VT Stories Oral History with Bill Roth, January 26, 2018 (Ms2016-015)

Ren Harman: Good afternoon. This is Ren Harman, the Project Director for VT

Stories. Today is January 26, 2018 at about 12 PM. We are in the Holtzman Alumni

Center on the campus of Virginia Tech with a very special guest with us today.

This is the only time that I will prompt you, but if you can just state in a

complete sentence my name is, when you were born, and where you were born.

Bill Roth: Wow. My name is Bill Roth. I was born in McGee Women's Hospital in

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on November 3, 1965.

Ren: Thank you very much for that. Can you tell us a little bit about Mt.

Lebanon, Pennsylvania?

Bill: Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania is a suburb of Pittsburgh. It's about 15 minutes

south with traffic. It's probably seven miles as the crow flies south of

Pittsburgh, and it is known, or at least was known for having 00:01:00excellent schools

and excellent athletics. By excellent athletics I mean not only did the teams

win, but there was a commitment to athletics in high school. The facilities were

great. Mt. Lebanon for example had the first high school stadium with a turf

field. It had the first nice press box. Now all high school stadiums have this.

It had the best lights at that time of our evolution of cable television. That

was one of the few stadiums where you could do a game at night because the

lights were good. It had the best swimming pool. So there was a commitment to

athletics not only in terms of fan interest was there, but they spent a lot of

money to promote physical activity amongst students, and the teams there were

really good.

Ren: Can you talk about your mom and dad?

Bill: My father was an engineer, went to Carnegie Mellon, or for that era it was

called Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh. He was an engineer, built homes and

apartments and retired early. And my 00:02:00mother raised four children. Her name was

Esther and she raised four children, and then when I went away to college she

went away to college. I went to Syracuse for school, she went to Chatham College

and she got her degree. She raised kids and then when her youngest, which was

me, went away to college she said, "I'm going to," not to the same school, but

she got her college degree in her 60s.

Ren: Wow.

Bill: As an undergrad. It was great when she would have group projects at the

house. I would come home from break at Syracuse and there would be seven

19-year-old college girls in my living room with my mom. Very interesting.

Ren: [Chuckles] Pretty nice. There was four of you. Where were you in that?

Bill: I was by far the baby; I was 12 years younger.

Ren: Brothers, sisters? What's the breakdown there?

Bill: Two sisters and a brother.

Ren: You said your 00:03:00dad was an engineer. What role did education play in your

early life? Were they strict about school?

Bill: Yeah. Everyone in my family was much much smarter than I. My father went

to Carnegie Mellon. My brother went to MIT. Linda went to Brandeis. They were

all really intelligent. I went to Syracuse to study multi-media journalism, what

we call it today, broadcast journalism back in the day, which is what I always

wanted to do but a good high school, great commitment to education. My dad

bought me my first tape-recorder. That was before flash drives and you had to

have a cassette in there with four D batteries. It was a heavy recorder to lug

around bag in the 70s when I was 9 years old doing this.

Ren: I read somewhere when I was doing some research, did you want to be a

fireman at one point?

Bill: I did. 00:04:00My favorite TV show as a kid was a show called Emergency, which was

I think a spinoff of Adam 12 or Adam 12 was a spinoff of that. It was about

these paramedics in Los Angeles that would go around and crack jokes and save

lives. I thought what could be more fun than cracking jokes and saving lives, so

that was my first thing. I knew I was 8 or 9 that I was going to be a

broadcaster. That's all I ever wanted to do.

Ren: Who were you listening to and watching on television at the time?

Bill: Well as a child, not that I've ever grown up, (comma space), but as a

child people like Bob Prince in Pittsburgh and Mike Lang who does to this day

the Pittsburgh Penguins, and Jack Fleming who was the broadcaster for the

Steelers, and Jack Buck of the St. Louis Cardinals and Harry Callas of the

Phillies, and of course Vin Scully. While we couldn't get all the Dodger games

on the radio, it was the pre-internet era, there was no tune-in app or MLB app

or 00:05:00Dodgers.com to listen to an LA Dodgers game, he did enough national games

that I heard him, so they were my inspiration.

Ren: I guess you attended Mt. Lebanon High School?

Bill: Hmm.

Ren: What kind of things did you get into when you were in high school?

Bill: I was the voice of the Blue Devils. I was the public dress announcer for

all those home football games, so that opened the door for me, because when I

was in the 9th grade I started interning Duquesne University's radio station.

And by the time I was in 11th grade in high school I was on the air with Duquesne.

Ren: Was that KDKA?

Bill: No, that was later. KDKA is the big station. They didn't put high school

kids on the air, but Duquesne University's radio station I was 17. I was a high

school junior. They sent me to the all-star game in Montreal, major league

baseball all-star game. It was really [00:05:50 parte des toiles], party of the

stars. The transcriber is now trying to figure out is that French. But yes,

there were great opportunities. My parents were really supportive.

They would drop me off or I would take a 00:06:00bus into Duquesne and get on the air.

KDKA was the country's first radio station.

Ren: Do you play a little hockey? I've seen some pictures.

Bill: Oh boy. You know far too much. Yeah, I played some hockey. That was my

only athletic endeavor. A little bit of baseball, but ice hockey and loved it.

But there was a pond near our house, a lake, pond, one or the other. This was a

lake and it would freeze over and we could skate down there. Mt. Lebanon, going

back to that, to this day they are the only school with their own ice hockey arena.

Ren: When I was doing the research and I saw that I was like that was kind of

early I would think to have an ice hockey arena.

Bill: Every high school in the league played games at Mt. Lebanon. Like every

game was a home game for everybody. There was only one rink, so the games would

be at like 3, 6, 9, and midnight, every day. There was just game after game

after game. You would practice at 4 in the morning. Ooh.

Ren: Doing a little research here I came across, and I think he's a few years 00:07:00older than you, Mark Cuban. He grew up in the same town as you.

Bill: Yeah, Mark Cuban is a Mt. Lebanon High School graduate. His younger

brother Jeff was a classmate of mine, so I knew Mark. Mark was I guess three

years older than me, so by the time I was in 9th grade he was a senior, so was a

line one didn't cross and probably still exists today, right?

Ren: Right. I believe so.

Bill: But curiously, Mark Cuban, Jeff and I we have combined to make $30-million

again this year. The three of us continue to crush it financially. Mark of

course makes 29.9% of that but that's fine.

Ren: It works out. That's a good one. When you first started thinking about

college did Syracuse University just draw you because of the SI Newhouse School

of Public Communications, and can you talk a little bit about that school?

Bill: Yeah. I was really familiar, my experience at Duquesne, so as a 00:08:00 high

school sophomore, junior, and senior for those three years I knew all the

students at Duquesne, and so I kind of got around that campus and I saw what

they did. And Duquesne had an NPR, National Public Radio station on its campus,

unlike here at Virginia Tech where WVTF in Roanoke, the NPR station there was

right in Pittsburgh, which is where the school is located, and so I got to know

all these people. So I started thinking about college and what I'm going to do

when I get out of high school when I was in 10th or 11th grade, and everyone

talked about Syracuse. I only applied to two schools. I didn't even apply to

Duquesne. I applied to Syracuse and Michigan State. Those were the two top

broadcast journalism colleges at the time. I mean there's way more now, but at

that point it was the place to go. I went up, I visited Michigan State in

December and it was cold and windy. And I visited Syracuse in the spring, so I

may have become the first and to this point only student to pick Syracuse solely

because of the weather.

