiss missed a bed check and was caught after curfew.

Beamer ordered Weiss sent home. He was put on a bus back to Blacksburg, given 833 miles aboard a Greyhound to think about how he’d let the team down—and lost the only chance he would ever have to play football on national television. Weiss’s family members had bought last-minute airfares to New Orleans and scalped Sugar Bowl tickets to be in the stands for what could have been a Rudy-like story of the kid who never got to play until he became the hero of his very last game. Instead the kid was on a bus home, his family’s money wasted.

To open the season following its Sugar Bowl appearance, Virginia Tech would face Georgia Tech on college’s equivalent of Monday Night Football. Cleared of the accusation, Journell would kick the winning field goal for the Hokies in overtime. Keep that fact in mind.

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NORMALLY ONLY THOSE EXPECTED TO play attend away games. Bowls are different, one reason college football organizations like them so much. Not only do spouses come along for the week, so do the scout team, the redshirts and those deep on the depth chart.

Since Virginia Tech will have a full practice week in New Orleans, rather than a day-before walk-through as with most road dates, the scout team is needed to run the University of Michigan offense against the first-team defense. For many on the scout team, the Sugar Bowl is their initial experience of an away game—chartered jets, expensive hotel, fans in the lobby asking for autographs, Virginia Tech flags and logos all over a city. Scout-team members, like the starters, received tracksuits and other apparel specific to the game—someday to be treasured possessions for the Hokies unlikely to play.

Though Virginia Tech and Michigan are storied football programs, through some quirk they had never met. The Hokies entered the Sugar Bowl 11-2, the Wolverines 10-2, with Virginia Tech the highest-ranked opponent Michigan had faced in its season. Michigan’s star was quarterback Denard Robinson, a lightning-reflexes player in the mold of Clemson quarterback Tajh Boyd, who had inflicted on the Hokies their sole defeats of 2011.

Both programs knew they had been selected for the Sugar Bowl over Boise State and Kansas State, higher-ranked schools backed by the touts, because Virginia Tech and Michigan “travel well”—have loyal supporters who spend freely to be present at away games. A Hokies-Wolverines pairing meant game tickets and New Orleans hotel rooms sold rapidly. The Sugar Bowl committee wasn’t sure Kansas State supporters would snap up seats and suites. Because Boise State has openly denounced the BCS system—the only football power to have done so, because for years Boise State did not belong to one of the conferences that receives an automatic BCS bid—no one on a bowl committee wanted to do the Broncos any favors.

Practice during Sugar Bowl week involved using the Superdome, allowing Virginia Tech players to cavor on the same field used by the Saints, a recent Super Bowl victor. The Hokies stuck to their usual hyperspecific schedule, each phase timed down to the minute. One day’s practice included thirty game-specific rehearsal phases for special teams, far more than the typical football practice. The offense elaborately repeated its presnap checks and sims, while defenders repeated their birdcalls, the hand gestures used to change alignments in response to whatever the opposition quarterback calls presnap.

Virginia Tech coaches taught so many plays, checks, sims and birdcalls that it was hard to believe the players remembered them all. A good guess is they did not. Ask any twenty-year-old male how things are going and he will say, “Good.” Ask if he understands something and he will say, “Yes.” Hokies players constantly told their coaches they understood everything, including clicker sessions in which the coaches would show game film rapidly forward and backward. A couple times after clicker sessions, I pulled players aside and asked if they would explain complex actions and signals to me—and to me, they admitted they could not follow what coaches had just said. During games, most of the time players knew what to do. But clearly some failed to remember assignments, and usually those were the disaster plays.

“The era of the dumb jock is over,” Bud Foster says. A generation ago, a good athlete could show up having failed to study the playbook and wing it. Not today: constant study and memorization are required to avoid the embarrassing mistake that will be shown in slo-mo on SportsCenter. But physical performance still matters more than tactics. Several times after watching coordinators Foster and Bryan Stinespring chalk-talk their charges through complex desired reactions to tiny variations in opponents’ cues, I was left thinking half as much would be twice as good.

Of course opponents were experiencing the same—Michigan players surely could not remember all the calls, either.

To relax during a Sugar Bowl practice, Beamer let the team stage an impromptu touch football game on the field of the New Orleans Saints. Asked to cite a flaw of his longtime boss’s, Foster said, “He does not know how to be spontaneous.” The touch football game was a rare exception.

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THE PLAYERS’ SCHEDULES WERE FULL, to pack in experiences and reduce the time available for getting in trouble. Meetings and game film in the mornings; practice in the afternoon; bowl-paid activities in the evening. Among the latter was dinner at Dickie Brennan’s, a pricey New Orleans steak house—$66 plus tip for turtle soup, salad, house filet and a side dish—then a trip to see where the Rex Krewe builds its Mardi Gras floats. The dinner at Brennan’s was at 6:00 p.m., followed by a fajita bar back in the hotel at 9:00 p.m. They are, after all, football players. The following morning, I met with a few players while most of the team luxuriated in a noon wake-up call. The early meal had been a simple continental breakfast for coaches and the travel party. Despite a gargantuan steak dinner and then fajitas the night before, the Hokies who got up early were complaining of no eggs and bacon at breakfast. They are, after all, football players.

At one smorgasbord meal served in a hotel ballroom, Beamer waited patiently behind players and graduate assistants, the interns of college-sports coaching. Beamer never cuts to the front of lines; players and staffers know not to offer him a spot at the front because he doesn’t want special treatment. When Beamer finally made it to the table to present his meal request, one of the servers whispered, “Is that man someone important?” Celebrity college football coaches such as Nick Saban, Lane Kiffin or Chip Kelly would have caused a stir at the Hilton Riverside. Beamer, with more victories than Saban, Kiffin and Kelly combined, walked the hotel’s halls unnoticed.

While the players practiced and saw the town, a sizable official party—Virginia Tech administrators and boosters—was present, enjoying a black-tie gala the night before the game. Bowl invitations are a bonus for the boosters too. If Division I football ultimately switches to an NFL-style playoff bracket, television audiences will grow, but for teams and the schools they represent, the resort-reward aspect will be lost.

The coaches and the better-known players were invited to daily press conferences. The coordinators, Foster and Stinespring, took a lot of the press questions, being more comfortable than Beamer exchanging banter with the media. Typical softball, to Stinespring, in a room with chairs for two hundred sports reporters: “David Wilson is such a star, does anything about his talent surprise you?”

Foster tells me he talked to Tyler Weiss’s mother. There was no way to change the situation because Beamer told players beforehand that curfew violations would not be tolerated. But Foster wanted to make sure the family did not feel forgotten. It’s the kind of little touch—such as sending handwritten letters to Corey Moore years later—that distinguishes the Virginia Tech approach. “College football players are so big and muscular they look like men, but inside, they are teenagers,” Foster notes. “They have a teenager’s understanding of the world and make the kinds of mistakes we all made as teenagers.”

Beamer’s son Shane is the running backs coach, and a bright light. His title is associate head coach, grander words for the office door than the title held by the two coordinators, who are far more accomplished. The younger Beamer might someday be in the running to replace his father; father-son succession often backfires in business, but might in this case receive the support of the Virginia Tech extended family. Shane already knows to greet all media questions with “That’s a great question,” regardless of whether it actually is. Endlessly saying “That’s a great question” while thinking How did he get in here? is a habit of successful politicians, and of beloved coaches.

