football school? basketball school?

the beauty of being a uva graduate and sports fan is the ability to say to one's self that uva is a football, i mean basketball, no, football school.

after last night's 24-7 pummeling on national tv by georgia tech, i am very proud to say that we are officially now a basketball school.

who remembers the 2001-2002 football season, my first one as a student, when we barely beat richmond (yes, richmond, that's 1aa) by some ridiculous score of 16-13 or 13-10 or something barely squeaking by. i remember turning to my hallmates and we all agreed, "well, we're a basketball school!" although we might have missed the dance that year (and every year since) i'll remind everyone that we were ranked 4th in the country in both polls several weeks into the basketball season.

we also remember, of course, those years when pete's program went sour. but hey, i would just look to my friends and we would say, "well, we're a football school!" although we never went to a BCS bowl or won an ACC championship, i'll remind everybody that we did go to 4 straight bowl games and were ranked 6th in the country.

i mean seriously, who needs to have one dominant team (duke bb, carolina bb, fsu fb, miami fb)? you'd be bored the other half of the year...

this is the life of a uva fan - and i must admit it's quite a luxury. it's not quite the luxury of having both at the same time, but hey, when could duke or carolina ever say they were a football school? when could virginia tech or florida state ever say they were a basketball school? i hope that dave leitao and sean singletary know that, this season, they are carrying on their shoulders our proud football, wait i mean basketball, tradition.

and i hope, this time, they don't let us down. uva will be dancing this year. you heard it here first.