Ren: Because of the weather. 00:09:00 [Laughs]

Bill: Upstate New York in the spring time is really nice.

Ren: When you got to Syracuse immediately declared broadcast journalism as your

major, right. You worked at the campus station, right? WAER?

Bill: AER. So the culture there really goes back to a gentleman named Marty

Glickman, who was a Syracuse athlete and broadcaster and student, a very famous

story, a Jewish athlete and the Berlin Olympics and there's a movie made about

it. Marty ended up being a great broadcaster and went and worked in New York,

and did Giants games and Jets games and went on to NBC, and he mentored a young

Jewish kid from New York who became Marv Albert. The tradition kind of started

the way we do things at Syracuse, and it kind of passed on 00:10:00generation after

generation and Marv Albert and Bob Costas and Bob Costas...and it goes and on

through today. They recruit kids to come there to do broadcasting,

extra-curricular, certainly focus on the classroom, but it's what you do,

extra-curricular and you push each other. That is the model and the culture that

we're trying to build now for Virginia Tech. I know you're going to get to that later.

The academics are a part of it. The faculty there would claim it's a large part

of it. The alums who have gone through it would claim it's a smaller part of it.

It's the culture of having other like-minded sports people, sports journalism

people engaged on a daily basis with debate. And whether you're talking about a

team or you're talking about a television show or you're talking about how a

game was produced, we were quite the nerds. You learn.

Ren: Was it competitive?

Bill: Very much so, because not everybody there gets on. A lot of people go to

Syracuse thinking they're going to be the next great 00:11:00broadcaster, and there's 25

other people who want to do the same thing and there's only four or five slots.

So a lot of people leave or transfer out or get frustrated or go right for the

Daily Orange newspaper.

Ren: At Syracuse, at that time, I guess it was the mid-1980s, what was really

separating yourself, Mike Tirico, the other guys?

Bill: Sean McDonough, Sean O'Brian, Dave Ryan, Greg Papa, all of these people

have become incredibly successful.

Ren: What does it take to separate yourself from those other people that you

said may never make it to the voice of a college?

Bill: I think it's almost like an athlete in that when you're a high school kid

and you're really into sports and you're doing crazy things like sitting in

front of your television broadcasting a game into a tape-recorder. Or you get

into the shower and you do your opening 00:12:00standup because your voice sounds deeper

than it really is.

A lot of people sing in the shower, but us crazy kids in high school we would

get in the shower and it's, "Hello again everybody and welcome to Three Rivers

Stadium, where tonight the Pirates and Phillies begin a three-game series in the

National League East," okay. You think you are the only one who is like that,

and then you get to Syracuse and you find out you weren't the only one doing it.

I think that's what attract. It's the people who go there, when you visit you

go, "Oh my goodness, there's someone else just like me," and that's hard to

find. It's a real fraternity.

Ren: I'm sure hard work, research, practicing, working on your voice in some way.

Bill: A lot of kids know as soon as they get there. So now we're two years into

the SMA program at Virginia Tech. I don't think this is stuff you can teach.

We've got to get them here first. If you're not good by the time you're here,

it's like trying to 00:13:00teach someone to draw as a high school senior who has never

picked up a pen before or a pencil. It's almost impossible.

Ren: And I think people have an impression that it's easier than it really is,

because when I talk to our interns about interviewing I'm like it seems that

it's easy, but unless you do it hundreds and hundreds of times it's not as easy

as it looks I guess you could say. I'm sure broadcasting shares a little bit of

similairity with that. When you went to Syracuse you won the Robert Costas

Scholarship in 1986. What was the criteria for that? How did that work out?

Bill: You know, I don't recall. I do know that I joked with Bob's kids that we

share something in common, that your dad helped pay for all three of our college

educations. Bob gets a chuckle at that too. I'm sure it's the same at every

school, it's a scholarship and then you have a 00:14:00deduction from your tuition and

you get a nice plaque. That was the first time they gave that award that year I

think. As I recall I had no idea I was getting it. It was in the springtime of

my junior year and I was told, "Can you please go to the senior awards

ceremony?" and I didn't really want to go. They said, "Please go," and I said,

"Why?" They wouldn't tell me, and I was surprised. Most of those awards go to

seniors, so I would claim it was just a weak field Ren, that's why I won. There

were no seniors. They gave it to the junior.

Ren: I'm sure that a majority of your time when you were there was wrapped up in

broadcasting games and course work. Did you do anything outside of this field

that you were slowly starting to be at...?

Bill: We did a lot of broadcasting. We did football, basketball, lacrosse games.

We did television shows. We did radio shows.

Ren: It was all just broadcasting?

Bill: 00:15:00If we weren't asleep or in a class we were at the radio station until 10

or 11 o'clock at night producing the pre-game show, or figuring out the best

music bed for this feature and learning how to do it, our call. Now this is

pre-internet, right. This is ten years before...

Ren: Email or anything.

Bill: Well there might have been email, but it was ten years before everything

was done online, and so you had to edit tape with a razor blade and a grease

pencil. We didn't record onto a hard drive. You edited videotape with these big

three-quarter inch decks with an in-point and out-point. Sometimes it would

stick or it wouldn't stick or the machine would eat your tape, and if you messed

up there was no option Z. There was no undo. It was go shoot the story again, 00:16:00 so

there was a lot of pressure.

Ren: A little bit different than it is today, right?

Bill: It's easier now. It's more efficient now.

Ren: I was listening to an interview with Paul Thomas Anderson, the director,

and he was talking about video editing with the double VCR tape to tape.

Bill: Tape to tape.

Ren: He said he had bought the equipment to do his first feature and he said he

could never figure it out, so he just ended up editing tape to tape. I thought

that was pretty interesting. I hadn't heard that phrase in a while.

Bill: There was no drag and drop.

Ren: So you graduated from Syracuse in 1987 with a degree in broadcast

journalism. How did Virginia Tech come into the picture? How did this all happen?

Bill: Well it happened really fast. So I graduated from Syracuse in 1987 and I

had an opportunity to stay there and do television on the ABC affiliate Channel

9. I had to at that point decide do I want to stay in Syracuse where I know a

lot of people within the athletics 00:17:00department and do TV, or do I want to do play

by play. I thought you know, I really want to try the broadcasting games because

that was my passion. Four minutes a night on the local news didn't do much for

me, broadcasting games did. And there was an opening in Huntington, West

Virginia at Marshall University and David Brane was the athletics director there

and he was from Grove City, PA. When I graduated I sent a tape down to West

Virginia and they liked it, and I got a little bit lucky. The first job out of

Syracuse, actually right in May, a week after graduation I was doing the NCA

Lacrosse Championships on ESPN. One of the most spectacular players ever to play

the sport of men's lacrosse was a gentleman by the name of Gary Gate. He was

from British Colombia Vancouver West Coast of Canada, and he in the NCA

tournament in the championship 00:18:00game did something unprecedented.

He raced up. He ran as fast as he could to the goal but from behind the goal. He

jumped over the goal and stuffed the ball in. No one has ever done it since.

He's the only one that's ever done it and in fact it has now been outlawed, or

it's an illegal play.

Ren: You can't do that anymore.

Bill: For a player's safety. It would be like dunking a basketball from behind

the goal. You could do it in hoops, but that's a similar play. And I had that

call on ESPN and everybody saw it and it was on Sports Center and that really

helped me.

