NCAA: Hokies Will Be OK Without Vick

Here’s a hunch: the football program at a certain university in Blacksburg, Virginia, will not shut down between now and September.

You could be forgiven for thinking otherwise, if you’re just a casual observer of all things college football. The announcement that Virginia Tech redshirt sophomore quarterback Michael Vick, after much vacillation, was declaring for the NFL draft is being characterized as near-apocalyptic news.

Make no mistake: Michael Vick was a great college football player. Quarterback is arguably the most important position on the field, offense or defense, and even if Vick wasn’t spectacular on every single play, he had the potential to be. Defenses going against him had to be ready for virtually anything on virtually any play, and Vick’s dangerous athleticism was a goodly portion of the reason why Virginia Tech was 22-2 over the past two seasons.

But college football is played with teams. Vick was just one player. Hokie fans should realize that and move on. He may have shed a tear or two at Vick’s press conference, but you can bet Head Coach Frank Beamer is spending more time looking ahead than back.

With Vick back for another year (and certainly his last, if he hadn’t declared for this year), the Hokies would have started the 2001 season ranked in the top five, perhaps in the top two. Vick would have given them 16 experienced starters for their next edition. RB Lee Suggs and WR Andre Davis, Tech’s other two key offensive players, are already set to put the Hokie colors on again next fall, and adding Vick back into the mix would have put Virginia Tech on the fast track for the Rose Bowl.

Because Vick was so athletic, and so frequently electrifying, next year’s Virginia Tech team now looks like bread without the yeast or a plane without the wings to some people. But it pays to remember something about Michael Vick: he’s eligible for the pros after starting just two years because he is a redshirt player, meaning that early in his career he was perceived in some way as inferior, not ready to lead the Hokies. Vick’s exploits have been so revered over the last two seasons that he’s almost become legend, but that legend has some humble beginnings.

He had a notable prep career in Virginia, but much of the country had heard little of Vick until the last part of the 1999 college season. His virtuoso performance in the Sugar Bowl in January 2000 was his formal introduction to much of the country, even though he’d finished third in Heisman balloting a month before.

Riddle me this: if a player of Vick’s obvious skills could sneak into Heisman trophy consideration and the national championship game under much of the nation’s radar, isn’t there at least a possibility that there is a better player out there somewhere? And maybe that player is ready to put on the burnt orange and Chicago maroon of Virginia Tech. Maybe not, but at least there’s a chance.

So Virginia Tech’s hole is an opportunity for someone else, some other player we haven’t yet heard about, who right now is lifting weights or watching film or working on throwing drills or running sprints.

Virginia Tech can find one of the best object lessons in how to deal with the loss of a superstar just a short distance to the south and west, just over the spine of the Smoky Mountains in Knoxville. The parallels between Virginia Tech’s ’01 team and the 1998 Tennessee Volunteers are already striking.

Remember Peyton Manning? Sure you do. The SEC’s all-time leading quarterback and likely the most revered player ever to wear Tennessee Volunteer orange. Now an All-Pro with the Indianapolis Colts, Manning won the adulation of an entire state by doing the anti-Vick and using up every year of his eligibility at UT.

For four seasons Manning was the Tennessee quarterback. For three of those, his name was strongly linked to the Heisman Trophy, along with qualifiers like All-SEC and All-America. Manning’s Tennessee teams were good—the Vols went to four bowls, winning three (coincidentally enough, Manning’s first bowl win came over Virginia Tech), and Tennessee was 32-5 over Manning’s last three years.

The Volunteers won a SEC championship in 1997, Manning’s final year. But even though they won far more than they lost during Manning’s career, they never captured a national championship with him under center.

The year after Manning traded orange for Indianapolis blue and millions of dollars, Tennessee went 13-0, repeated as SEC champs, and went on to beat Florida State for the national title. The Tennessee team that won the national crown in 1998 was largely similar, personnel- and coaching-wise, to the last team quarterbacked by Peyton Manning—except, of course, for Manning.

Manning was a different type of player than Vick—a film room resident and drop-back passer, as opposed to the more instinctive, fluid style evinced by the erstwhile Hokie. But the lesson is still valid, and the lesson is this: the truth is that having a superstar on your team can be both a blessing and a curse.

Peyton Manning was a great college quarterback, and the problem was that his teammates knew it just as well as the press and NFL scouts did. Too often, Tennessee would get itself into a jam with poor or uninspired play, expecting Manning to lead them to back to victory. Sometimes he could do that. But football is a team sport, and at least five times Manning’s best efforts—most often, against Florida—weren’t enough. Call it the starstruck syndrome—if a player is a good as Manning, or Michael Vick, sometimes his own teammates just want to watch him perform, because the next great play might be just a few seconds away. They never panic, because they feel with their star on the field, they’re always just a play or so away from deliverance.

1998’s Tennessee team lacked a great quarterback, but Manning’s successor Tee Martin was just solid and stable enough to lead a more cohesive and less starstruck Volunteer team to the mythical national crown. Without their superstar QB, the rest of the Tennessee team knew they had to elevate their play, and they did. Will Michael Vick’s successor be good enough and next year’s team smart enough and together enough to accomplish the same? That remains to be seen. But in the meantime, Hokie fans shouldn’t contemplate ritual mass suicide. The rest of Beamer’s cupboard is hardly bare.

A bit of magic has been lost, but that’s all. Vick was great. Now he’s gone. Life after Vick begins now for Virginia Tech, and only someone totally uninitiated with team sports would assume the program has no chance to continue its recent success without him.