One Reader Asks “How Did You Get The Nickname Hootie?”

Posted on Tuesday, Sep. 4, 2018, 5:00 pm by Jerry Ratcliffe

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The reader writes …

Question from Chris Brown: “Love the site. Living in the Charlotte area I am starved for UVa news. I was fortunate to graduate in 1990 with one year of season tickets that following fall for football.

Can Bronco and staff really recruit both Virginia and North Carolina? We had a pipeline from Winston-Salem and Charlotte to UVa for years that is gone (too many great players to name) while we have barely been able to recruit in 757 for over a decade.

The quote from Bear Bryant [used in last week’s Hootie’s Mailbag] is so right – there are some great players within a five-hour driving radius that we are not even in the room anymore.

Answer: Chris, thank you for your question and please spread the word about our site to your fellow Wahoos in Charlotte. I know there are many.

Those 1990 days were special for those who witnessed them. In my career here, the 1989 and 1990 seasons were some of the best times in Virginia athletics, coupled with the Ralph Sampson era in terms of fan interest and national media interest. Nothing else has duplicated that type of enthusiasm here.

As far as whether Bronco and staff can recruit the state and North Carolina like George Welsh’s staff did in those days remains to be seen. They are making an effort, but as I stated last week, it’s not easy bringing a near-entire staff cross country with no Virginia roots and effectively recruit the state overnight, let alone North Carolina.

Certainly that is one of the top goals on new AD Carla Williams’ agenda. She realizes that Virginia football will not move forward without better talent. Welsh mined both states for plenty of talent that moved on to the NFL. George will be the first to say that he couldn’t have done that without Virginia making the commitment to building the McCue Center, which helped show that UVa was serious about its football program.

That building is now outdated and cramped for football, which is why Carla Williams is drumming up support for a much-needed replacement. I really don’t think Virginia football can make the giant step everyone wants without this new support building, which will help attract better athletes, which will make the team better, which will win games and attract more athletes, and generate revenue for the entire athletic department. Virginia lags behind many of its fellow conference competitors, and shouldn’t.

Personally, and this is my opinion, I believe Virginia should reach out to Danny Wilmer, who recruited many of those great players from UVa and N.C. during that era, and talk to him about reestablishing those connections with high school coaches in both states. Danny still lives in Charlottesville and would love to help Virginia football.

I saw first hand how he built great relationships with high school coaches. I went on several recruiting trips with him back in the day and the high school coaches loved the guy.

I can remember several times that Danny would walk into a high school coach’s office and the first words out of his mouth were: “Coach, you have anyone on your team that can help us beat Florida State?”

He just had a great rapport with coaches. Recruiting is about building trust and that’s something I know Bronco and his staff are trying to do. But it takes time.

Question 2 from Chris Brown: It looks like Tony is starting to get higher-ranked recruits. Any perspective here?

Answer: I actually think the way Tony handled that post-game interview on national TV after the horrific loss to UMBC did more for Virginia basketball than reaching the Sweet 16 would have done from a national perspective.

I was on several sports talk shows around the nation the two weeks after that loss and that’s all people wanted to talk about, the class and poise and sincerity and perspective that Tony Bennett put on a monumental defeat. He gained incredible respect in the basketball world, only adding to the great impression people had of him before.

Believe me, high school prospects saw that, their coaches saw that, their mommas saw that.

On top of the post-game, Bennett has built one of the nation’s most consistent programs over the past five years. No matter whether you like the style of play or not, you can’t ignore what he has accomplished, and I believe the best is yet to come.

Oh, and he has proven some of the skeptics wrong, the ones who said you can’t go to Virginia and end up in the NBA. He destroyed that myth, so my prediction is that if Tony stays at UVa like Krzyzewski, Roy Williams, Dean Smith, Boeheim, remained at their respective institutions, he will join them in the Basketball Hall of Fame and will have tons of accomplishments on his resume to boot.

Question from Harold Drumheller: “Obviously, Perkins is a talented runner, but 13-24-1 for 185 (yards), and 2 TDs, and a pick six against an FCS team, which finished a very pedestrian 6-5 last year doesn’t jump out and wow anybody. Does Virginia have enough power up front to sustain a running game in the ACC until the passing game is ironed out?”

Answer: Good question, Harold. This Saturday’s game at Indiana might be a better indicator because it should be a step up in competition. We may not get a true gauge on that until the Louisville game on the 22nd.

It’s difficult to judge much from the Richmond game, although UVa certainly punched some holes in the Spiders’ defense.

What I expected was exactly what happened in terms of Bryce Perkins’ presence impacting the overall efficiency of the offense. I’ve always believed that an effective running quarterback can change so much because he puts pressure on the defense.