A long-snapper for the Hokies in the mid-1990s, Shane played for Virginia Tech in the same period as did linebackers coach Cornell Brown and secondary coach Torrian Gray. Together, they are the closest Virginia Tech coaching comes to a youth movement. Brown started twenty-five games in the NFL, and is the brother of Ruben Brown, one of football’s best-ever offensive linemen. At Blacksburg, Brown coaches within view of the banner for his own retired jersey. Gray was a high draft choice of the Minnesota Vikings but never adjusted to the NFL and became a college assistant coach, starting at the University of Maine, when just a few years out of college himself.

On a staff that prizes quietude, Gray is the only one who cracks jokes during practice, once dropping to the ground and theatrically pretending to die when his starting secondary surrendered a long touchdown pass to the backup offense. The players pick up on the coaches’ low-key. Team dinners are muted; there is no rock or rap music in the locker room; bus rides are hushed. In a day when athletes want to do something flashy to make SportsCenter, Virginia Tech players are remarkably reserved, more like they’re looking for the library than for the field. At a Superdome practice, Wilson was the only player acting out—dancing at the center of the turf with his jersey pulled high to show off his core, which appeared to be forged from tungsten. A football player’s core is what used to be his abs, which used to be his six-pack, which used to be stomach muscles.

An open secret of the coaching staff is that Stinespring and O’Cain don’t speak much to each other. O’Cain is the play caller, normally a role for the offensive coordinator, so Stinespring does not have quite the duties his title implies. Because he does not call plays, Stinespring uses his extra time to coach the offensive tackles, so Curt Newsome, who works with guards and centers, isn’t exactly the offensive line coach. These awkward arrangements, grounded in Beamer’s desire never to fire anyone unless totally unavoidable, would end a year later with Newsome and O’Cain dismissed and Stinespring demoted.

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ONE DAY A ROOM WAS SET up for interviews with Wilson, Thomas, offensive tackle Blake DeChristopher and tight end Chris Drager. Each sat on a chair placed on a riser, to create a dais; journalists’ heads faced the players’ knees. They are, after all, temporary royalty. Reporters crowded around the quarterback and running back, ignoring the lineman and tight end. At one point a reporter did stop at DeChristopher’s podium—to ask what he thought of Wilson.

Monday before the game, the coaches met to plan final tactics. Beamer tells his assistants that if Virginia Tech faced fourth and short, he would tell Danny Coale—a wide receiver also subbing as the punter—to “rugby option.” Coale would take a punt snap and roll to his right. If he thought he could reach the first-down line, he would run; if not, he would launch a rugby-style, in-motion punt. This sounds a lot easier in a meeting than at game speed.

Next, the coaches go over lineups with the medical staff. Mike Goforth, the head athletic trainer, reported that five players were scheduled for surgery the day after the team returned to Blacksburg. Usually parents come when a player needs surgery; his position coach is always at the hospital and stays until it’s clear the surgery succeeded and the young man has woken up. After operations, recovering players would go home for the rest of winter break, since school would not resume for a week. Goforth consults parents or guardians if he thinks surgery is advised “because the guys always say they are fine and want to play. Nobody wants to miss the rest of the season, or even miss one game.”

NCAA athletes get routine bumps-and-bruises medical attention without cost to them. For surgery, the family’s health insurance pays, and a Virginia Tech secondary policy covers the out-of-pocket. The NCAA provides no insurance for long-term health complications. If football-caused brain trauma or degenerative orthopedic conditions manifest after college is over, don’t bother calling the NCAA.

Goforth reported that running back Tony Gregory was one of the five scheduled for surgery on return to Blacksburg. He had a partial ACL tear: was able to play, but perhaps should not. Beamer was fond of Gregory, a special-teams ace. Goforth noted that Gregory badly wanted to be on the field because it was a BCS bowl. Beamer said he could dress.

During the meeting, Beamer nodded his head yes or shook it no on dozens of minor matters. The routine decisions regarding the rugby-option punt play, and allowing Gregory to dress, would prove essential to the outcome. Often small decisions have unexpected consequences. But you can’t know in advance which small decisions will be the ones.

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AS THE DAY APPROACHED, VIRGINIA Tech coaches became concerned about the knock on their program—“Frank Beamer can’t win the big game.” This did not seem on players’ minds, or if it was, none mentioned as much. “Back in my day, if we lost a game, we would be in a rage, we would smash lockers,” says Brown. “Today the guys hardly react. They care, but it is important to be seen as cool and detached.” Regardless of what they are feeling inside, contemporary football players feign indifference, shrugging and saying, “It is what it is.” It is what it is has become the slogan of today’s team sports, meaning anything from I am philosophical about the situation to Look, we got our butts kicked, what the hell do you expect me to do about it?

Beamer went to New Orleans with his fantastic streak of nineteen consecutive bowl seasons, but a losing bowl record. Entering the Sugar Bowl, the winningest active big-program football coach was 243-110-4 in regular-season play, just 8-10 in bowls. Virginia Tech’s victory over Texas in the 1995 Sugar Bowl brought national attention to the Hokies, and by extension to the Virginia Tech admissions department. But in six appearances in the top-prestige bowls, Beamer hoisted a trophy just twice: over Texas in 1995, and over Cincinnati at the 2009 Orange Bowl.

The previous year, at the 2011 Orange Bowl, Virginia Tech played Stanford even through the early third quarter, then faded. In the college football regular season, any program that observes the NCAA limit on athletic hours, as Virginia Tech does, can’t vary game plans much week to week. There just isn’t time to study the next opponent, devise an original strategy and teach that strategy to players. But during the one-month layoff before a bowl game, there is time. Before the 2011 Orange Bowl, Stanford gave the microscope treatment to the Hokies’ tendencies and realized Virginia Tech did not cover tight ends going deep. This was hardly an oversight: most college defenses ignore the tight end deep because college tight ends almost never go deep. Stanford sent tight end Coby Fleener deep. He responded with six catches for 173 yards and three touchdowns, breaking the Hokies’ back.

This time around, Virginia Tech coaches felt confident they had prepared an original, opponent-specific game plan for Michigan. But otherwise they hadn’t changed much. No extra psych-up, no special focus, the bowl week treated as a regular week. Schedules were even drawn that way. For instance, Thursday of bowl week was marked REGULAR MONDAY because players would be doing exactly what they did on any Monday.

The more I observed Beamer, the more comparisons I saw with Marv Levy, the Hall of Fame head coach of Cal, William & Mary, the Kansas City Chiefs and the Buffalo Bills. Levy is the sole football coach ever to have reached four consecutive Super Bowls, so he must have known what he was doing. Yet he lost all four. And said he slept soundly after each, which may be the key.

The farther a team advances into the postseason, the more the stress. Regular-season games can be won on the fly. In the postseason, psych-up and game-planning rise in importance.

In the first Bills’ Super Bowl, Buffalo was a heavy favorite over the New York Giants. The Bills had the then-revolutionary no-huddle offense and had just cruised to a 51–3 AFC title win against the Oakland Raiders, while the Giants had a plodding offense and were lucky to win the NFC title over the 49ers on a field goal on the final down. Giants coach Bill Parcells had taken boxes of game film of Buffalo with him to San Francisco; he and his coaches flew directly from San Francisco to Tampa, where the Super Bowl would be held, and began to study Buffalo’s offense aboard the charter flight late Sunday night. Levy gave his players Sunday night and Monday off. When coaches arrived in Tampa on Tuesday, he decided it was too late to study the Giants, and they’d just use the same game plan that had destroyed the Raiders. But Parcells had spent all Monday studying that game.