Ren: This had to be Sportscenter early days I guess.

Bill: Yeah, and it was really big.

Ren: With Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann.

Bill: Olbermann and Bob Lee and Chris Burman, and lacrosse was big on ESPN back

in the late 80s now, right. They didn't have the major league baseball or the

NBA or the NFL. That was May. I was 21 years old, and Marshall had an opening

and Dave knew I was from 00:19:00Pittsburgh and some mutual friends put us together and

they hired me, Huntington, West Virginia. And then in that fall Dave left to

come to Virginia Tech to be the new athletics director here. And so there was AD

at Marshall. I was just out of college. I had just turned 22 and there was an

opening at Virginia Tech, so that's how it happened. I was only at Marshall for

seven months and Dave said, "Do you want to work at Virginia Tech?"

Ren: When you first got to Virginia Tech, the first time you saw the campus,

what do you remember about that day?

Bill: Actually, when I was a junior at Syracuse in 1985 Mike Tirico and I came

down for the student station and broadcast the SU Virginia Tech game, so my

first experience was with Mike. In fact, I bought a VT cap, there's a picture

somewhere with me and Mike.

Ren: Yeah, I saw that.

Bill: 00:20:00Yeah, I'm 19 years old, a Syracuse student. I just fell in love with Tech.

It reminded me of Penn State. It reminded me, the people, the topography, the

feeling, the vibe, the passion. The stadium is way smaller than Penn State,

still is, but it felt to me like Penn State. I think you hear that a lot. You

know Jim Weaver who is our athletics director here for a long time went to

college there and played football there, he always told me the same thing, he

said, "This is just like Penn State." It's a warm version of Penn State.

Ren: When you came to call that game as a sophomore what do you kind of remember

about the campus and what it looked like? You were talking about how it felt

like, what do you remember visually?

Bill: We stayed in Salem the Friday night before. We ate at one those Golden

Corral-style restaurants, and I had never been to one before, so I do recall 00:21:00 that.

I remember that Virginia Tech it was so cool because it had two bands. Like what

school has two marching bands? Because the Syracuse band always struggled. First

of all they were small in numbers. There weren't a whole lot of them, and to

this day carried on a tradition of being somewhat inebriated or hungover in

kick-off, and so the music just never worked at Syracuse. That may be common for

all bands, but at Tech they took the band seriously, so I do remember that. And

the fans, they were really into the game.

Ren: You were 22 when you were named the Voice of the Hokies, is that correct?

Bill: Yes.

Ren: That was in 1988. I don't even know where to start, but do you remember

calling your first game?

Bill: It was at Clemson. I remember it vividly. Mike Burnop and I went to, I'm

trying to remember if we flew into Greenville, Spartanburg, or flew into

Atlanta. I don't 00:22:00recall. It might have been Atlanta and we drove up, but we

flew. I do recall that because I remember we had a rental car, and driving into

all those tiger paws. Clemson was really really good at that point. Danny Ford

was their coach, over 80,000 people. I had never been at a football game with

85,000 people. The Steeler stadium doesn't seat that much. Pitt didn't seat that

much. The biggest crowd I had ever seen was my very first game at Virginia Tech

and Clemson won. They had a tailback named Terry Allen who ended up playing for

the Redskins, had a good NFL career. And it was Coach Beamer's second year. We

were down on scholarships. We didn't have as many players. We were on probation,

and that was my first game, the fall of '88.

Ren: Do you remember being pretty nervous?

Bill: No, because Burnop was so supportive and nice and I knew everybody 00:23:00who I

was working with. I had worked with Dave the year before. I think it's kind of,

a lesson I learned later in life, but when you're working somewhere and you move

with your boss to the new place, it's a lot easier to make the adjustment. It's

a new job but it's really the same job, it's just you're wearing a different uniform.

Ren: Yeah, right. Throughout the years you've had some pretty historical and

notable cause. What are some of the ones that really stick out in your mind that

you remember the most? You have the national championships, you have the bowl streak.

Bill: It's funny, it depends on who you ask. There's some basketball fans that

enjoy basketball calls. There are a lot of people that like those little

five-second one-liners that came out of nowhere that have seemingly lived on

forever. You know when Virginia Tech finally beat UVA in football it was a

really substantial and significant event, 00:24:00because Coach Welsh, George Welsh, the

coach at Virginia had been so successful, not only on the field but they were

graduating everything. They were putting kids into the NFL and they were beating

the Hokies like there was nothing to do, and it really bothered Tech fans

because of the sense of pride.

When Coach Beamer finally beat UVA that was really great, and they beat them

when they had one of their better teams for the first time. And then our first

win in Charlottesville was huge. Now I think as we record this, Virginia Tech

has won is it 14 or 15 in a row?

Ren: Yeah, something like that. I think it's possibly 15 I believe.

Bill: But at that point I went over and Virginia was massive. At that point I

think there was somewhat of an institutional inferiority complex between the two

schools. They were in the ACC. They were higher ranked in every imaginable

academic category than Virginia Tech. We were not making any monies in

independent in football and they are making all this money and all these TV

appearances in the 00:25:00ACC, so to finally beat them was huge.

Ren: Throughout this long history you have of being the voice of the Hokies, a

lot of people know you for your opening line. What's the origins behind from the

blue waters?

Bill: From the blue waters of the Chesapeake Bay to the hills of Tennessee,

here's how this was born. At West Virginia Jack Fleming used to open every

broadcast with a scene setter. It would be well-written, almost poetic in the

way he would write it. As the sun rises above Morgantown the glistening dew

welcomes the mountaineers onto the field. And it would be very picturesque, and

Jack was 70 at that point. I was 22, 00:26:00but I had grown up listening to him because

he did Steelers games too, so Jack would always do this scene setter. And he

would talk about the heart and the passion of the mountaineer. "And today the

mountaineer nation the heart beats as one," and the whole thing was very

dramatic, and he would end with the hills of West Virginia resound with the

sounds of mountaineer football. That was always his last line.

So my first year at Tech I didn't do anything like that. When I went to Richmond

I tried to meet as many people as I could when I first got here, learned as much

as I could about Tech and its history. And there was a gentleman by the name of

Chuck Noe. And Chuck Noe hosted a radio show in Richmond on Sunday nights, plus

he hosted the coaches' shows for UVA. Terry Hall the basketball coach, George

Welsh was the football coach. Now as background Chuck had been the basketball

coach here at Virginia Tech and then he went on to South Carolina and he went on

to VCU and he ended up retiring in Richmond in the Fan down there.

I 00:27:00drove down to his house. He was retired. He had stopped doing the radio show

at that point and I said, "Let's go grab lunch." So we went in the Fan and he

bought me lunch and we talked about Tech and I learned a lot of things. We went

through all of his scrapbooks. It was fabulous. He helped design Cassell

Coliseum. He told me why it was so steep and why it's hard to get out. We don't

want people going to the concession stands. We want them right on top of the

court. We want it loud. Why did you put the visiting team down there in front of

the student section? Because we don't want them to hear. The whole thing was

designed with the home court advantage in mind.

