Photo by: Anthony Garro
Eagles Prep For First "Real" Lane Stadium Experience
September 07, 2022 | Football, #ForBoston Files
BC hasn't played at a packed Virginia Tech house since 2018.
Trips to Lane Stadium aren't easy. It's the third-largest football stadium in the Atlantic Coast Conference, and each of the 66,233 fans in attendance are angled such that their sound envelopes a playing surface in its cavernous eruption. It boxes opponents into their sideline, and its remote location makes it impossible to escape during even the smallest, most mundane pregame ritual. Now nearly 60 years old, it still stands as a fortress in Blacksburg and a citadel on the New River Valley.
The environment itself is a once-in-a-career experience, but COVID-19's interruptions now mean that almost no members of the Boston College football program actually remember playing at Lane Stadium. They haven't seen the stadium at its hilt and haven't felt the chants and eruptions at the strains of Metallica's "Enter Sandman." It's almost brand new, but when they run out of the tunnel on Saturday night, every Eagle will quickly understand the sound of silence and its golden value for a road game against the Hokies.
"I've never been there before," said head coach Jeff Hafley. "When we were there [in 2020], it was during COVID, so it was dark and eerie and cold. We've got some guys on the staff who have been there, and we've researched it and listened to it a little bit. It's loud, so we have to try to do our best job of simulating that. I know it's hard, but that's what we have to do. We have to be able to handle it and embrace it."
BC's last trip to a full Lane Stadium memorably included the sound of a sold-out stadium retreating into the Smoky Mountains after a 31-21 victory for the Eagles. BC was ranked 24th in the nation after beating nationally-ranked Miami in the Red Bandanna Game one week earlier, and the win over the Hokies helped secure ESPN College GameDay's trip to Chestnut Hill for the Clemson game one week later after Travis Levy ran for two touchdowns against Bud Foster's Lunch Pail Defense.
The Eagles never trailed, but the 780-plus yards between the two teams helped both teams rally from single touchdown deficits. Virginia Tech's was first after Ryan Willis threw two first half touchdowns to take a 14-7 lead, but Levy's two scores bookended a 22-yard Anthony Brown-to-Korab Idrizi connection. BC never surrendered more than one more Willis touchdown pass and walked out with the 10-point victory after Colton Lichtenberg's 28-yard field goal maintained the two-score advantage in the late fourth quarter.
It was BC's first win over the Hokies in four years at the time, and after winning a rematch in 2019, the Eagles claimed their third win in four years with last year's 17-3, Red Bandanna Game win. The lone blemish over that period, the 2020 game was a blowout to the Hokies, but it was played before approximately 1,000 friends and family members during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I actually had a chance to play there last year [with Notre Dame]," said tight end George Takacs. "We had two two-minute drives to win the game, but it was a close game down there. So I have experience, but it's an awesome environment. I think that's actually helped for me because I have been there, and I know not to get caught in all the extra going on, just kind of focusing on the game."
Understanding how that sound impacts a game is why BC cranked up the volume in Fish Field House on Tuesday morning. The noise reverberated throughout the area surrounding the Chestnut Hill Reservoir, and hand signals became more commonplace for coaches more accustomed to using headsets. Quarterbacks worked with silent cadence and snap counts, and the signals added an extra layer to the work already utilized to improve the team's overall performance.
"There are different things you can do," Hafley said. "You can go to a silent cadence, you can tap the [center], and you can do a whole bunch of different things. You just can't use your normal verbal cadence because no one's going to hear you if it gets really loud. So there's a bunch of things that you can do, and we've been working on them - and we'll continue to do that."
"The biggest thing is to focus on the details and the execution of the offense," Takacs agreed. "We have great players on this team. That showed up on Saturday [against Rutgers], but what also showed up is that we need to be more focused and execute better [this weekend].
"We're talking a little [about Lane Stadium]," he clarified, "but at the end of the day, most guys are used to playing in loud stadiums before. So at that point, it's not really any different from anything else."