Parcells wouldn’t be able to sleep for a week if he lost a Super Bowl. Championships tend to be taken by driven, manic coaches with a win-at-all-costs mentality; the nice guys, who do not believe the world ends if they lose, tend to fall away at the last. Levy, a pleasant man who quotes Shakespeare and would make a fine dinner guest, was defeated in that Super Bowl by 1 point by Parcells, an angry man who often lost his temper in public. Levy’s other Super Bowl losses came to Joe Gibbs, a gentleman but an obsessive perfectionist known for sleeping in his office during the season so as not to be away from game film, and to Jimmy Johnson, who as a coach had a cutthroat reputation, though mellowed after switching to sports broadcasting and buying a boat.

Bill Belichick, Nick Saban, Parcells—in sports, many ultimate trophies go to win-at-all-cost types, while nice guys such as Levy and Beamer pull up just a bit short. For his part, Beamer said, “If we were two and eleven, I would be upset. But we’re eleven and two and going into a BCS bowl. Whatever happens, we have had a great year. If the program is doing okay and the university is doing okay, then you’re okay. You should feel grateful.” Within big-college football, that distinction was getting lost.

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IN TEAM SPORTS, BOTH ATHLETIC ability and an athlete’s story matter. The aware coach is not just sending bodies onto the field—rather, sending in the totality of a player’s physical ability, mental acuity and life experiences. Here in alphabetical order is biographical information on Hokie players who would make marks in the 2012 Sugar Bowl, including some detail on what happened to them after their Virginia Tech years concluded:

Jarrett Boykin. A Tennessee native, Boykin would finish his Virginia Tech years as the school’s all-time leader for receptions and receiving yards—then be crushed when fellow Hokies wide receiver Danny Coale was drafted by the NFL and he was not.

The all-time receiver for a major college program not drafted by anyone! But every football player knows the stories of those who refused to quit. Wes Welker was not recruited to play in college, went undrafted by the NFL—and made the Pro Bowl five times for the New England Patriots. Fred Jackson didn’t start in high school, attended a Division III college, was not drafted by the NFL, and ended up as the starting tailback for the Buffalo Bills, cashing a multimillion-dollar bonus check. Cameron Wake was passed over in the NFL draft, lived in Canada to play for the British Columbia Lions when no NFL team even offered him a place on the practice squad, and made the Pro Bowl twice for the Miami Dolphins.

Undaunted, Boykin tried out for the Jacksonville Jaguars and was cut. Then he tried out for the Green Bay Packers, making the team. The Jaguars had the worst passing attack in pro football, the Packers one of the best: the bad team did not want Boykin, the good team did. Puzzling outcomes like this are not rare in athletics. By the end of his rookie season in Green Bay, Boykin was getting a bit of playing time.

Collin Carroll. From Minnesota, Carroll was the first long-snapper to attend Virginia Tech on football scholarship; most college football programs find a long-snapper among their walk-ons or backups. Though describing himself as “clumsy and unathletic,” Carroll was in the Hokies’ starting lineup for four years, snapping in four bowl games.

Carroll also wrote sports columns for the Collegiate Times, the Virginia Tech newspaper. He packed his columns with facts and statistics, and interviewed teammates about such awkward topics as their out-of-wedlock children. After graduating, Carroll enrolled in journalism school at Northwestern University, pursuing a master’s degree. His future in sportswriting is bright.

Danny Coale. Every sports team has a player who leads a charmed life, and for the Hokies that player was Coale. Born in the small town of Lexington, Virginia, his parents saved to send him to Episcopal, an exclusive private boarding school in Alexandria, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Capitol Hill. Coale’s father, head of the physical education department at Virginia Military Institute, knew the quirks of the recruiting game and arranged for his son to begin Episcopal by repeating ninth grade. That ensured when Danny was being looked at by colleges, he would be a year older than his peers and performing better. Repeating a grade to get an athletic edge—grayshirting—is rarely discussed and widely practiced.

Going into high school senior year, Coale attended summer tryout camps at the University of Virginia, the University of North Carolina and North Carolina State. “After each camp,” Coale says, “a coach took me aside and said, ‘Who’s offered you so far?’ When I said no one had offered me a scholarship, they didn’t want me. They only wanted players other colleges wanted.” Bud Foster was Coale’s recruiting coach—every college assistant coach is assigned parts of the country to recruit, and Foster had the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC. “When I got to Virginia Tech camp, nobody asked what other schools had offered,” Coale says. “Coach Foster tested me and asked to me come to Blacksburg. Compared to other colleges, Virginia Tech seemed honest and upfront.”

Coale would become Virginia Tech’s number-two receiver all-time for receptions and yards gained, and the first Hokie to win the Atlantic Coast Conference award for top student-athlete. In the spring of one academic year he received his undergraduate degree, in finance, then played the following autumn as a graduate student, while taking master’s-degree courses. Smart, ambitious athletes work the system in that way: receiving their bachelor’s, putting in one more sports season as a grad student, then departing college at Christmas with master’s credits. Doing this gets a smart, ambitious athlete a bachelor’s and most of a master’s on a football scholarship.

Coale says, “College football for me was a dream come true, because we played in so many big games on national TV, and every year we ended the season playing for the conference championship or in a major bowl or both. But most college football players don’t have that kind of experience. For many, college football leads to injury or bad outcomes. In prime time you see the successful players from the successful programs. Viewers should be reminded there’s a lot of pain and unhappiness in college football too. And even as a finance major, I think the money is out of control. Money has become the beast of the BCS era. Way too much of college sports is about the money.”

Leaving school immediately after the Sugar Bowl, Coale attended the NFL’s annual scouting event in Indianapolis, where he ran the 40-yard dash in 4.5 seconds, defying the stereotype that white players cannot be fast. Coale was drafted in the fifth round by the Dallas Cowboys, finding himself not only at a prestige franchise but with Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett, a Princeton graduate who himself was a smart, ambitious athlete. Coale’s charmed life continued.

Blake DeChristopher. Growing up in the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, DeChristopher, an offensive tackle, was a football phenom from a young age. By the time he arrived at Virginia Tech, DeChristopher also was a giant—six feet five inches, listed at 311 pounds, able to bench-press 410 pounds while in his teens. He became a four-year starter for the Hokies—four-year starters were once the norm for the best college football players but today are increasingly rare, as the kind of athletes capable of starting for four years declare early for the NFL draft.

DeChristopher accumulated an impressive string of awards, including first-team all-ACC and an honorable-mention all-American. By senior year he’d also made his presence distinctive, growing a mountain-man beard. A diligent student, he graduated with a degree in sociology while “a junior on the field and a senior in the classroom,” as someone who redshirted his first year would say, then played out his eligibility while taking master’s-degree courses.

Passed over in the NFL draft, DeChristopher would end up in the camp of the Arizona Cardinals. He spent a year on the Cardinals’ injured reserve, earning a token sum, then was waived. The NFL is so intensely competitive, even an unusually large, strong man with tremendous athletic ability may not make the grade.