But anyway, he said, "You need a hook. You need some schtick." I said, "Coach

I'm a broadcaster, not a comedienne." He says, "No, you need something that

starts your broadcast that's different and creative and unique to Virginia

Tech." I said, "Okay, I'll think about it." And so I wrote down a bunch of

things and I called a couple of friends, including a good friend of mine, Tony

Caridi who is at West 00:28:00Virginia. The original line was from the blue waters of

the Chesapeake Bay up and down the Shenandoah Valley to the hills of Tennessee.

We talked about it and I said, "I think it's too long." You know it's like you

always hear about the unknown third verse, the rocket man, that's the unknown

second verse to that open. It was just too long. I said, "Oh yeah, what's cool

about Tech is we've got fans throughout this State and our radio network is

really big." That's what it was. It reflects the University and what we're

trying to do. Virginia Tech just isn't Blacksburg, it's from...

Ren: Chesapeake to the hills of Tennessee.

Bill: Yeah. And we played around with it a little bit. Someone suggested

Cumberland Gap. Someone suggested Mt. Rogers. It just didn't flow. So we went

with that and right off the bat people thought 00:29:00that's awesome. Richmond Times

Dispatch did a story on it. It was a call to arms for the Hokies. Then I called

Tony back and I said, "I think we've got something. I think we've got

something," and just did it every game. Every football and basketball game, so

we're talking about thousands of games over 30 years.

Ren: You were able to really see a growth of athletics at this University from

the late 80s to the 90s and Michael Vick and then to where we were with Coach

Beamer. I know in doing some research and talking to some people I know that you

really were proud of being able to expand the broadcast that you were doing with

Mike into other kind of areas of the State I guess. Can you talk a little bit

about that?

Bill: Well it wasn't just me. I was just the guy going into the stations. Coach

Beamer and Dave Braine were really supportive of it. 00:30:00Coach Beamer really

believed in the TV show. He thought that television was really important for

this program and if we weren't going to be on ESPN and CBS every week, which we

weren't and still aren't, we were on a lot but not every week, that we needed a

TV on in those markets and it was really important to me on the best station.

What's the best TV station in Norfolk? WAVY. What's the best radio station? TAR.

Let's get on them. What's the best TV and radio operations in Richmond? What are

the best in DC? He felt that that would really help recruiting.

Ren: So it was almost a collaborative effort between athletic director,

yourself, people on the call.

Bill: Right, and so if I needed Coach Beamer to make a call or a visit and every

time we would do a Hokie club event in one of those cities we would make sure

the TV and radio partners were with us. And I always said WAVY TV in Norfolk

they are just as important as our biggest donor in Norfolk. Millions of people

live there. They may not be familiar with Virginia Tech. And I think what

happened 00:31:00was we became Norfolk's team. Old Dominion didn't have a football team

yet, and if you were a great player in the 757 of course you were coming to

Virginia Tech. Why? Because everybody is watching Coach Beamer's TV show on

Sunday mornings. Coach Beamer's radio show on Monday nights. And again,

pre-internet. There was no Twitter. There was no Facebook, so if you wanted to

talk to Coach Beamer you know what you do? You call the 1-800 number on Monday

night on the Hokie hotline and Coach Beamer is going to take your call, and he's

going to talk with you about things.

We had kind of a folksy friendly way of doing that show. How are you doing

coach? "I'm good. I'm down here in Suffolk." "It's hot today." The coach would

be, "Great. Oh I bet it is hot down there. I've been down there." "Coach, when

is the last time you were in Suffolk?" "You know what I like? I love going to

Smithfield. You know why I like going to Smithfield? Because they've got all the

farms down there. 00:32:00We get bacon and ham and ribs from Smithfield or peanuts from

Smithfield." And between the two of us we made everybody feel like we were their

home team. And so someone would call from Richmond and it would be the same

thing. "I go to Highland Springs." "Oh [00:32:19 Cheryl] went to Highland

Springs. Did you know that?"

And so he became this beloved folksy hero, and the reason was he was very

accessible to our fan base and then we started winning, but he never changed. So

even 15 years into this and he's winning and we're about to get into the Big

East how big is that? He's still taking calls and schmoozing with fans in

Bluefield and Bristol and Richmond and DC, big cities, tiny small towns and he

saw a value in it and I did too. Because if the janitor can call and talk to

Frank Beamer, the janitor at the high school or the cafeteria 00:33:00worker, he or she

is going to say good things to the kids and those teachers at those schools and

now all of a sudden all the good players are coming here.

And I think Coach Beamer's vision of how we're going to get to State, how we're

going to be the home team in Norfolk and how we're going to be the home team in

Fairfax, a lot of it was pre-internet, let's get on TV and radio in those towns,

in those cities.

Ren: I'm sure there were years that were kind of up and down, but throughout

this history was it just kind of a slow exponential growth? We got into the Big

East. We started winning more. We were going to Bowl games, then the move to the

ACC. Was it kind of a slow growth or was there a point in time, a year that you

can kind of really put your finger on and say this is when things really took

off and got to where it is today? In terms of donations, scholarships, notoriety

of athletics and the University as a whole?

Bill: There were big events that happened, David Braine being hired from 00:34:00Marshall was a big thing, and obviously Coach Beamer being hired from Murray

State. That was the genesis of it. At the time it happened, the day that

Virginia Tech got into the Big East in football was the biggest thing that had

ever happened at Virginia Tech, as big as Bruce Smith winning the Outland and

being the number one pick might have been, or Carroll Dale or Hunter Carpenter

getting into the college football Hall of Fame. At the time getting into the Big

East was the biggest thing that ever happened at Virginia Tech, and that

happened at the Providence Biltmore Hotel in Providence Rhode Island in a room

off the lobby, up the stairs off the lobby. I joke the biggest moment in Tech

history was held in the Providence room where Ritchie Schwartz was having his

bar mitzvah 24 hours later.

Ren: [Laughs]

Bill: But it's true, because what that did Ren is getting into the Big East, now

all of a sudden now the games were on TV, okay, and everybody in the country saw

what I saw when I first came here a few 00:35:00earlier as a Syracuse student. The

passion, the fan base, the beauty, what is this school? It's Virginia's version

of Penn State.

Ren: What year was this? What year did they get into the Big East?

Bill: 93? 92, right. And so now all of a sudden Virginia Tech is playing games

on ESPN and Thursday night games. And if you win the conference you're going to

the Sugar Bowl. Well, if we didn't get in the Big East we would have been an

independent. Remember now we were just like Southern Miss and East Carolina,

those independents. Even if Coach Beamer had won a little bit as an independent

Virginia Tech would have never been able to afford to keep him and his staff

here. So now you're on television. You're going to Bowls. You're making money

and then you're winning, and Michael Vick is a high school 7th or 8th grader and

he sees this. Remember now we're Norfolk's team, and so everybody in that high 00:36:00school loves the Hokies.

Ren: Was it Warwick?

Bill: Warwick High School, and boom, so that was the third, that's the next big

thing -- Vick. Now because of all of that now we're attracted to the ACC.

Ren: I want to ask you about calling the Sugar Bowl, the National Championship

in '99 against Florida State. What was that experience like? That's as big a

stage I guess for college football as you could be on.

Bill: It was the showcase for Mike as a quarterback, for Coach Beamer as a

coach, for our program. It's still the most people that's ever watched a

Virginia Tech football game. One of the highest watched football games of the

last 30 years. It was on ABC and primetime 00:37:00games, the national title, the Hokies

are ahead in the fourth quarter. It was an incredible football game. I wish we

would have won it. Everyone jokes about all my play by play calls. There was a

lot of good ones from that game that no one will ever hear because we lost the game.

