At least they won. Bad teams find a way to lose games, and that is exactly what Temple did last Saturday, kicking away a chance for a second overtime and allowing Virginia Tech to escape Lincoln Financial Field with the most narrow of victories. This wasn't just any run-of-the mill bad Temple team, either. This group of Owls came into the game with a 1-8 record punctuated by a loss to I-AA Villanova.

They were 0-4 in the Big East, having lost their previous four games by a 58-161 aggregate and holding the distinction of ending Rutgers� three-year, twenty-five game conference losing streak only two weeks earlier by a 14-30 score on the same field where they made fourth quarter life so tough for Tech. There was nothing in the altogether woeful performances turned in by Temple so far this season that gave any indication they could throw such a scare into a Tech team that had, only 3 � weeks earlier, been sniffing around the very top of the rankings. But they did, taking Tech into overtime and only allowing the Hokies to escape by the skin of their teeth.

This would have been yet another in what has become a lengthy list of Tech losses to huge underdogs during the Frank Beamer era. A loss to a Temple team that is playing out the string not of only another lost season but its time as a DI-A program would have likely been the worst of Beamer�s time at Tech. It could have meant the same in a negative manner as the 1995 win over Miami did in a positive one. It would have affixed the �fraud� label so securely to Tech that it would take years of concentrated effort to remove. The consequences being contemplated by those Hokie fans pacing in front of their radios Saturday afternoon were entirely too grim, as a very different future than what we would very much like to envision was flashing before our collective mind�s eye.

But Tech did not lose. The Temple kicker might have handed the win to Tech, but it was a win nonetheless. Tech�s record is 8-2 and they remain perched just outside the Top Ten, not 7-3 and the butt of jokes by every sports commentator in the civilized world. Take a very deep breath and repeat ten times: It was a Tech win. Feel better? It was a close call but that is all it was. Tech won the game.

I did not see the Tech-Temple game and am always reluctant to comment on what I did not personally observe. Therefore, I won�t. I will not speculate on how Tech managed to blow a seventeen-point fourth quarter lead to Temple, of all people. I will have no comment on what seems to be the company line coming out of Tech, that one player, Walter Washington, was able to wreak such havoc on a Tech defense whose coaching staff had no answer. I will not remark on how it appears that the Tech offensive staff has so badly bungled the quarterback situation that both Bryan Randall and Marcus Vick seem to have lost their confidence due to the constant shuffling. I did not see it and thus have no opinion on what I heard Saturday from Bill Roth, that Tech�s passing game is so lightly-regarded that even the likes of a 1-8 Temple team that gives up points by the bushel was able to cram an eight-man front onto the line and not be lit up through the air. Since I was not there I will not point out that yet again Tech brought what sounded a lot like a poor effort to a game against a lightly-regarded opponent, something that happens over and over again. I was not there and didn�t see it for myself so I will provide no commentary.

What I will do, as I tend to, is take one of the standard comments from Tech, that this was just one of those things, again, and move on to the next game. This Saturday�s game against Fredo will mark the seventy-seventh and last Big East conference game for Tech. In the previous 76 games, Tech has amassed a record of 55-21. Since the onset of Big East round-robin play in 1993, Tech is the only team to have compiled a winning record against every other BE team, and is obviously the only conference member that can make that claim. Sorry, Miami, but we won six of eleven.

The mark against Fredo is 8-2, and Tech has won the last seven. This is a winning streak that very much needs to continue. Tech has faced in the past few weeks WVU and Pitt, places where the game against Tech was approached as a holy crusade [certainly not a patriotic one] by the folks who will soon be left behind by those of us heading to brighter conference futures. While the shoe is not totally on the other foot in this game, as we managed to beat Fredo to the ACC, it is close enough. Tech surrendered serious emotional advantages to WVU and Pitt; this is as close as we are going to get to gaining one.

This is Fredo we will be playing Saturday. These are the people who conspired to drop Tech�s football and other athletic programs down the rat hole of the L�il E. It was Fredo who made the initial contacts and conducted the secret meetings with the ACC. This is the dim-witted clown who served as Donna Shalala�s stooge during the early ACC expansion process. It was Fredo who laid the groundwork to have Tech faced with a future of games against Louisville and a Directional Florida.

That Fredo was played for a fool by Shalala and ditched at the very instant she found it convenient to do so, and only wormed his way into the ACC because the conference needed twelve and I did not possess a veto, matters not a whit. These are the guys who, when left behind in the first expansion declared such allegiance to the L�il E that they agreed to a huge exit fee only to escape right along with the rest of us and now claim that their promises to what will eventually be their former conference should not be binding because they are liars.

There was and is no opponent on our 2003 schedule for whom I have greater contempt, including Miami. No one acted more unethically during the entire expansion mess than Fredo. This is an opponent truly worthy of Hokie disrespect. That he has been designated our permanent rival in the other ACC division demonstrates to me that John Swofford and the boys at ACC headquarters have a real sense of humor about things.

Tech is playing a huge game Saturday. The team needs another large gathering to support the team at the Will Walk and a packed and enthusiastic Lane Stadium cheering them on and sending the seniors out on a positive note. Tech still has much to play for in the remaining two games of this season: another ten-win year, another New Year�s Day Gator Bowl, retention of the Commonwealth Cup and beating to a pulp a Fredo team whose administration declared war on Tech.

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