Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [339]
CHRIS FOWLER:
Virginia Tech obviously has had a close relationship with the college football unit and with GameDay since the late nineties. Very few other campuses are as close-knit, had the sense of unity, had the sense of pride that came from being somewhat isolated geographically, a little bit of an outsider, a latecomer to the landscape. So when you go there, you sense that, if your antenna is up at all, there’s something different about this place.
When the shootings happened, I didn’t like the national media coverage; I thought it was missing the point. I think that people who had parachuted in, descending upon Blacksburg, had no understanding of what they were doing. I don’t think it was being represented in a way that was all that informed.
Now, I’m an outsider, I’m not a Hokie. But I felt like I was qualified to write an essay expressing what I saw on the TV screen over those few days. And it wasn’t intended to be a healing thing for Virginia Tech. I would never presume to speak for them. I was just trying to explain to people that this isn’t just another campus, so when something like this happens here, it has a little bit of a different poignancy than even something that awful would have somewhere else.
I never had any kind of response to anything I’ve written like that. I mean, the comments that were made after the piece was posted, the way that it was getting virally spread around the community of the alums and students, and the responses that I got were unbelievable. It shook me up. My wife and I would sit there and read notes on it. I wasn’t trying to provide them medicine for their grief. But they really appreciated that perspective from an outsider. I still get comments.
GameDay going there was not a big part of the event. Being that together for the first time, in that big a number as a community after they’d been away all summer, that was the event, the pregame ceremony, the team running out, how [Virginia Tech football coach Frank] Beamer and the team chose to draw inspiration, and what it meant to have the football team on the field for those students—that was the thing. I was very proud of the collective effort and the sensibility that prevailed.
LEE CORSO:
I can describe College GameDay for you like this: in the studio, it’s like an actor who’s doing a TV show with a canned audience. There’s no audience, no feedback, no nothing. And then there’s the actor that goes on Broadway. He immediately gets a rush because he’s playing to an audience. That’s exactly the way it feels. And you know that actors will tell you they have to do Broadway every once in a while just to stay sharp.
It’s the most gratifying thing to be done at ESPN. Because you get instant reaction to the performance and that’s great stuff. College football is our vehicle, but we’re in the entertainment business. And once you lose that, you’re never going to make it.
KIRK HERBSTREIT:
My dad played at Ohio State. He was a captain there. So before I even went to Ohio State, I was probably more of an Ohio State fan than I was while I was at Ohio State as a player, and since leaving. Now, I’m not going to hide the fact or pretend that when the camera’s off I am not an Ohio State fan and that my four boys aren’t dressed every Saturday in their scarlet-and-gray jerseys and are at home with my wife singing the fight song when they wake up to breakfast. I mean, that’s just the way I am and that’s the way I always