Ren: Chris Weinke and Peter Warwick.

Bill: Yeah, they were number one wire to wire.

Ren: You talked about moving into the ACC, winning a couple of ACC championships

which was huge and playing in some big games there, from 1993 to 1996 you served

as the play by play announcer for the Richmond Braves. What was that experience like?

Bill: It was great. Chipper Jones just got into the Hall of Fame this week. I

think you learn more at a baseball stadium than you do in a classroom. It's the 00:38:00ultimate classroom. Everything you need to learn about life you can learn if you

have to go to a baseball stadium every single day, day after day after day all

summer long. Relationships, overcoming things, good weather, bad weather,

dramatic wins, heartbreaking losses, injuries, getting along with people,

engaging with fans. I loved it. It was really hard, because what was happening

is the Braves were good going to the playoffs. The Hokies were good going to

Bowl games and then the basketball team got good -- whatever it was, 200 weeks.

I think they worked like 200-something weeks in a row over like 31/2 years. It

was just crushing me, and I had to make a decision do I want to stay with

baseball, Braves, but Tech looks really good.

Ren: Yeah.

Bill: And I think we're going to be really good. This was in '96. The Braves,

'96 00:39:00was my last year. Went to the Orange Bowl here that fall and that was the

end of that. I said I can't keep driving back and forth from Richmond.

There was a point, I probably could still do it, I could name off the top of my

head every exit between Richmond and Blacksburg.

Ren: That's probably true.

Bill: But I do have a story about that.

Ren: Yeah, yeah.

Bill: The fans in Richmond will like. The Richmond Braves had a promotion called

the Sherwin-Williams homerun inning. The Sherwin-William Sure Win homerun

inning, and if someone hit a homerun during that inning 100-bucks. If it was a

two-run-homer 200-bucks, a three-run-homer 300 grand slam $1,000. And every game

we would pull out a contestant. You would go to a Sherwin-Williams store and

fill out a little coupon and they would bring it to us and we would read it. Joe

Smith from Midlothian is our Sherwin-Williams homerun, and of course the Braves

would have three 00:40:00strikeouts. Oh, congratulations anyway. Good luck tomorrow.

We'll pick another name. Well at the end of the season with the Braves we ran

out of names. There was no coupon left in the box, so we had to make up a name.

Well, west of Richmond we started doing exits. Shannon Hill was a contestant one

night. Shannon Hill. Amazingly from Louisa County. And the next night it's the

next exit, Louisa Ferncliff.

Ren: Oh my God.

Bill: The Braves load the basis. Now there's no such person. It's an exit on

I-64, and I've got a blank sheet of paper and I'm claiming it's the coupon. Oh

Louisa we're pulling for you sweetie. This could be your big 00:41:00moment. Steve, Stu

and I were doing the game, a grand slam. "It's a grand slam for the Braves," and

it's our first and only winner of the year, "And congratulations to Louisa

Ferncliff our $1,000 winner!" So we go to the break at the end of the inning and

the people from the station come by the booth. I can't believe we're going to

have to pay this person $1,000 for a meaningless minor league game. Where's the

coupon? We need to get her phone number and her name. We said, "We made it up,"

and they were so happy. So every time I drive by the Louisa Ferncliff exit I tip

my cap to our Richmond Braves grand-slam winner.

Ren: They didn't have to pay the $1,000 though.

Bill: Who never existed.

Ren: That's hilarious. That's a great one. Something I wanted to ask you, I mean

gosh, between the traveling for games and Bowl games and media days, you

probably have met and talked to more alumni than as 00:42:00many as Coach Beamer.

Through all these travels is there a singular story about Virginia Tech that you

hear from these alumni?

Bill: Oh boy, there's so many. We've had several Make A Wish kids, friends of

alums or alums that work in a hospital. All this kid wants to do is sit in the

north end zone and jump up and down to Enter Sandman but doesn't want anyone to

know. Can you get him in or her in? We do it. Not only that, you can come up

Friday, you can play catch with Mike Vick or walk through and Coach Beamer

would... We never even publicized those things, so things like that happen.

Alumni things, you 00:43:00know in '07 after the shooting we had 1,500 people show up at

a Hokie club event in Richmond and it felt so therapeutic and so... As big as

that football game was against East Carolina the kickoff dinner in '07 in

Richmond was amazing. You know the University Alumni Association has the little

sticker Virginia Tech for life and the pins, and we see that and whatever, it's

clever marketing. It's great marketing, but it's life and death in that instance

because we lost students and we lost professors and we lost our innocence. We

lost so much in '07. I just remember the feeling in that room that night. I've

never been in a room since like that, and I understand why, but that was a

really defining 00:44:00night to see people sharing their stories. You just realize what

an amazingly special place this is.

Ren: I wanted to ask you about that game against East Carolina because that was

my freshman year of college.

Bill: First game.

Ren: First game as a college student, I mean I had been to hundreds before then.

How were you able to, after the tragedy that happened here, how were you able to

kind of collect yourself and do your job knowing what a return to normalcy meant

for this campus and this University?

Bill: It was a really hard game to do. I recall the voice cracked a few times

during the game. I recall I did not want to, I had 00:45:00previewed/screened the video

that they were going to play to the crowd the day before and I said I can't

watch it.

I watched it Friday in the HokieVision office and it was really good. I don't

know if you recall what it was.

Ren: Yeah.

Bill: I said if I see that there's no way and I didn't watch. I turned the

volume on my headset down and just tried to focus on the game, because I wanted

to be able to broadcast the game. I talked with some of the players that day

from Virginia Tech. I don't think they wanted to play. They didn't want to go

out there and hit East Carolina's kids. East Carolina probably felt the same

way. I think once the game got going it was okay, but it was a therapeutic

return to normalcy, or the new normal for our campus, but it was a hard game to

do. I would rather have not done the game. It would have been better just to...

But it was time to play. It was September. It was a hard game to 00:46:00 do.

Ren: Would you say that was probably the hardest game you've had to call?

Bill: Emotionally yeah. I mean there have been some really cold games that where

what makes it hard is it's 7 degrees and you're standing outside for four hours.

Oh, I just want to move, but you can't move because you've got to stand still

because you're working.

Ren: Right. We will move on to a lighter conversation here. I want to ask you

about being inducted into the WAER Hall of Fame in 2014 by your classmate Mike

Tirico. What was that experience like?

Bill: I felt and still feel very undeserving because this year I inducted Marv

Albert, and how I got into a Hall of Fame before Marv Albert is ridiculous and

astonishing. Regardless of what order you go and go alphabetical, go

chronological, he's done hundreds of 00:47:00thousands of major events and more than

anybody and Marv needed to go in. It was great. I mean it was a very special

place. I have two schools. I've got custom captain's chairs in my house. I'm

sure you've seen those captain's chairs that people own. I've got a Virginia

Tech chair and a Syracuse chair, proud of both, two amazing schools. Two very

different schools. It's amazing both are in the ACC now, but institutionally two

totally different schools and I'm proud to have my picture on the wall there and

a picture on the wall here, so it's great.

Ren: In 2013 you were inducted into the Virginia Hall of Fame.

Bill: Another one that makes no sense.

Ren: As well as being named Sportscaster of the Year 11 times by the National

Sportswriters and Sportswriter's Association.

