Story Links
Aug. 5, 2004
It was only August 4th.
Newly hired University of Virginia Associate Director of Marketing and Promotions, Hunter Yurachek, thought he would give Cavalier football fans a preview of things to come. You know, a meet the team type of thing with a few of the Cavaliers showing up at a local mall to sign an autograph or two.
Talk about a preview.
Over 200 people clad in orange, Wahoo hats, and some even supporting V-Sabre tattoos, patiently waited in line to meet Darryl Blackstock, Jermaine Hardy, Elton Brown, Connor Hughes, Marques Hagans, and Heath Miller.
You thought last year the Asian flu spread. Orange fever is catching up with a lot of people nowadays.
Sporting the new “Orange Fever” t-shirts, the six Cavs who killed part of their evening signing posters, mini helmets, pennants, and anything else that wasn’t nailed down couldn’t believe the reception.
“I almost felt like tears,” Hagans, Wahoo quarterback said. “This is really great for all these people to be out here. We appreciate the fans more than they know and I think we are really starting to build something here.”
The line of fans stretched past three or four store fronts and all they wanted to do was talk football. As the line moved past the table where the players were sitting the comments and questions came at a breakneck pace.
“How do you think you guys are gonna do?”
“Connor, how far can you kick a football?”
“Darryl…is the defense gonna be as good as everyone is saying?”
“Jermaine, how’s the knee?”
Yurachek said he never really got this kind of crowd when he traveled this promotion in Winston-Salem while working for Wake Forest.
“This tells me a lot,” Yurachek said while watching the line move past the players who were crowded at two tables. “Virginia fans are pretty passionate about their team and I can’t blame them. Now all we have to do is win.”
That’s part of it. When you build it, they will come. Head coach Al Groh has done a magnificent job reconstructing the team as well as the attitude. When the Cavaliers’ head man began preaching “culture” and wearing orange to work as well as to the Carl Smith Center…fans bought into it. One retailer told me he had ordered more orange shirts and outerwear than ever before…there is simply a demand for it now. Orange golf shirts, pants, scarves, even underwear are now being stocked in department and specialty stores.
“We’re not the suit and tie team like we used to be,” quipped UVA’s All America candidate at right guard, Elton Brown. “I’m seeing orange everywhere. It really shows how people are taking to us and I can’t get enough of it.”
The fans can’t either.
Football notes
** Jermaine Hardy, Cavalier safety who missed all of the 2004 spring drills while recuperating from a knee injury, reported this week the knee is fine and he is 100% heading into fall camp. Hardy, who made four tackles in the Continental Tire Bowl against Pittsburgh last year, heads into 2004 with five career interceptions, tops among active Wahoos.
** UVA placekicker and All America candidate Connor Hughes took some time off this summer from kicking to rest his leg in preparation for the ’04 campaign.”It’s a little like golf. There comes a time when you have to put down the clubs, and I just needed to stop kicking for awhile,” he said. Hughes returns this year as one of the top kickers in the nation hitting all 40 extra points last year and 23 of 25 field goals. The Williamsburg, Virginia native is the only Cavalier kicker to hit more than one field goal over fifty yards in the same season last year when he nailed three.
** Over the past three years, Virginia has saved some of its best football for last. Coming down to the final months, November and December, Al Groh and his team are 8-2.
** While offense sells tickets, defense wins championships. Last year UVA’s “Orange Crush” gave up only 20 points per game…a four point drop from a year ago. Opponents converted first downs at only a 35% rate and UVA’s 3-4 alignment produced 27 sacks…fifteen more than the opponents. In the last six quarters of the last two games of 2003…Virginia Tech and Pittsburgh scored only three touchdowns…and only 23 points.
Catch the fever!!