Chris Drager. Drager grew up in Pittsburgh, grandson of a steelworker. He played both sides of the ball at Virginia Tech, tight end and defensive end, suffering several concussions. The university nominated Drager for a Rhodes Scholarship, and he advanced to the interview round in England. There, he says, “I got a lot of questions on knowledge of international economics and didn’t do well on those.” After the Sugar Bowl, Drager would leave college to train with a sports-performance specialist, hoping to be chosen in the pro draft. Some NFL teams want to see how a potential player performs when he does nothing all day long but train and watch football film, which simulates daily life at the NFL level.

Drager was not drafted nor signed as an undrafted free agent. His football days were over; perhaps as well, considering his concussion history. Just before the Sugar Bowl he said, “I made a point to savor senior year because I’ve been playing organized football since I was in fourth grade and I knew I might never do this again.”

James Gayle. Born in Los Angeles, Gayle plays defensive end—once considered a power position, increasingly seen as a speed position. The spread passing offense and the zone-read rushing offense, two popular football mutations, must be countered with quick, agile defensive ends. Gayle is tall and brawny but not especially heavy—his forte is “foot speed,” the ability to change directions in an instant. Defending the spread or the zone-read offense requires ends who can rush the quarterback and also run sideways into the flat.

Growing up with a single mother who worked as a prison psychologist, Gayle had on-and-off presences in his life from his father, a former Ohio State football player, and from his uncle Shaun, who started in the Chicago Bears’ 1985 Super Bowl win. James Gayle did not play football until eleventh grade—“Football is a lot of work, and you get hit in the head constantly,” he explains. On the latter point, James was cautioned by Shaun, who in 2012 joined a lawsuit against the NFL. At age fifty, Shaun was beginning to experience dementia and alleged his NFL playing years were the cause.

When James finally took the field in high school, he showed unusual aptitude, drawing the attention of many colleges. “In my case, football made me a better student,” he says. “I was mediocre at grades until I learned that needing a good GPA was for real, that GPA would help get a scholarship. So I woke up. From the second semester of high school junior year on, I studied all the time and made honor roll.”

Gayle notes, “Being at Virginia Tech, up in the mountains, it keeps you out of trouble. There’s no club scene, that’s for sure. If I had gone to a school like the University of Miami, there would be a lot of temptations. The Blacksburg atmosphere helps you focus on work. I decided that as a Hokie I would work out, attend class, be at practice, do my homework and go to bed early. If I was in a big-city environment, I’d probably be at clubs. My high school was mostly black, so college is a sociological adjustment for me in that respect. At first I was uncomfortable, but now I like being around many different types of people. I’ve come to understand that interacting with people who are different from you is part of a college education.”

Unlike some in athletics, Gayle is reflective: “I know being a football star is an artificial world. There’s a lot of nonsense involved. Coach Beamer says if you do the small things correctly, the big things take care of themselves. So I just work out and study and go to bed early and hope he’s right.”

Josh Oglesby. Coming out of high school, Oglesby was a highly recruited player, in part because his father had been a college football star, and athletic ability often runs in families. Oglesby would leave the Virginia Tech program mildly bitter that he never held the “feature” back role for the Hokies because two other strong players at his position were recruited. In 2009 and 2010, Ryan Williams was the starter at tailback, then in 2011, David Wilson won the job. Both Williams and Wilson became high NFL draft choices—what might have happened to Oglesby, if he hadn’t plateaued at second-string.

“Football can set you up for failure by making you feel like the world owes you something when really you are just John Doe and you need to pull your own weight,” Oglesby says. He graduated, putting himself on track for success in life. “I am fortunate because my parents are together and I grew up in an environment where education was viewed as a lot more important than sports.”

Barquell Rivers. Every team has a player whose luck is bad, and for Virginia Tech in recent seasons, that was Rivers. He grew up in Wadesboro, North Carolina, which, he says, “is small and poor, there was no movie theater and no mall, playing ball was the only thing to do.” Rivers’s parents separated when he was young. He was raised by a grandmother, then an aunt. “My mother had to work two jobs so I only saw her on weekends,” he says.

By 2009, Rivers was a star linebacker for Virginia Tech, with powerful shoulders and the fireplug build of the sport’s best middle linebackers, and with an instinctual understanding of the game. The saying is “Can’t coach size, speed or instincts.” Rivers was drawing notice from NFL scouts.

This lasted until Max Out Day in the weight room. Rivers was attempting to power-clean 350 pounds. The maneuver requires snatching a barbell from the ground and raising the weight to the chin. The world record for this type of motion is 580 pounds, achieved at the 2004 Athens Olympics by the extremely hefty Iranian power lifter Hossein Rezazadeh, who trained for years to do nothing else. To hit 350 pounds, Rivers would need to raise almost half again his own body weight. And unlike Rezazadeh, Rivers did the power clean only once in a while.

“I didn’t lock my arms correctly so put the weight back down to try again,” Rivers says. “I slipped and fell awkwardly. Immediately I knew it was serious.” Rivers ruptured the quadriceps tendon in one of his legs, a rare injury. Without its tendon the quadriceps muscle rolled back up into his body, making it seem a hole had appeared in his leg.

Rivers did not play in 2010, a year in which he had trouble walking. By 2011 “I could walk normally and it didn’t hurt much anymore, but I couldn’t plant and change direction like I used to.” Changing direction quickly is essential in football. Rivers went from four-star to rarely on the field. In Rivers’s senior year, most games concluded with his jersey clean, and only quarterbacks and kickers want clean jerseys. Rivers would end the season with just eight tackles, versus ninety-six in his banner 2009 season.

Rivers graduated with a degree in property management and returned to his hometown to think things through. He says, “There is no feeling like running out of the stadium tunnel to sixty-eight thousand screaming people, then hearing people chant your name in the stands. But if you are realistic, you know that one play can take everything away. When I got to Blacksburg, I chose a major that would lead to a career if the football disaster day came. Then it came. My mother did not want me to play college football because she was afraid I would get hurt.”

Virginia Tech’s secondary health-care insurance stays in effect only a year after an athlete’s final reported injury; many colleges don’t offer even that. Rivers left college football with a sports-caused condition that may lead to degenerative orthopedic conditions down the road. If health problems develop, he’s on his own.

Logan Thomas. The quarterback, from Lynchburg, Virginia. Football turns on this position. Beamer said in 2012, “I will continue coaching as long as my health holds up and I have a good quarterback.”

Thomas enjoys a striking physical presence: handsome, an easy smile and at six feet six inches has what scouts call “a high cut,” meaning long legs and a narrow waist. Most basketball players are built like this, and in youth, Thomas favored basketball. “But in high school I began to calculate that there are a lot of six-six guys in the NBA and very few six-six guys in the NFL,” he says. Cam Newton, first choice of the 2011 NFL draft, is 6-5 and high cut; Colin Kaepernick, starting quarterback for the 49ers in the 2013 Super Bowl, is 6-4 and high cut. While still in high school, Thomas correctly fathomed that quarterbacks built like basketball players could become a football fad.

“I was raised by a single mom; my grandfather was like my father,” Thomas says. “There was a lot of pressure on me to become a better person, so my mother liked what she had heard about the Virginia Tech focus on respectable behavior.”

Thomas is relaxed and confident, an athletic celebrity since he first walked on turf. Raised in a media culture, he feels the loss of privacy: “Everywhere I go, I must represent the university, even though I am not an employee and receive no pay. I enjoy privileges other Virginia Tech students do not, but also have obligations they don’t. If I screw up, like with a DUI, the entire country would know. If the typical college student screwed up with a DUI, only his parents would find out.”

