Groh bashers only tell part of the story

Regardless of what transpires over the next 24 hours in terms of Virginia football, there are a few things that need to be said.

For those who tend to live on the negative side, then you should skip on to something else.

I’m not a Virginia alum. My allegiances as a fan have rested with a school in the Deep South since I was old enough to watch football. I’m paid to be an impartial observer of UVa athletics, something I’ve done since 1982.

I was at the press conference when George Welsh was introduced as coach and have missed only two games since. Over the years, I’ve gained a lot of insight and inside knowledge from Welsh, his assistants, and Al Groh and his staff, stuff that most people aren’t privy.

That’s why I find it necessary to defend Groh in this column today. Yes, I do like Groh. I think he’s a good coach and I believe he will get things going again at UVa.

I’m sure that many of you don’t agree and will be inclined to rip me on the message boards and send me nasty e-mails. Go ahead — I’m accustomed to such negativity. I learned a long time ago that no matter where you went to school, that class didn’t automatically come with a degree.

Poisonous atmosphere

To avoid any confusion, I’m not lumping all Virginia fans together. However, in the 26 seasons I have covered UVa athletics, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen so much negativity.

I’ve covered five other major colleges in my career and never witnessed so much of it.

I knew things had to be bad when one former UVa All-American came up and said that he preferred playing road games because the atmosphere at Scott Stadium was so negative.

After all that Welsh did for UVa and the football program — essentially performing a coaching miracle — I still can’t believe the way many fans treated him the last few seasons of his career. George is as tough as they come, and that bothered him.

Sure, Groh’s team just finished 5-7. However, let’s look at two key factors.

Scrambling for a QB

First of all, he had to play the season with essentially the team’s third-string quarterback. Now, I’m not throwing Marc Verica under the bus. I really like the kid. What he did accomplish was impressive. But as I wrote during that success, he was due for some bad days because he was a rookie and hadn’t gone through the process.

Ask any head coach in the country what their season would have been like this year if they had lost their top two quarterbacks and had to essentially go back to the drawing board.

I did.

The few I talked to said they were amazed that Groh could win a single game after that happened — let alone four, two of them against ranked teams (I still believe Georgia Tech is the best team in the ACC).

I firmly believe that had Jameel Sewell or Pete Lalich been around for the whole season, the Cavs would have been in the ACC Championship game Saturday.

The fact that UVa went 5-7 against what was ranked by Sagarin as the toughest schedule in the nation should not be ignored. If you watched football yesterday, you would have noted that Virginia gave ACC champ Virginia Tech a better game in Blacksburg than Boston College did in Tampa.

You might have also noticed that East Carolina won the Conference USA championship and that Richmond hammered defending FCS champion Appalachian State. Oh, and Southern California kept on rolling.

Speaking of USC, give Groh some credit. After the VAF and athletic department created tons of ill will among a segment of its fan base with its reseating of Scott Stadium, one of the lures or remedies was to schedule the Trojans in order to create some excitement and draw fans.

The Cavs had practically no chance of winning. Had Groh not been a team player and instead scheduled teams like Clemson and some other schools chose to play, sure wins, the Cavs would have been bowl eligible regardless of what happened down the stretch.

I also asked some head coaches about that. One of them said, “I didn’t see a whole lot of people lining up to schedule USC.”

Those are two huge factors that can turn any team’s season.

Meanwhile, fans are complaining about Groh’s record over eight seasons: 56-44 with a 3-2 bowl record that’s a lot closer to 5-0 than some may think. That’s an average of seven wins a year.

Welsh’s last eight seasons saw the Cavs win 61 games, or an average of 7.6 wins per year, and a 2-5 bowl record.

Now, if Welsh, who is considered one of the top coaches in college football history (he’s in the Hall of Fame) couldn’t average more than 7.6, tell me who could?

Virginia tried its best to get Mark Richt to come here after George retired, and Richt and his wife loved Charlottesville, the University, but he realized that under the conditions that weren’t likely to change, he could rarely win more than eight games a year here. Yes, that’s fact, not fiction.

Then we keep hearing all the comparisons and frustration about losing to Virginia Tech. Well, who doesn’t lose to Tech?

Give Frank Beamer credit. He’s got an incredible program going and he’s a surefire Hall of Famer himself. Plus, he has one of the nation’s top assistants in Bud Foster, who has made a difference.

UVa is 1-7 vs. Tech during the Groh era, although last week’s results indicate there’s not that much separating the two programs at the current moment.

Here’s how the rest of the ACC has done against the Hokies: Duke 0-5; N.C. State 1-1; Wake Forest 0-2 (Deacons coach Jim Grobe was last year’s national coach of the year); Georgia Tech 1-4; UNC 0-5; Maryland 0-3; Florida State 2-1; Clemson 0-2. BC and Miami are expansion teams but BC owns a 4-5 record against Tech since ‘01, while Miami is 4-4.

Virginia fans like to throw academics in the face of their opponents, so the fact that the Cavaliers can’t always get their choice of athletes or keep them for that matter due to academics can’t be ignored either.

I’m not poking fun of Virginia Tech here, but there are differences. The fact that any kid goes to college and betters themselves is terrific. However, if you’re a recruit and you can go to Tech and choose an easier major and play in front of a more enthusiastic crowd, which would you choose?

Of Tech’s starting 22 players, 10 of them list their course study as “apparel, housing and resource management.” Again, I’m not saying that’s bad. I’m saying it’s different.

Getting back to the quarterback thing. If you’ll look at the last 25 years or so of UVa football, then you might notice that in all of the seasons that the Cavaliers won eight or more games, there was a pretty good quarterback running the show: Don Majkowski (‘84); Scott Secules (‘87, he led the ACC in passing); Shawn Moore (‘89 and ‘90); Matt Blundin (‘91, he led the ACC in passing); Mike Groh (‘94 ... led the ACC, and ‘95); Aaron Brooks (‘98); Matt Schaub (‘02 and ‘03); Marques Hagans (‘04) and Sewell last season.

Lesson: when you have a quality quarterback, things usually go well. When you don’t ...

Groh has also been handicapped by the early entrance deal. Virginia is the only ACC school that discourages it (although one guy seems to be squeezing through this time around). Several of the other ACC schools sign well over the 25-recruit limit, and believe me, it makes a difference.

Groh runs a clean program and gets rid of troublemakers. Some schools keep them on the team.

UVa’s recruiting seems to be improving in the Commonwealth. If you have been paying attention, several coaches have said that Groh is doing a good job and are sending players his way.

Howie Long, Todd Lalich (Pete’s father) and Tiki Barber have all sang Groh’s praise over the past 12 months. Those aren’t bad endorsements.

And, please, give me a break on the sign ban thing at Scott Stadium. Groh had nothing to do with that, any more than he had anything to do with the reseating of the stadium. That blame falls elsewhere.

Then there’s the matter of expectations.

Why do you think Virginia is the only school in the ACC (pre-expansion) that has not won an outright league championship in football or men’s basketball since 1976?

It’s not coaching.

That’s a column for another day.

In the meantime, it makes me wonder what might happen if the Virginia fan base got behind Groh the way Tech fans have supported Beamer all these years. Something positive just might happen.