It wasn’t like the last two years when defenses knew that Benkert wasn’t going to run the ball, so they would load up the tackle box with an extra safety or two and outnumber Virginia’s blockers. There simply wasn’t enough bodies to unclog the rushing lanes, so Jordan Ellis didn’t have a hole.

I’ll never forget what Al Groh once told me: “All running backs run the same when there’s no hole.” Well, maybe with the exception of Herschel Walker (my opinion, not Al’s).

Because Perkins has the speed to get to the edge and rip off huge chunks of yardage, those safeties can’t afford the risk of staying in the tackle box, which takes some pressure off the O-Line, and opens the running lanes. They must respect the outside or get burned.

Certainly, ACC defenses will be more difficult to deal with, but I expect Perkins will improve his passing as the season progresses. He’s not going to turn into Peyton Manning over night, but he can become more efficient, particularly as he gets more familiar with his receivers.

If he doesn’t, then Virginia could become a little more one dimensional the opposite of last year.

Bronco said Saturday night that the blocking scheme is different than a year ago with more man principles than zone, at least in certain occasions. Still, the O-Line appears to be more physical than the last two seasons. The key is staying healthy.

Question from Steve Farrar: “The band played during our point after attempts at the UR game. Why in the world is the band allowed to play while we are running a play?

I think they did it every PAT. Did the rules change? I fear this could come back to haunt us.

As an aside, I thought the new DJ played his music too closely to the actual snap and while I appreciate trying to amp up the enthusiasm of the crowd, is any consideration give to communication issues with our team?

Answer: As far as I know, Steve, the rules have not changed. Bands, music, etc., are supposed to cease before teams start calling their signals. So, I’m assuming this is a situation that will be corrected by UVa officials.

Honestly, I did notice that happening once, but I don’t think it was during a PAT, so that could become a problem if not addressed.

I have kept up with rules changes and I don’t ever remember this one changing. I’m surprised game officials didn’t jump on this during the game.

I have reached out to UVa to find out more about this, so I will let you know what I find out.

Question from Erika: “How did Hootie get the name Hootie? I’m dying to know.

Answer: Well, I can tell you I owned it before the Blowfish came into existence.

I don’t know how interesting a story it is, but here goes:

My first job in the business was at a small town newspaper. We would put out three papers every Saturday night for three close knit cities. During the changeover in the printing press, my sports colleagues and I would head up to the roof of the building on summer nights and have a refreshment or two to kill time, because we had to proofread the sports sections when they came off the press to make sure there were no glaring errors.

The building was among the tallest in town, and so we would notice that the town police would do their rounds of the businesses in town, and we could see all over the town for several blocks from our perch.

Perhaps it was the refreshment or boredom late one night when I noticed the police on their rounds, and for some unknown reason, shouted out “Hootie Hoo.”

Well, at that time of night in a deserted downtown, my voice echoed all over town, down the alleyways and to the police. Immediately, the squad car’s old brakes screeched to a halt and the spotlight came on, searching for the culprit down the alleys.

Being the young journalists we were in those days, and smartasses to some degree, we got a kick out of it, and so repeated the “Hootie Hoo” call as the squad car continued on its rounds, stopping each time in hopes of discovering where the annoyance was coming from.

Well, this went on for the entire summer and into the fall, and became a weekly tradition.

So, once the fall ended and we stopped going up on the roof, we thought that was the end of it.

Until one day, I was sitting at my desk as a police officer came in, which wasn’t unusual. They would always come in and deliver a police report to one of our small staff’s reporters.

This time, though, he stopped at my desk. Told me I was under arrest and to step outside. I was befuddled and wondering what was going on. The officer asked me to get into the squad car and drove me the few blocks to the police station.

I don’t know if it was a holding cell or the real jail cell, but he put me in the cell and locked the door. I sat back there, sweating bullets for at least 15 to 20 minutes.

About that time, the officer came back and stood in front of the cell and didn’t say a word. Pretty soon, he was joined by about seven other officers. Then, the old police chief, who would later become a future neighbor of mine, a rather rotund gentleman, waddled back to the cell.

Each one of the policemen looked at each other and in perfect sycranation, shouted: “Hootie Hoo!!!”

They started laughing, and so did I, more in relief than anything else. The chief unlocked the door and said, “You sumbitch, that’s all we talked about for months was catching whoever it was yelling all over town every Saturday night.”

Apparently it had become quite a thing.

Anyways, the word spread throughout the sportswriting fraternity to the point that anytime I showed up in a football press box for several years afterward, several of my colleagues with shout out, “Hootie Hoo.”

Shortened to Hootie, or Hoots, and no more shouting in the press box … well, maybe every now and then.

That’s the story. Now you know.

Hootie Hoo.