Great Scott! Hootie Hit 88 Miles Per Hour…

One of the features that will become regular on JerryRatcliffe.com is “Hootie’s Way Back Machine,” when I climb into our company’s time machine and visit a memorable moment in Virginia sports history.

For anyone unaware, yes, my nickname is Hootie, something I’ve had long before the Blowfish came into existence.

So here is the first installment. Come along with me, but as our friend Rod Mullins in the Southwest corner of the state reminds us, remember that we have to hit 88 mph on the keyboard before the flux capacitor will start. And try not to interact with yourself or others as it will upset the space-time continuum.

Fasten your seat belts, because where we’re going, there are no roads ….

September 23, 1961.

Virginia football coach Bill Elias had just gone to bed around 11 p.m. that Saturday night when a car horn interrupted the silence. The driver relentlessly blew the horn until Elias decided to see what was going on.

As the coach opened the front door, the horn suddenly stopped. Elias looked down and spotted a piece of paper that had been slipped under the door.

“I can’t remember what was written on the paper word for word,” Elias told me in an interview in the late 1980s, “it was something about doing a good job without making any concessions.”

The message had been placed by the Seven Society, UVa’s most secretive of its secret societies, as the content was referring to what Elias, in his first year as the Cavaliers’ head football coach, had accomplished earlier that day.

Virginia had beaten William & Mary, 21-6 at Scott Stadium, ending three seasons of frustration and a 28-game losing streak that had tied Kansas State for the nation’s longest losing streak.

Elias had come to Charlottesville after serving as head coach at George Washington. He inherited a UVa program that was underfunded and well below the number of scholarships allowed by other ACC schools. Prior to his arrival, the Wahoos had gone 1-9 in 1958 (winning the second game of the season against Duke), 0-10 in 1959, and 0-10 in 1960.

Elias was determined to end the streak and turn Virginia’s football fortunes around.

I will never forget the story he told me about his first pep talk to the UVa team just before the Cavaliers took the field to face W&M in the season opener. His talk was disastrous.

“The thing that has stuck with me all these years wasn’t the fact that we won, but the fact that in the dressing room before we went out on the field that day, I said to the team: ‘You may not believe this, but you’re going to come off the field a winner today.’ And they laughed at me. All of them burst into laughter,” Elias said.

“Well, I had planned on saying a lot more but I figured I had better stop right there.”

The players weren’t the only ones filled with self doubt. So were the fans, who had become accustomed to watching their team lose.

In fact, one fan came to the game with a banner that read: “Let’s Break the Record,” meaning he was pulling for the Cavaliers to lose so they could break Kansas State’s national streak.

Elias, who passed away in 1998 at the age of 75, believed that his team could end the streak after noticing during spring practice that there was some talent on the team. He just had to convince them they could win.

As the game progressed that day against the Indians (William & Mary’s original nickname), the coach couldn’t help but notice that his players began to realize they could end the streak.

“They were standing taller and it wasn’t long before the people in the stands got behind us,” Elias said.

When it was over and the Cavaliers prevailed, the players hoisted their new coach onto their shoulders and carried him off the field.

“I thought they were going to give me my weight in gold,” Elias chuckled.

What they gave him was almost as good, three more wins that season, including a stunning upset over bowl-bound Maryland. The Terps were 7-2 heading into Charlottesville and all they had to do was beat Virginia for an invitation to the Gator Bowl.

The Cavaliers shocked the Terrapins, 28-16, and knocked Maryland out of any consideration for a bowl bid.

Elias insisted that the fad of waving white hankies and white towels was created that day at Scott Stadium. Wahoo fans chanted “bye, bye Gator Bowl,” and waved those hankies and towels until the Terps left the field at game’s end.

Elias’ UVa teams went 4-6 (1961), 5-5 (‘62), 2-7-1 (‘63), and 5-5 (‘64) before he accepted the head coaching job at the U.S. Naval Academy.

One of the few pieces of memorabilia that Elias kept from his time in Charlottesville over the years was that piece of paper slipped under his door.

That was worth its weight in gold.