Bill: In a weak field.

Ren: You have these accomplishments, 00:48:00as you're kind of jokingly, but how do

these things really make you feel?

Bill: We had winning teams and we were on everywhere. To the people in Norfolk

we are the home team and I keep going back to how big that was and how that is

for student recruitment then and today, and how big that is for sponsorship then

and today, and recruiting really good players that people... We were on the best

stations. We were winning and we were on the best TV stations on Sunday mornings

so everybody saw me, and I think that's why. Now we worked to get them. We had

to go in and I visited sponsor after sponsor in Hampton Rhodes and in Richmond

and in Lynchburg, all over the State. So, I feel like, people say where's your

home? I always say it's Virginia. My address was Blacksburg and Blacksburg is 00:49:00home, but I feel at home in Williamsburg. I feel at home in Richmond and Norfolk

and Fairfax, everywhere. I mean when you go someplace and you see the same

people year after year for 25 years you know your way around. You know the

backroads and the best barbeque, and you know how to get to the front of the

line at a certain place, so that's all. I think we created something really

special here, but having great teams was the number one thing.

Ren: This is kind of a side bar question, but do you get recognized a lot out in

public? Not just in Blacksburg, Christiansburg, River Valley, but is that strange?

Bill: Yeah. Not strange, I enjoy it. I'm representing and still represent Tech

and that's an important place. It's an important thing in the State.

Ren: I want to switch to this. I hope it's okay that we talk about this. In 2015

you kind of made the decision to leave Virginia 00:50:00Tech. Was that a difficult

decision? Did you wrestle with it for a while?

Bill: Yeah, it was really hard. I wondered basically if I was ever

professionally, personally, but if I was ever going to leave where would I go.

And I had done some games on TV and there had been openings and nothing ever

really got me excited. I mean I didn't even have a resume. And I knew the

gentleman at UCLA was going to retire and I had a lot of family out there and

it's the top job in the country in my field and it pays a ton. It was the same

group that owned IMG and we played them. I knew the guy was going to retire and

when we played them in the Sun Bowl in El Paso, we had a group that got together

for both schools and I had a chance to meet their athletics director. He

reminded me a lot of Jim Weaver. His name is Dan Guerrero, and I met some of

their 00:51:00 people.

The following year the guy announced that 14-15 would be his last year, so it

was just a year later, I thought okay. So I kept my eye on it and I watched them

and I watched how they did things. I watched their program, Coach Mora on the

football side and Coach Alford and who they were recruiting, the station they

were on. It was the Dodgers and the Bruins and that's it. It's like there's Vin

Scully and the voice of the Bruins. Those are the announcers on that station. I

thought long and hard about it. I had a long meeting with Coach Beamer and Whit

and Buzz and the President and John Dooley and others. And I said, "This job is

going to open up and I think I want to talk with them about it." Coach Beamer

talked with some other people and it wasn't being unloyal to 00:52:00Tech. I didn't do

it behind anyone's back. This is the best job in the country. This is the

winningest team in the history of college or pro sports in our country. They've

won more than the Yankees and the Canadians and the Celtics combined.

Ren: Yeah, right.

Bill: All these Olympians and men and women and football and basketball and

wrestling and swimming and tennis. So it opened up and they looked at my work

and they said, "We would like to meet you." And they flew me out to LA and I

vividly remember we were playing Duke at 9 o'clock and I got a phone call before

the game, at about 6 o'clock, three hours. I walked into Whit's office and I

said, "UCLA wants me to go out." I went out. We talked and looked around and

then they flew me back out for an interview and they said, "We want you to do at

UCLA what you did at Virginia 00:53:00Tech." I really wrestled with it and then they

offered a lot of money. I came over and I talked with Whit and Frank and they

were great. It basically came down to do I want to be doing at 72 what I was

doing when I was 22. If I'm ever going to leave it's going to have to be for

something like that, Pauley Pavilion, the Rose Bowl, the Bruins. It was really

hard and I didn't like it, and I can't tell you why to quote the Eagles, the

California band. I didn't like, it's the best job, it's just not the best fit

for me. I don't know looking back if it was the wrong, I don't think it was the

wrong decision to give it a try. I'm glad I tried 00:54:00it, but it wasn't the right fit.

Ren: Because you may have had that doubt in your mind for the rest of your

career, your life. What if I had took that job? I don't think many people would

fault you for at least trying it and seeing what it was like and live in, and I

think you've said this before, the kind of media capital of the world. You think

Los Angeles and New York, it's been those two.

Bill: I think the way we do things here, and by 'we' I mean those of us on the

East Coast. I like the way we do things here. As we record this it's been a

couple of years and I still try to figure out why. But there are very good

people there. I still stay in touch with the UCLA people. I text with Coach

Alford. Coach Moore has been dismissed, 00:55:00but I will stay in touch with those

people out there. They are good people. I think LA is a really nice place to

visit. I like being able to get to where I'm going in less than a half hour and

not have to budge 90 minutes just to go 10 miles. But not to sound like a

poster, this is home.

Ren: Well glad to have you back. My brother lived in San Diego for ten years and

he moved back to Virginia.

Bill: San Diego is different.

Ren: It definitely is.

Bill: Yeah.

Ren: But he had the same Virginia is home, Southwest Virginia is home. This area

is home.

Bill: We like to think there's a big difference between Virginia and Georgia and

there's really not that much difference. It's really the same. It's just to me

LA was just 00:56:00not what I hoped it would be.

Ren: When you came back to Virginia Tech and to Blacksburg how did the role of

this professor of practice with the Communications Department, VT Department of

Communications come into play?

Bill: Well that was all part of the plan to come back. I've got to get the years right.

Ren: 16 I guess?

Bill: No, it was before that. I was having breakfast with Jim Weaver in Miami at

the Orange Bowl. We were talking about starting a student broadcaster program,

because we wanted to get our students more involved and we started doing that. I

talked with Dr. Denton, the head of the Comm Department at Virginia Tech. I said

we want to do some things and start a class that [00:56:54 Andrea Allegretti]

teaches a sports journalism class. It became really popular.

And I talked to 00:57:00Bob when I was in LA. "How's it going?" We stayed in touch and

said we're going to start a sports media program here at Virginia Tech. Who

would be someone to coordinate this? So that's in my mind. You can kind of put

the pieces together. It's like hmm, you know, "I'm going to come back. I'm

coming back to see some people. Why don't we get together?" And sure enough I

did and we came back. It happened really quickly. Dr. Sands was in on this and

the Dean was in on it. Can we do this? What would it take? You've got a great

program here. We have an opportunity for a great program here. We already have a

school where athletics is really important. The big-dollar items have already

been purchased. The studio here is already built. We've got a great television

studio. We've got a TV studio that CNN could come in and do shows from here or

Fox or ESPN or MSNBC, any of them, a totally digital 00:58:00studio. It's the same

switchyards, the same lights. We're ready to go and we've got to take advantage

of it. Well, if you're going to invest millions and millions and millions of

dollars in a studio in the brand new Moss Arts Center let's get some kids in

here that want to do this.

So that's where the genesis of it was and I'm glad they asked me to come back.

We're going to focus on sports and there's going to be a lot of great

opportunities here at Tech for kids. We've got the ACC Network launching next

year. There's going to be a real need for students in front and behind the

camera. We're going to add some more faculty just like me to this list of

instructors. Now we've got to get kids to come in. We've got to get kids that

want to come to Tech to be broadcasters like we have them coming now who want to

be engineers or that want to study in Pamplin. We need to have them come in and

really really be eager about journalism and broadcasting.