Some colleges talked to Thomas about being a tight end, but Beamer saw him as a quarterback. “This shows Coach Beamer really knows what he’s doing,” Thomas said with a twinkle in his eye. “Plus quarterbacks are paid more in the pros and get hit in the head a lot less.”

David Wilson. From Danville, Virginia, a rural burg in the same area as Frank Beamer’s hometown, Wilson is a born tailback: fast, strong, ideal build to run the ball. As a high school senior he rushed for 2,291 yards and thirty-five touchdowns, remarkable numbers. Virginia Tech badly wanted him and had the inside track, being about a hundred miles away. Most star-rated prep players end up at a university close to home. The close-by program has the proximity to scout and woo, while offering a stadium in driving distance for friends and relatives.

Wilson would be chosen in the first round of the 2012 NFL draft by the New York Giants, then defending Super Bowl champions. He fumbled on his first NFL carry. While it’s impossible to play football without fumbling once in a while, a rookie who fumbles in his first outing lands in the coach’s doghouse. This happened to Wilson, who barely saw the field for months. Then in a December 2012 contest against the New Orleans Saints, Giants head coach Tom Coughlin would give Wilson a second chance; he responded with three touchdowns and 327 all-purpose yards, best in the Giants’ nearly century-long annals. Entering the 2013 NFL season, Wilson was seen as a potential star.

*   *   *

WAKE-UP CALL FOR PLAYERS was 11:00 a.m. on the morning of the Sugar Bowl, for a scheduled 7:38 p.m. kickoff, local time—8:38 eastern. Football ratings are higher on the East Coast than the West Coast, so networks are conscious of not starting games so late that half the nation will head to bed by the fourth quarter. Basketball ratings are higher on the West Coast than in the East, which is why the NBA doesn’t worry about starting playoff contests after 10:00 p.m. eastern.

The Hokies had breakfast, then chapel, which was held in the dining area right after the meal. Most players stayed, though chapel is unusual in being an optional football activity that actually is optional.

Johnny Shelton had been the team chaplain at Elon University, a liberal arts college in North Carolina, till by chance he sat next to Beamer on a plane flight. They got to talking, and Shelton says Beamer told him, “All these wins are great, but I worry about the futures of my players. So many young men on the football team come from fatherless homes; we are teaching them how to play, but are we teaching them how to live?”

At chapel, Shelton reads from the Paul’s letter to the Philippians: “For God has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him as well.” Playing a football game entails a kind of suffering, though it’s hard to see what this has to do with the Christian hope for humanity. In the locker room before kickoff, several players will come to Shelton to be blessed. He offers the traditional prayer that the Lord place a hand upon the shoulder of the faithful and keep them from harm. Though none ever say so, football players are keenly aware that once the game starts, one of them may get badly hurt. Safety Antone Exum—sporting a high-tech Mohawk cut, dyed gold—would kneel before Shelton in a pose little different, except for cleats, from a medieval devotional painting.

At 5:00 p.m., buses began departing for the Superdome. First three buses with the dress squad, those who would play, plus coaches. Then three buses with the scout teamers and athletic department staff. Then three buses with the official party from the president’s office, the top Virginia Tech officers and boosters.

Putting on the football gear took the better part of an hour; taping ankles was the least of it. Virginia Tech has a chiropractor in the trainers’ area before games, to “manipulate” players’ spines and limbs, in hopes that looseness before contact will reduce injuries. Many players waited in line to lie on their stomach and have the backs of their legs repeatedly kneaded with massagers that look like science-fiction waffle irons. The goal is to loosen muscles and tendons so they don’t cramp, especially the hamstrings, which are made cramp-prone by weight lifting and speed training. “Once this kind of preparation was viewed as soft,” Goforth says. “Now it’s all about whatever gives you a competitive edge. Massages, yoga—whatever works.”

The locker room is quiet, almost still—no shouting, no exhortations. I say, “Good luck tonight,” to David Wilson in a whisper, as no one’s speaking loudly. The appropriate thing to say to an athlete before a contest is “Good luck.” Perhaps “break a leg” is the right thing to say to an actress before she steps on stage. In sports, it’s “Good luck tonight.”

Because sporting events are sometimes presented as morality plays, fans and sportscasters like the notion that triumph stems from personal heroism. Players and coaches are conscious of the role of luck in sports outcomes. After a loss, saying “we had bad luck” sounds like excuse-making, after a win saying “we had good luck” sounds like false modesty. But whenever a game is close, Lady Luck chooses the victor. Players and coaches get this; audiences and sports commentators may not.

That luck is discounted as a factor in sports mirrors the discounting of luck in society. Americans tend to believe one person became wealthy, and another poor, based entirely on each person’s merit. Few want to think that a major influence on life outcomes is simple luck. The rich don’t want to think that because it implies greater obligations to the poor, who don’t want to think that because it implies less hope they will rise from present circumstances.

The quiet turns to shouting as the players reach the tunnel. By the time they arrive at the sideline, the Hokies are pumped. O’Cain and Gray ascend to the press box; Foster and Stinespring stay on the sideline. Whether an assistant should coach from the sideline or the press box has long been debated. The press box affords an aerial view, what coaches call the A22 perspective—all twenty-two men on the field. But on the sideline a coach can ask players what they observed during the action, and players have a perspective available to no one else. Sometimes simply asking a player, “When we ran X, what did you see?” is the key that unlocks a game-winning call.

Because O’Cain relays the play call down to Stinespring, who relays it to the backup quarterbacks, who give hand signals to relay the call to Thomas, who relays the play to his teammates, the Virginia Tech system is clunky.

*   *   *

FINALLY, KICKOFF. ANYONE WHO ISN’T excited by a game of this import doesn’t like football.

Michigan plays a “zone read” offense, a football meme—unknown a decade ago, now common even in high school. In the basic zone read, the quarterback stands deep in the shotgun; one defensive lineman is deliberately left unblocked, allowing an extra blocker for other defenders; the quarterback holds the ball out to a running back; if the unblocked lineman goes for the running back, the quarterback keeps the ball and runs sideways; if the unblocked lineman keys on the quarterback, he hands the ball to the running back. When the zone-read option first appeared—many coaches claim paternity—it was unstoppable. Now defenses know how to handle this offense. But it’s still effective, especially with an elusive quarterback.

Michigan receives the opening kickoff and goes three and out, Virginia Tech stopping a series of zone-read runs. The Hokies take over at their 37, and eight plays later have first and goal on the Wolverines’ 4. This is a good omen. Virginia Tech is more comfortable playing with the lead—jumping ahead early, then applying defensive pressure—than coming back. Though any sports team would rather have the lead, some angle to exhaust opponents by the fourth quarter; Virginia Tech angles to strike early, then hold on.

On first and goal, Wilson takes a handoff and is hemmed in for what should have been a short loss. He has a brain freeze and sprints backward more than ten yards, trying to find a place to reverse field. Any purist in the stands covered his or her eyes, thinking, Never run backwards! Jim Brown, Barry Sanders and punt returner Dante Hall could profit by running backward; that is the entire historical inventory of football players who benefited by running toward their own goals. Earlier in the season, Wilson had been hemmed in, gone the wrong way, found a spot to reverse field and ended up with a 20-yard gain. Shane Beamer, Wilson’s position coach, winces as he sees Wilson try the same again: the Hokies were in first and goal, and now their top offensive player is sprinting in the wrong direction. Wilson wants to “make a play,” to do something flashy, and instead commits an error. The result is a 22-yard loss.

