All Kindsa News About Former Hokies

Here's some news about former Hokies that I've been able to piece together from the Roanoke Times and television reports:

• Dwayne Thomas has torn his ACL and will have to put his plans to play in the NFL on hold for a while. Apparently, new Tampa Bay Bucs coach Tony Dungy loved Thomas's abilities to catch the ball out of the backfield and had assured Thomas that he was a virtual lock to make the team. Then Thomas tore his knee up playing a simple game of catch with Jermaine Holmes. Bummer. The good news is that Thomas is rehabbing in Blacksburg and now has the time to take a few last classes that he needs in order to finish up his degree (remember, Thomas did not redshirt, so he was only here four years).
• Speaking of the Tampa Bay Bucs, former Hokie punter Robbie Collie has signed a free agent contract with the Bucs. Collie was in San Francisco two years ago, was later cut, and kicked with a semi-pro team in Roanoke last year.
• Maurice Deshazo has been cut from his CFL team and has returned to Christiansburg, where he will now sell cars for a living. One positive thing to say about that is that the team had the brains to cut former UVa (ugh) quarterback Shawn Moore at the same time.
• Bryan Still has signed a three-year contract with San Diego. Terms not disclosed.
• Tyrone Drakeford is apparently in line for a starting job in San Francisco's defensive backfield. Drakeford's main competition for the job, Eric Davis, has been let go by the Niners.

Let's Put This SEC Thing to Bed

Dave Braine officially laid the Tech-SEC rumors to rest in today's edition of The Roanoke Times. Braine says that there's nothing going on, but he did mention that he always, always, always campaigns to get the Hokies into the Big East, SEC, or ACC whenever he meets up with their commissioners.

Along those lines, I used to worry (A LOT) about Tech getting booted out of the Big East football conference if, say, Notre Dame wanted Big East football membership and the Big East powers took that as an opportunity to dump Tech's "small market" for Notre Dame's "big market" (don't go crazy; I don't think that's actually going to happen. It's just an example). But now that we've won the Big East and the Sugar Bowl and have established ourselves as a national force (for now), I'm not as nervous about it. I think that if the conference memberships were to start shifting again, for whatever reason, that Tech is enough of a player now that we would wind up somewhere good.

But you never know. My advice is to live it up, Hokie fans, and enjoy things like the Sugar Bowl while they last, because nobody knows where we'll all be 10 years from now. Heck, who would have imagined back in 1986 that there would ever be a Big East football conference, and if so, that we'd be a part of it?

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