Ren: We talked about this a little bit 00:59:00earlier and in doing some research, you

talked about how Syracuse the model was you kind of mentor the person who comes

after you and the same thing, and obviously that was beneficial for your career.

Are you kind of thinking about the same model here?

Bill: Yeah, that's exactly what we're doing. Yeah. So I'm meeting - I call it

recruiting, it's not recruiting like the coaches recruit because there's not the

summer camps, but I'm driving to Richmond and DC and I'm meeting with kids and

their parents, and their final two schools are Syracuse and Michigan State. And

I say, "Before you sign up for that let me show you what we're doing here." And

so we've got three kids, one this year, we've got two coming next year. I met

with a young man and his parents, an 11th grader in Miami two weeks ago. I think

they have got to be really really good and really passionate about it by the

time they get here, as opposed to someone who is already a junior here at Tech

and they've never stood in front of a 01:00:00camera before.

It's like trying to learn to play the piano when you're 30. It's hard. But if

you've already got it and you've been doing it since you were 9 or 10, which a

lot of these kids have been doing, they just never considered coming here to

learn. As expensive as higher education is around the country it's double or

triple at a private school, and so many of these schools, Miami and Syracuse and

Fordham have done really well with this over the years are private. For some

families it's not a big deal. I've talked with some families that paying

300-grand to send their kid to school is nothing. There's not a loan involved,

it's a check and it's no big deal. They don't even feel it, but that's not the

norm. That's not the way it is for most families. So we can build the same thing

in sports media analytics at Virginia Tech the same way Coach Beamer built that

football program, so that's the blueprint. Coach Beamer showed us how to do it,

whether it's Norfolk or Richmond or DC or 01:01:00anywhere, Southwest Virginia, wherever

it happens to be, let's make Virginia Tech journalism, Virginia Tech

communications on the tip of your tongue of where I should go to college. Not,

"Oh, I need to go to Fordham. I need to go to Northwestern," another private

school that costs 65-grand a year. Great programs, and I've worked with some of

these people and I know some of them, and we share ideas. Some kids who want to

go to school in an urban city at an urban campus, Northwestern and Fordham are

perfect. We can't offer that.

We had 30 kids work college game day last year, right. Pulling cables, helping

[01:01:38 Herbstreit] working with Corso, getting the lights set-up. You're

never going to get that chance at Fordham and that's what I tell them. If you

want an opportunity right now in the fall of 2018 come. And so I got one last

year and two this year that we're actually recruiting.

Ren: Yeah, that's awesome. Just looking at your Twitter I had 01:02:00seen you have

guest speakers often, and these are people that are on ESPN or whatever, Fox

Sports 1, whatever it may be speaking to your class and kind of showing them,

teaching them in a way someone who has been in the business and done what these

kids want to do, I mean I think that's huge. That's pretty awesome. I think

maybe broadcast journalism, sports media analytics, whatever the correct

terminology is there, I think it's going to pay huge dividends to them because

other majors don't have that opportunity and that experience, and maybe that's

kind of like the selling point of having you head this concentration.

Bill: As of this moment it is a concentration.

Ren: Are you looking towards maybe have a minor?

Bill: The University would like it to be a minor, yes.

Ren: A minor? Okay, cool.

Bill: It's great. So I get people to come in and speak and they critique my

broadcast. The way it has worked so far the first two years of this is I'm in

the classroom until Thursday and 01:03:00then I'm out doing the game somewhere in the

country on TV on Saturday.

And I say, "All right, your homework for this week, make sure after the Hokie

game you turn on ESPN and I'm doing the Cincinnati game or I'm doing the game in

Seattle," whatever it is. So by Monday I get a full critique of my own

broadcast. "You told us that you are supposed to look at the camera and never

look down. You looked down at the game on Saturday."

Ren: Has it made you a better broadcaster?

Bill: Yeah, it has.

Ren: That's pretty cool. So you're teaching the students something and in turn

they are teaching you something. That's pretty cool.

Bill: I'm definitely a better broadcaster right now than I was two years ago,

and the television has been fun, because I had done mostly radio, some TV. I am

really enjoying the television.

Ren: Is it entirely different would you say?

Bill: Yes.

Ren: I want to ask you, these are some kind of broad questions here. If someone

simply says the words Virginia Tech what's kind of the first thing you think 01:04:00 of?

Bill: When someone says Virginia Tech the first thing I think of, it's more of a

feeling than a think. An image would probably be that a sunset over the duck

pond or Burruss or Lane stadium, or an aerial shot of the fireworks going off.

It would be Lane, Burruss or the gazebo. Burruss from the Drillfield looking

west, southwest. You know what I'm talking about.

Ren: Throughout how many years, 30-plus, 01:05:00what changes have you seen at the

University, whether it be the University at large, athletics, the growth of

different majors, what changes have you seen over time, major changes, and what

do you think about some of the changes?

Bill: Wow. Well the great leaders we've had from the presidents we've had at

this University have just been incredible. Dr. Torgersen, Dr. Steger, Dr. Sands

and Coach Beamer and now Coach Fuente in football and the athletic directors,

Jim and Dave and Whit, Jim Weaver, David Braine, and Whit Babcock, the leaders

have accelerated and grown this University. The national capital region growth

is incredible. I still think the best days of Tech are ahead of us. I would be

curious to see as the population of the State continues to grow what the 01:06:00enrollment of our school looks like in 25 years. I think that will be really

interesting to see.

And globally, I think anywhere you go in this country people know what Virginia

Tech is now and that wasn't the case in 1985. And I think now you want to make

sure anywhere in the world people know what it is, and obviously whether it's

adjusting the logo or having a more global presence in Europe and Asia. I will

be curious to see where it goes in that realm. I know the schools on the West

Coast, being there for one year, I can tell you that at the Cal schools, UC

Berkeley and UCLA, the number one focus is Asia. All their focus is set on

marketing in Asia, getting students from Asia, doing programs there, getting

investors from there, doing business there with UCLA, University of California

alums. And I will be 01:07:00curious to see, we're an East Coast school, if we go global

maybe we do Pacific [01:07:06] business projects and academic collaborations,

but I would think it's more European for us only because it's a lot easier to

get over there.

Ren: Right.

Bill: We're an amazing national University. You asked what's the growth,

probably more of an international growth at this point.

Ren: When you look across the campus what concerns you?

Bill: I think Cassell needs to be replaced and actually I'm wondering how we're

going to pay for it. I think we need a new convocation basketball multi-purpose

building there. In 20 years it's going to cost ten times as much as it would

today. I think that would be something that would really help our campus, not

just athletics. That concerns me a little 01:08:00bit, and the cost of it. I mean I

think everyone knows higher education is really expensive. The cheapest it's

going to cost to run anything on this campus is right now. It's going to cost

more next year and more in five years, and how are we going to fund that while

keeping it affordable for Virginia families? We're a land grant school. We have

a mission to serve the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia. It's core is why

we are here. It's great to have a great football team and it's great to have a

top 30 research school and it's great to have academic programs ranked in the

top of the country regardless of what it is, it's awesome. But at the end of the

day it's a land grant University that is here for Virginians to serve people in

the State and we can never forget that.

