Shane Beamer Faces Emotional Showdown Against Virginia Tech

Shane Beamer is bracing for his first chance to see life from the other sideline, and it promises to be an emotional moment.

On Aug. 27, Beamer will be on Georgia Tech’s side as a graduate assistant when the Yellow Jackets open at Virginia Tech, coached by Shane’s father, Frank.

“Not a day goes by when I don’t think about what it will be like,” said Shane Beamer, the Hokies’ long snapper/wide receiver for four years before leaving Blacksburg, Va., for Atlanta.

“I’ve tried to envision every scenario possible. Who will win, what it will be like with those guys, my friends, coming through the tunnel. . . . And me being on the other sideline watching, wanting them to win, but wanting us to win, too.”

And what about when you spot your father?

“It will be very emotional,” he said. “Tears? I’d say there’s a good possibility of that.”

Frank Beamer is anxious, too.

“He’s at a great place, with an excellent coaching staff,” Beamer said. “The tough part is we have to start out playing each other. I sure don’t like to play with my son on the other side, but we’ll do what we have to do.”

Shane Beamer, 23, has a few friends at Georgia Tech. Coach George O’Leary and the Beamers are longtime pals--they own homes within shouting distance on Lake Oconee, about 70 miles east of Atlanta. Ralph Friedgen, the Yellow Jackets’ offensive coordinator, and Frank Beamer go back to the days when they were graduate assistants together at Maryland in 1972, and then assistants at The Citadel.

With his knowledge of the Hokies’ offense run by Heisman Trophy favorite Michael Vick, will he give the Yellow Jackets inside information?

“My dad and I are competitive people, but I’m only a grad assistant working with the strength program,” Shane Beamer said. “I’ll kind of take a back seat when it comes to that. I’ll do what I can to help us win, but we do have coaches who know a lot more than I do.”

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CHECK BACK ON JAN. 4: Here’s a rundown of Top 5’s from several annual major college football publications:

Associated Press--1. Nebraska, 2. Florida State, 3. Alabama, 4. Wisconsin, 5. Miami.

Athlon Sports--1. Florida State, 2. Nebraska, 3. Alabama, 4. Michigan, 5. Wisconsin.

Blue Ribbon Yearbook--1. Nebraska, 2. Florida State, 3. Alabama, 4. Michigan, 5. Miami.

ESPN The Magazine--1. Florida State, 2. Nebraska, 3. Alabama, 4. Miami, 5. Georgia.

Football News--1. Nebraska, 2. Florida State, 3. Georgia, 4. Wisconsin, 5. Texas.

Lindy’s--1. Nebraska, 2. Florida State, 3. Wisconsin, 4. Alabama, 5. Miami.

Street & Smith: 1. Nebraska, 2. Florida State, 3. Alabama, 4. Miami, 5. Wisconsin.

The Sporting News--1. Nebraska, 2. Florida State, 3. Alabama, 4. Wisconsin, 5. Kansas State.

TITLE PLANNER: The Orange Bowl will be the site of this year’s Bowl Championship Series national title game on Wednesday night, Jan. 3, 2001, but in case you want to plan ahead:

The 2001 national championship game will be played Thursday night, Jan. 3, 2002, at the Rose Bowl. (That’s 5 p.m. Pacific time, meaning there should be one doozy of a traffic jam).

IRISH SELLOUT: Notre Dame may be down, but the Fighting Irish are far from out at the turnstiles. As usual, all six home games are sold out, extending the home sellout streak to 155 games. . . . Demand for the Nebraska game on Sept. 9--47,865 ticket requests--was second-highest in school history. The highest? 57,048 ticket requests for the ’97 USC game.

By the way, the Huskers received more than 28,000 requests for the 4,000 tickets they had available.

CAROLINA HAS CURRY: Ronald Curry said he’s healthy and ready to fulfill the promise that followed his arrival at North Carolina two years ago.

“I think I’m able to do everything I was doing before I got hurt,” the Tar Heels quarterback said. “It feels fine. It’s not an issue anymore.”

Curry, the football-basketball star from Hampton, Va., who chose the Tar Heels over Virginia in 1998, is coming back from a ruptured Achilles’ tendon.