Boston College and Virginia Tech kick off on Saturday, September 10, at 8 p.m. from Lane Stadium in Blacksburg, Va. The game can be seen on the ACC Network with online coverage available through the ESPN platform for cable subscribers with access to the channel. Radio coverage is available through the Boston College Sports Network from Learfield, locally in Boston on WEEI 93.7 FM and WEEI 850 AM.
The environment itself is a once-in-a-career experience, but COVID-19's interruptions now mean that almost no members of the Boston College football program actually remember playing at Lane Stadium. They haven't seen the stadium at its hilt and haven't felt the chants and eruptions at the strains of Metallica's "Enter Sandman." It's almost brand new, but when they run out of the tunnel on Saturday night, every Eagle will quickly understand the sound of silence and its golden value for a road game against the Hokies.
"I've never been there before," said head coach Jeff Hafley. "When we were there [in 2020], it was during COVID, so it was dark and eerie and cold. We've got some guys on the staff who have been there, and we've researched it and listened to it a little bit. It's loud, so we have to try to do our best job of simulating that. I know it's hard, but that's what we have to do. We have to be able to handle it and embrace it."
BC's last trip to a full Lane Stadium memorably included the sound of a sold-out stadium retreating into the Smoky Mountains after a 31-21 victory for the Eagles. BC was ranked 24th in the nation after beating nationally-ranked Miami in the Red Bandanna Game one week earlier, and the win over the Hokies helped secure ESPN College GameDay's trip to Chestnut Hill for the Clemson game one week later after Travis Levy ran for two touchdowns against Bud Foster's Lunch Pail Defense.
The Eagles never trailed, but the 780-plus yards between the two teams helped both teams rally from single touchdown deficits. Virginia Tech's was first after Ryan Willis threw two first half touchdowns to take a 14-7 lead, but Levy's two scores bookended a 22-yard Anthony Brown-to-Korab Idrizi connection. BC never surrendered more than one more Willis touchdown pass and walked out with the 10-point victory after Colton Lichtenberg's 28-yard field goal maintained the two-score advantage in the late fourth quarter.
It was BC's first win over the Hokies in four years at the time, and after winning a rematch in 2019, the Eagles claimed their third win in four years with last year's 17-3, Red Bandanna Game win. The lone blemish over that period, the 2020 game was a blowout to the Hokies, but it was played before approximately 1,000 friends and family members during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I actually had a chance to play there last year [with Notre Dame]," said tight end George Takacs. "We had two two-minute drives to win the game, but it was a close game down there. So I have experience, but it's an awesome environment. I think that's actually helped for me because I have been there, and I know not to get caught in all the extra going on, just kind of focusing on the game."
Understanding how that sound impacts a game is why BC cranked up the volume in Fish Field House on Tuesday morning. The noise reverberated throughout the area surrounding the Chestnut Hill Reservoir, and hand signals became more commonplace for coaches more accustomed to using headsets. Quarterbacks worked with silent cadence and snap counts, and the signals added an extra layer to the work already utilized to improve the team's overall performance.
"There are different things you can do," Hafley said. "You can go to a silent cadence, you can tap the [center], and you can do a whole bunch of different things. You just can't use your normal verbal cadence because no one's going to hear you if it gets really loud. So there's a bunch of things that you can do, and we've been working on them - and we'll continue to do that."
"The biggest thing is to focus on the details and the execution of the offense," Takacs agreed. "We have great players on this team. That showed up on Saturday [against Rutgers], but what also showed up is that we need to be more focused and execute better [this weekend].
"We're talking a little [about Lane Stadium]," he clarified, "but at the end of the day, most guys are used to playing in loud stadiums before. So at that point, it's not really any different from anything else."
Boston College and Virginia Tech kick off on Saturday, September 10, at 8 p.m. from Lane Stadium in Blacksburg, Va. The game can be seen on the ACC Network with online coverage available through the ESPN platform for cable subscribers with access to the channel. Radio coverage is available through the Boston College Sports Network from Learfield, locally in Boston on WEEI 93.7 FM and WEEI 850 AM.
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