Now it’s second and goal on the 26—effectively, second and 26. Not many offenses have a play for that down and distance. The drive ends with a field goal, as third-string placekicker Justin Myer connects. Virginia Tech 3, Michigan 0.

Michigan takes the kickoff, and soon Robinson throws an interception to Kyle Fuller, who makes a stellar play. A gifted athlete, he is of average stature. You wouldn’t notice him if he walked by on the street.

Kyle’s older brother Vincent was a star for the Hokies and then played six seasons for the Tennessee Titans. Kyle’s older brother Corey is on the present Virginia Tech squad, later to be drafted by the Detroit Lions. Their younger brother Kendall, a much-sought high school senior, would commit to the Hokies. College coaches like to recruit brothers: once one brother has been in a program, he can help siblings prepare. Brothers Antoine and Derrick Hopkins are playing defensive tackle for Virginia Tech in the Sugar Bowl. They are nicknamed Hop and Skip; the Hokies hope to recruit their third brother, nicknamed Jump.

Virginia Tech moves the ball but is guilty of two penalties and soon faces third and 20. The Hokies rush to the line to quick-snap, and Thomas hits a 27-yard pass to Coale on a deep turn-in. Michigan seems surprised when the Hokies quick-snap on third and long. The Wolverine defensive back seems surprised by a white guy who attended a snobby private prep school—okay, he didn’t know the private prep school part—accelerating past.

Late on the possession, Thomas converts another third-and-long pass, but two runs gain little; the first quarter ends. Thomas tries a quarterback draw on third and 7 and is stopped. Myer hits a 43-yard field goal. In the NFL, 43 yards is viewed as routine; in college play, any field goal attempt beyond the 40 is an adventure. Virginia Tech 6, Michigan 0.

On the next Wolverines drive, Virginia Tech’s line gets a big sack on first down. Coaches call sacks and penalties “drive killers”—it’s hard to score on a drive with a negative-yardage play. Michigan punts, and Virginia Tech takes possession on its 26-yard line, leading by 6.

So far everything is going the Hokies’ way. Enthusiasm is high. I am standing on the sideline with two distinguished former Virginia Tech players, Bruce Smith, the Hall of Fame defensive end, and Antonio Freeman, a Pro Bowl wide receiver who started for the 1997 Packers team that won the Super Bowl. “This is going to be the Hokies’ night,” Smith says. “After this, no more talk about how Coach Beamer can’t win the big one.”

Thomas connects with Coale for another long gain. Josh Oglesby, the backup tailback, enters the game and snaps off two nice runs. That Wilson, a special talent, sometimes expects special treatment, while Oglesby is a straight-up team player, has led to slight tension in the locker room. Some of the Hokies would rather see Oglesby carry the ball.

Leading 6–0, the Hokies reach fourth and 1 on the Michigan 4. A field goal here makes the margin two scores, but a first down followed by a touchdown would be the early roundhouse punch that Virginia Tech seeks. There’s a 75 percent chance of converting a fourth and 1, so going for it is not a “huge gamble,” as sportscasters say, rather, playing the percentages. Besides if a team tries and fails in this situation, the opponent is pinned against his goal line.

On most football teams, the head coach makes the fourth-down decisions. Beamer decides to go for it. Seeing a specific hand signal, Thomas immediately breaks the huddle and runs the Hokies fast to the line of scrimmage. The call is the Brady sneak. On fourth and 1, Belichick, Yoda of NFL coaches, has been having Tom Brady rush the New England Patriots up to the line and quick-snap for a quarterback sneak, catching the defense not set. Thomas quick-snaps, dives forward and is stuffed for no gain.

Every previous time Virginia Tech had run this action during the season, it worked. But Michigan coaches had a month to put the microscope on Hokie game film and detected the Brady-sneak tendency. Virginia Tech coaches failed to anticipate this tendency would be noticed and had not designed a different fourth-and-1 play.

The stop invigorates the Wolverines. Michigan reaches midfield, where a sack creates third and 17. On this down, when all Virginia Tech needs is an incompletion, Robinson hits a 45-yard touchdown pass against a busted coverage. The Hokies’ secondary was confused about who had whom and left a man unguarded. Busted coverages occurred on the killer plays in the Clemson losses too. All teams, including the best NFL clubs, occasionally have busted coverages. When defenses try to create confusion by changing alignments one second before the opponent’s snap, the result may be that the defense confuses itself. Michigan 7, Virginia Tech 6.

The Wolverines kick off, and the ball sails to Tony Gregory, the player with the partial ACL tear. Michigan does not know that, but the play unfolds as if Michigan did. Gregory fields the kick, starts to run, is hit on his injured knee and fumbles: Wolverine recovery. Virginia Tech holds, and the Wolverines kick a field goal. Halftime score: Michigan 10, Virginia Tech 6.

*   *   *

IN THE LOCKER ROOM AT intermission, Goforth tells Gregory to take his pads off: he is done for the night. Gregory feels awful, having touched the ball exactly once and fumbled on national television. Teammates say nothing to him. No one yells nor consoles; they just say nothing.

The coaches huddle in a separate room for a few minutes, deciding on second-half tactics, then meet with players, by their positions. Foster, always emotional, is fired up and uses a chalkboard to show the defensive front how to foil Michigan’s blocking. But he speaks the clipped code of football so rapidly, it’s not clear if his charges can follow him. Newsome stands at the center of a circle of offensive linemen who are seated on folding chairs. He does not say much and looks worried. At halftime, coaches may be full of bluster or red-faced angry—these are standard conditions. When a coach simply looks worried, that’s not good.

Danny Coale, a senior and a leader, gives an agitated oration, reminding seniors this is the last time they will wear the Virginia Tech uniform, extolling them to go out as winners. “People remember the last thing that happens,” Beamer told me earlier. “If we win eleven games but lose the Sugar Bowl, all we will ever hear about is ‘Why didn’t you win that last game?’”

Coale shouts, “Never! Seniors, you will never wear these colors again! We need to finish this fight!”

A network stage manager sticks his head in the door to announce the teams are due back on the field.

*   *   *

FOR ALL THE ELECTRICITY AND testosterone of a big football game, teams can get drowsy at halftime. The signature play of the 2010 Super Bowl was the New Orleans Saints’ surprise onside kick to start the second half. The Indianapolis Colts seemed a bit drowsy and, for a critical instant, did not react. The Who had been the halftime act—multimillionaires who arrived by private jet screeching into the microphone, “Out here in the fields / I fight for my meals.” The Who’s sets were being rolled out the tunnel on the Colts’ end just before the second-half kickoff. Several Indianapolis players were watching the sets, not the Saints. It was a great time to call an onside.

Maybe Michigan is drowsy. Virginia Tech gets the second-half kickoff and soon faces fourth and 2 on its own 37. Beamer said in pregame meetings that he would call a fake punt in this situation, and considering halftime torpor on the Michigan side, this seems the perfect place. But with the Hokies defense performing well, Beamer decides to kick. Exum sacks the Michigan quarterback on a safety blitz—a high-risk, high-reward tactic—and soon Virginia Tech has the ball again.