Ren: Two things that I don't want to leave out here is the Bill Ross Student

Athlete-Endowed Scholarship. Can you talk a little bit about 01:09:00 that?

Bill: I'm very honored that they named a scholarship after me for a student at

Tech who is going to study communications. We've got a bunch of student athletes

that are in our program, and I hope that someday someone is very very successful

in his or her post athletics career on the air. It's very humbling.

Ren: The Bill Roth's United Way Kids Day.

Bill: Every year we get a bunch of, the United Way is one of the great groups

here for kids that need it. There are a lot of disadvantaged kids in Virginia

and the United Way through several of its partner agencies 15 years ago we met,

and I was a speaker. I was a speaker at one of their events and I got to meet

some of these kids. He was 01:10:0011 or 12 years old and he had never been at a Tech

game. He had never been on campus. He was a Hokie fan. He had a VT shirt on

because I was the guest speaker. I don't want to make it up, he was somehow a

disadvantaged kid, a single parent and mom was in rehab, couldn't raise him and

he ended up in foster care, in four schools in three years, something along

those lines. I said, "You've never been to a game?" "No." I said, "We're going

to change that. You're coming to the game. You're going to sit with in my court

side." And then they said, "Well it's not that easy. He doesn't have a way to

get there. He's got foster parents." "Everybody in the family gets a ticket,"

and we did that. And so we got like 12 tickets. Everybody came. I said, "You

know what, next year let's find all these kids in Virginia that had never been

to a game, could never 01:11:00afford it and let's treat them like VIPs and we get them

t-shirts and hats and wristbands and free milkshakes from the dairy club and

they meet the team after the game, and get pictures with the Hokie Bird and they

all sit together and cheer for the Hokies." These are kids that have never had a

chance to be on a college campus before, let alone go to an ACC basketball game.

The tickets are $70, or $50, whatever they cost. They have no chance to ever do that.

And it's been great, so we've done it for 15 years. We had 100 kids last year at

Cassell and we're going to have 100 again this year for the Duke game. So again,

it's not me, it's the United Way. It's Tech Athletics. I've got 100 tickets to

the Virginia Tech Duke men's basketball game, Louisville. Virginia Tech

Louisville men's basketball game, and that's hard to pull off if you don't have

everybody, but everyone sees it. You see the tears just streaming down their

face when the Hokie Bird runs 01:12:00out, things that we take for granted and I love

doing that. Thank you for asking.

Ren: Yeah, that's awesome. I want to ask you, Mike Burnop just another voice who

has echoed through Virginia Tech's history, describe your relationship with Mike.

Bill: A brother, older brother, much older. [Chuckles] Way older. Older brother.

We talk four or five times a week now. We talked four or five times a week the

year I was in Los Angeles. His knowledge of Tech is incredible. His magnetism

when he walks into a room is off the charts. He's always had that. He's popular

with alums. He's popular with our players. He's popular with the opposing

players and coaches. What an ambassador for Virginia Tech in everything that he does.

Ren: 01:13:00Last couple of questions and thank you for being so generous with your

time. We are a little over an hour. If a student whether they are in high school

or maybe a freshman at this University wants to have a career in broadcast

journalism, they see you and other, Chris Collinsworth, Al Michaels, Mike

Tirico, all these broadcasters, what advice would you give to them?

Bill: The most important thing is that when they are still in high school is

that they are involved with their high school paper or a high school radio

station, or they do their own blog, or they have their own podcast, or they

intern, and they write a bunch. Kids need to write more, and writing isn't

texting 140 or 280 characters with your thumb on your phone, really write and

understand grammar, because after five semesters of this I can tell 01:14:00that grammar

is not valued as it was when I was in high school. A lot of kids don't have the

ability to write. We are doing a current event quiz every day in the one class

just to make sure they read, and that would be the second thing, because you

better be reading every day what's going on, because it's a five-question

current event sports quiz, current event quiz every day, and there's a

three-minute time limit. You either know it or you don't, so I want them to know

what's going on. And it's not just knowing about sports, it's understanding

journalism and how it works and they get it now. A lot of these kids they know

what the First Amendment is, but they don't understand why it is so important

until you show the Penn State story and how a young 22-year-old writer from the

Harrisburg paper challenged Penn State's president and said, "Sir, you are

lying." 01:15:00She was a Penn State grad and she stood up to Coach Paterno and that

athletic department and that University as a journalist.

And then we saw some people do it at Baylor. They covered up student rape, up to

the AD football coach president. And now we see the same thing happened at

Michigan State here in the last ten days, where that guy, our U.S. Olympic team,

that guy, that gymnastics coach and the Michigan State team doctor would still

be doing this if it wasn't for the Indianapolis Star. The president of the

University knew. The coaches knew. The athletic director knew. Email after email

of student athletes saying what had happened and they covered it up. And God

bless the First Amendment and the writers for the Indianapolis Star who said

this is going to be a really hard story to write. It's an incredibly awkward

topic to discuss. And so that's what we're doing in these classes, that you need

to know journalism. Yeah, you need to love 01:16:00sports and the Hokies are great and

understanding that is fantastic, but understand what the First Amendment is and

what our job is, what your job will be as the [01:16:11 farthest] state in this

country. That's why we are different than China and we are different than North

Korea and we are different than Venezuela. It's really really important and it

can be tough, and it can be awkward but it's important to know how to do it, so

those are the things that I would so. Know what the First Amendment is, intern,

read, and learn how to write.

Ren: Yeah, there you go. [Chuckles] What does Virginia Tech mean to you?

Bill: Well, I should have answered this before, to me Virginia Tech is the

people. So if I'm in Northern Virginia at a game watch party or in Florida at an

alumni event I feel like I'm at Virginia Tech. And I think a lot of people here 01:17:00understand that feeling. When you're around other Hokies you feel like I'm at

Virginia Tech. It may be at a bar in Charlotte with 125 other alums or parents

of kids, whatever it happens to be, it's my closest friends, it's my home. But

you don't have to be in Blacksburg to be at Virginia Tech.

Ren: That's true.

Bill: Right, you can be in Leesburg or one of our other satellite campuses.

Ren: Is there anything you would like people to know about you that they don't?

I know you are quite the piano player from what I hear.

Bill: We're not going now to the piano here at the library. We're not putting

that on. I'm really interested to see what Virginia Tech will be like if someone

is reading this in 30 years or 50 years or listening to 01:18:00it. From its founding

through today, 2018, the values of the school haven't changed and that's what so

amazing about it Ren.

O. M. Stull wrote the Hokie cheer and the Old Hokie yell, okay. If you put him

in a Hokie club event now or put him at Lane Stadium and he heard Old Hokie he

wouldn't know that it's been 100 years. Will we still chant Old Hokie in 2118? I

think we will.

Ren: Yeah.

Bill: And I hope we are, and I hope in 2118 they are still yelling 'touchdown

Tech' every time the Hokies score.

Ren: In wrapping up I just want to say, and I'm sure I'm not the first, someone

of my age to tell you this, I grew up in Southwest Virginia and traveling 01:19:00 to

Virginia Tech football games, listening to you on the radio, driving back

listening to you on the radio, so to be able to meet you through Andrew and for

you to sit down with VT Stories and to just share this unbelievable history that

you have with this University, I really really appreciate it. It's really

surreal, so Bill Roth thank you so much.

Bill: Thank you Ren. Go Hokies.