In two seasons at Chapel Hill, the 6-foot-2, 200-pound Curry has played in 16 football games, started nine, and completed just 46.7% of his passes with nine TDs and 17 interceptions.

For a guy who was much more hyped than high school rival Michael Vick, this year’s Heisman Trophy favorite, Curry has lots of ground to make up. Yet he still thinks he has a chance to win a Heisman.

“I still think that, to tell you the truth,” he said last month at the ACC media gathering in Hot Springs, Va. “It’s still a goal and it’s still reachable.”

In ‘98, an injury to Oscar Davenport threw Curry into the starter’s role in just his second game. Last season he was hurt after a 30-yard TD run against Georgia Tech.

With coach Carl Torbush on the hotseat after a 3-8 season, Curry is anxious to help turn around the Tar Heels’ fortunes.

And he just might. Like Vick, who led Virginia Tech to the national title game in ‘99, Curry thrives on making big plays out of broken ones. He also has a strong arm, but it’s his derring-do that has him ahead of Luke Huard on the depth chart.

“That’s what got me here,” Curry said. “Luke can sit back there and throw the ball, but when things get tight he can’t take the ball and run like I can. That’s one of the reasons I’m on the field.”

In basketball, Curry is a candidate to replace Ed Cota at point guard.

“He’s as competitive a young man as I’ve ever been around,” Torbush said. “The more he hears from people that he can’t do this or that, I think he’s got enough about him to try and prove to everybody that he can be a success in both sports.”

TEAM OF THE DECADE: Florida State won two national titles in the 1990s and closed out the decade with the best winning percentage among I-A schools at .893 (109-13).

Nebraska, with three national titles in the 1990s (one was in the coaches’ poll only), was second at .868 (108-16-1); Florida third at .820 (102-22-1); Marshall fourth at .820 (114-25); and Tennessee fifth at .813 (99-22-2).

QUOTABLE: “It’s nothing to walk down the hallway and brush past Earl Campbell and shake hands with him, then turn around and run into coach (Darrell) Royal. It’s something you read about when you’re a little kid. I never had a chance to see Earl Campbell play or coach Royal coach, but to be part of the University of Texas and deal with and meet people like that, it’s a very humbling experience.”--QB Major Applewhite on Texas tradition.

EXTRA POINTS: With seven more wins, Penn State’s Joe Paterno will surpass Bear Bryant’s I-A record of 323 career victories. . . . For a real taste of Southern football tradition, pick up “Southern Fried Football,” by Tony Barnhart, sports writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and ESPN GameDay reporter. . . . Mississippi coach David Cutcliffe is coaching his second Manning--he was Peyton’s QB coach at Tennessee; now he coaches younger brother Eli. . . . I-AA Eastern Kentucky’s Roy Kidd needs seven wins to become just the eighth coach to reach 300 career victories. . . . Marshall enters the season with the longest winning streak in I-A at 18 games; South Carolina has the longest losing streak at 21 games. . . . I-A football grows to 115 teams with the addition of Connecticut, which starts as an independent before joining the Big East in 2005. . . . Michigan led the nation in attendance over a four-year period with an average of 108,630 per game, according to a CBS SportsLine survey. Tennessee was second at 106,427, the only other school over 100,000 per game. . . . TCU, in the WAC this year, joins Conference USA in 2001. . . . South Florida moves to I-A as an independent in 2001 and joins C-USA in 2003. . . . ACC commissioner John Swofford takes over for SEC commissioner Roy Kramer as coordinator of the Bowl Championship Series. The weekly BCS standings used to determine the teams for a national title game will be released through the offices of the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame, based in Morristown, N.J. . . . Georgia Southern FB Adrian Peterson looks to become the first two-time Walter Payton Award winner, Division I-AA’s version of the Heisman Trophy. The 5-10, 212-pound junior, who won the ’99 Payton, has run for 100 or more yards in each of the 30 games he’s played for a total of 5,310. . . . Florida State has a 21-game regular-season winning streak. . . . Former Nebraska RB DeAngelo Evans is playing for Division II Emporia State. . . . QB John Rattay transferred from Tennessee to Arizona.