Thomas throws an interception, his only mistake of the night. Interceptions temporarily demoralize a team. They not only cost possession of the ball, they broadcast the word mistake—the quarterback threw poorly, or the receiver went to the wrong place. Making a big, obvious mistake saps a team’s energy for a moment: Interceptions often result in a quick touchdown the other way. That happens. Michigan 17, Virginia Tech 6.

Mistakes can lead to resolve, and that also happens. The eyes of the Hokies’ players flash. David Wilson springs a long kickoff return, then the offense pounds the ball into the Michigan red zone. The drive leads to Virginia Tech facing fourth and 1. That’s the very down on which a quick sneak failed in the first half. Human nature makes coaches prone to think that whatever happened on fourth and 1 last time will happen again this time, though if a coin comes up heads ten times in a row, this tells nothing about what will happen on the next flip. Beamer doesn’t want to risk not scoring, and sends in the field-goal team. Michigan 17, Virginia Tech 9.

The eyes of defenders are flashing too: the Hokies force a Michigan three and out. Momentum—impossible to quantify, unmistakable when present—is a central aspect of team sports. The momentum has swung back to Virginia Tech.

The Hokies drive to the Michigan 35, where it’s fourth and 11. Sportscasters talk about the red zone; the opponent’s 35 is in the maroon zone, where it’s too far for a field goal but too close to punt. Beamer keeps his offense on the field, to go for the first down. Thomas drops back to pass, spies a lane where there are no defenders and takes off running. He’s hemmed in a few yards short of the line to gain, but uses his large frame to bull his way to the Michigan 22 for a first down.

The Virginia Tech sideline erupts. At its core, football is about muscle and determination. When a player makes a crucial first down on sheer effort, his teammates become emotional. Even Smith and Freeman, decades removed from wearing burnt orange and Chicago maroon, are fired up. The Hokies call their dark color Chicago maroon because when Virginia Tech’s predecessor school was established in the late nineteenth century, the University of Chicago was an athletic powerhouse, its maroon widely known as a symbol of sports prowess.

Virginia Tech reaches first and goal; consecutive rushes by Wilson and Thomas punch the ball across. Now trailing by 2, Beamer decides to go for a deuce. Marcus Davis—a junior wide receiver in the shadows of seniors Coale and Jarrett Boykin—snags a diving catch. Virginia Tech 17, Michigan 17.

The defense forces another quick Michigan three and out. For the night, Virginia Tech would outgain Michigan, 377 yards to 184 yards, and make ten more first downs. Both are significant edges.

Three snaps later, the Hokies face fourth and 1 on the Michigan 48—fourth and 1 for the third time in the contest. The game is tied with eight minutes showing in the fourth quarter.

Going for a first down is tempting—a strong chance of maintaining possession, with possession of the ball being more important to football success than field position. Plus a punt might roll into the end zone, netting not much in field position. Beamer decides to go for it, but makes a major miscalculation. He calls time-out, gathers the punt unit over to him, and heatedly gives instructions.

Fourth and 1 at midfield in the fourth quarter of a tie game—Michigan head coach Brady Hoke already suspects fake punt. In this situation, most head coaches in Hoke’s position would signal “safe,” calling a defense against a fake rather than setting up a return. With Beamer using a time-out to tell things to his punt unit, he has telegraphed that the play will be a fake. For a fake kick to work, the coach needs a poker face, acting as though nothing is happening.

Coale takes the snap on “rugby option,” starts to run and is surrounded so rapidly he can’t give up on the fake and just punt. Beamer should have left the offense on the field and let the regulars gain a yard. The Michigan sideline is jubilant. Momentum has shifted their way.

*   *   *

THE WOLVERINES DRIVE TO THE Virginia Tech 24. There the defense stiffens. Michigan goes short gain, short gain, incompletion, field goal. Michigan 20, Virginia Tech 17.

During the ensuing kickoff—the word ensue would fall out of usage were it not for sports events—Virginia Tech is called for holding. The result is Hokies’ ball on their 9, four minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. “The team is up against it,” as was said, or perhaps was said, in Knute Rockne’s perhaps-apocryphal 1928 speech about the Gipper.

Showing determination, Virginia Tech stages an 83-yard drive. Coale makes a dazzling 30-yard catch. Tight end Chris Drager catches for a first down. Tight ends are central to NFL offenses, especially at New England and New Orleans, but in college they rarely see the ball—Drager would end a fourteen-game season with sixteen receptions. Tight ends do their work short over the middle, and only expert quarterbacks, such as Tom Brady and Drew Brees, have the green light to throw short over the middle, where the danger of interception is high. College quarterbacks are coached to throw outs, quick screens and “fade” routes, where interceptions are less likely.

With the clock nearly expired, Thomas hits Boykin, who struggles toward a first down but is stopped at the Wolverines’ 8-yard line. Virginia Tech uses its final time-out.

The situation: fourth and 2 on the Michigan 8, five seconds remaining. The choice: kick a field goal to force overtime or go for the touchdown, one play to win or lose.

One play to gain eight yards is not a high-percentage call, especially inside the 10: the closer a football team gets to the goal line, the less territory the defense needs to protect. Near the goal line, with too little space for other kinds of patterns, football teams often run fades. The fade—what the San Francisco 49ers tried on fourth and goal from the Baltimore 5 at the end of the 2013 Super Bowl—is the hardest pass in football to defend. But it’s also the hardest pass to complete; few college offenses reliably can execute a goal-line fade.

Proceeding to overtime is a fifty-fifty proposition. Michigan has just defensed ten Virginia Tech snaps in rapid succession, from a fast-paced no-huddle. Wolverine defenders are visibly tired, chests heaving—“sucking air,” in sports slang. There’s a decent chance Virginia Tech could score a touchdown, and the clock would expire during the play, giving the Hokies their biggest bowl win in many moons.

Beamer decides to kick. He sees the choice as the near certainty of an overtime, versus wagering everything on one play to gain 8 yards. Nearly all college and NFL head coaches would kick in this situation, either owing to their calculation of the odds or to the knowledge that if they do the expected thing and kick, then the team loses later, the players will be blamed, while if they roll the dice for victory and fail, the head coach will be blamed. Myer drills the field goal: the third-string placekicker quietly has gone 4-for-4. Overtime at Virginia Tech 20, Michigan 20.

*   *   *

THE NFL LONG USED THE morbid phrase sudden death for overtime. Sudden victory would be better. The third (or sixth, depending on who’s counting) Stars Wars movie originally was titled Revenge of the Jedi, then rechristened Return of the Jedi, since the just do not seek revenge. Overtime needs the same kind of retitling.

But even a positive spin such as sudden victory sells short the intense pressure of overtime. Every once in a while, a football game is won on the final play; overtime games are always won on the final play, with one side jubilant, the other crushed. One side will know joy, and the other unhappiness, though when a football game goes to overtime, either might have prevailed on a different bounce of the ball. But all anyone will remember is the last thing that happens, who wins and who loses.

The college overtime format gives each side an equal number of possessions starting at the “downhill” 25, taking possession in range for a field goal. If the first team with the ball scores a touchdown the second must also score a touchdown, forcing another overtime, or the first wins. If the first team with the ball scores a field goal, the second wins by scoring a touchdown, or forces another overtime with a field goal. If the first team with the ball fails to score, the second team wins with a field goal. (On paper a safety also would do the trick, but a safety is nearly impossible in the NCAA overtime format; safeties have won overtime games in the NFL format.)

Captains go back out to the center of the field. There’s a new coin flip. Michigan wins and elects to make Virginia Tech take the ball first. Owing to different formats, NFL teams winning an overtime coin flip almost always choose first possession. In college, coaches would rather go second. That way, when their turn comes, they know whether they must score a touchdown or can settle for a field goal. Whoever goes first does not know this.

Unlike the game opening, with building music, then a kickoff, the Hokies simply line up on the Wolverines’ 25 and the referee gives the ready-to-play signal.

Two Wilson runs advance the ball to the 20. Now it’s third and 5. Conservative tactics would focus on the first down. But O’Cain calls a deep crossing pass, hoping to put the game away.

Coale makes a magnificent lunging catch at the back corner of the end zone. The line judge and the side judge, bracketing the play, have perfect position to see Coale’s hands and feet. Both signal touchdown. The building shakes.

*   *   *

WHEN THE TEAM WITH FIRST possession scores a touchdown in overtime, odds of victory are high. Freeman, the former Pro Bowl wide receiver, was standing on the play side at the team-box limit—the closest to the end zone that officials will allow those on the sideline—and had a clear view. He runs excitedly to the coaches, crying, “He caught it! Good catch! He was in bounds!”

The Virginia Tech point-after team is heading onto the field when the referee waves his arms and announces the dreaded phrase “The ruling on the previous play is under further review.” That redundant wording—“further review,” when there’s been no prior review—is for some reason mandated by the NCAA rulebook.

Bruce Smith, Virginia Tech’s member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, shouts at the referee that the catch was good. He’s partial, of course, but has some experience in these matters. Freeman, who has made many tiptoe sideline receptions, declares, “The key thing is both officials on the play said touchdown.” If one official signals touchdown and the other signals out of bounds, or one looks to the other unsure, anything might happen on review. When officials awarded victory to the Seahawks instead of the Packers on the final snap of the infamous 2012 Monday Night Football game, the whole mess began with one official signaling touchdown and the other signaling interception. But when two officials on the spot have clean views and both give the same signal, Freeman says, they’re always right.

Fans and boosters in the seats behind the Virginia Tech team bench are celebrating. During the live broadcast, the play was shown in slow motion five times, and each time announcers Brad Nessler and Todd Blackledge—the latter the seventh choice of the 1983 NFL draft—said the catch was good. “They’re not going to overturn this, it’s a touchdown,” Blackledge declared. But the Virginia Tech coaches are wary, knowing reviews can result in nasty surprises.

In the NFL, the referee—the head official, distinguished by a white cap—looks at replays from a monitor near the field and decides whether to uphold or reverse. In the NCAA, an extra official in the press box makes the review, then calls his decision down to the field; the referee has no role, other than announcing the booth official’s judgment. An NFL referee can factor what he saw on the field, at game speed, into his review of a challenged call. An NCAA booth official watches from high above, seeing a distant mass of bodies.

The review is taking a long time, which makes the Virginia Tech coaches nervous—sometimes a long review means the booth is first ruling on the result of the play, then determining where to spot the ball. If it’s a touchdown, there is no spot to determine. Referee Jay Stricherz walks onto the field and flips on his microphone: “After further review, the receiver did not maintain control of the ball as he hit the ground.”

Danny Coale seemed to make one of the best touchdowns in college football annals, a spectacular catch in the end zone in overtime of a BCS bowl. His catch would have been talked about by football aficionados for decades—given a nickname, added to every highlight reel. Suddenly it’s just a failed pass, listed in the game book as “Thomas incomplete to Coale,” the overturned touchdown not even mentioned.

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BOTH CUSTOM AND THE RULEBOOK say that a call on the field should be overturned only if clearly wrong. If the call only might be wrong, the call should stand. Supposing a play is ruled a touchdown on the field, and it’s not certain that ruling is correct, the touchdown should stand. Supposing the same play had, with equal uncertainty, been ruled out-of-bounds on the field, then the call of incompletion should stand. The NCAA rulebook reads: “To reverse an on-field ruling, the replay official must be convinced beyond all doubt by indisputable video evidence.” Of the present and former NCAA coaches and players with no connection to Virginia Tech to whom I have shown Coale’s play, two-thirds said it was a touchdown, one-third said the ball was bobbled. Because there was no “indisputable” evidence “beyond all doubt,” the call on the field should have stood.

The next morning Beamer would tell me, “The game happens so fast, officiating mistakes at game speed are inevitable. What bothered me was that the mistake was on a replay. The call was made correctly at game speed by both linesmen who were right where the play happened, then changed into a mistake by a replay guy who’s watching a tiny monitor. That’s what bothered me.”

*   *   *

NOW THE DOWN IS FOURTH and 5 on the Michigan 20. Beamer sends out the field-goal team, and Myer misses the short kick.

On the night, Myer hit four of five, and 80 percent accuracy is good for a college placekicker. But though Myer connected the first four times, he missed his last try—and what happens last is what gets remembered. Kyle Brotzman of Boise State kicked sixty-seven field goals, one of the best career totals ever in Division I. All anyone remembers is that in 2010, he missed a short attempt in overtime, disqualifying Boise State from a BCS bowl game.

Michigan runs into the line three times to improve position, then launches a short field goal from exactly the spot on the field where Virginia Tech just missed. Final: Michigan 23, Virginia Tech 20.

*   *   *

THE PLAYERS LOOK AS IF they’ve been hit by a truck. They wear stunned expressions; some are crying. Men should cry: about love, family, or fate—not about sports. But this is different. The Hokies thought they’d won a BCS bowl, and a faceless zebra locked in a booth took their triumph away. The players know they outperformed Michigan statistically by a wide margin. The scoreboard tells the only story anyone will remember.

In the locker room, Beamer walks from senior to senior, shaking hands. They will never wear the Virginia Tech colors again. A stage manager announces whom the media have requested for the interview area—this requires a rapid shower and change into nice clothes. After victory, it’s a thrill to be asked to the media area. After defeat, a burden.

Beamer moves to the center. In this commodious NFL locker room, there’s space to step back and form a circle. The players fall silent.

“Tonight, I am proud to stand with you and proud that you are part of my family,” Beamer says. “You gave your best—the rest was beyond your control. Each one of you will always be part of the Virginia Tech family. No matter what the future holds, I will always be proud of every one of you.”

That was his speech. No raised voice, no histrionics, no thrown chairs. Just an expression of father-figure pride.

At first I thought: If only the touchdown had counted, this would have been a perfect night for Frank Beamer. On reflection I realized it was a perfect night for Beamer. He’d coached a terrific winning season; his players and assistants abided by the rules, doing everything with their heads held high; in the spring, 75 percent of the senior players would graduate. Behaving conscientiously, the Hokies pulled up exactly one snap shy of a monster victory in one of the premier events in college athletics.

If every football program were run to values and standards shown by Virginia Tech’s, the sport would be just as exciting and popular, but no longer notorious.

The team had a few hours of fitful rest at the Hilton, then went to the airport to board a charter flight that touched down in Roanoke, closest field to Blacksburg with a runway long enough for a large jet. Buses arrived at Virginia Tech in late afternoon. The campus was quiet, with Christmas break in progress. Players could enjoy a few days without class, while the next morning, coaches would report to the athletic complex to watch film of potential high school recruits. The winter sun was already declining and fresh snow had fallen, accentuating the stillness. They were safely back in football’s Brigadoon.

The final chapter: The future of football.