Wahoo Wire

Courtesy of Augusta Free Press

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Most of Virginia’s student body took this weekend’s away football game as an opportunity to leave its collective bowtie in the top drawer or pearl necklace in the jewelry box and relax, free from the stress of watching their winless team.

For some frustrated fans, though, the Cavaliers’ trip to Hattiesburg, Miss., represented an opportunity to make their complaints heard.

Dozens of the disenchanted Wahoo faithful congregated in front of the team’s McCue Center headquarters next to University Hall in the wee hours of Saturday morning, armed with posterboard, blue and orange magic markers, and a common message for much-maligned Virginia head coach Al Groh.

“Groh must grow!” second-year political science major Lance Massenburg shouted while filling in the blue bubble letters on his sign with orange, coloring carefully within the lines.

“We’re fed up with his schtick,” Massenburg continued. “Every week, win or lose, we get the same old stone-faced ball coach shrugging his shoulders for the fans. He’s lost his last six games, choked away bowl eligibility, and taken one on the chin from William-and-freaking-Mary, and we haven’t gotten so much as a headset smashed in frustration.

“He needs to show a wider range of emotions. If he’d just hit a microphone or something, the sixty minutes of bad football would at least be entertaining.”

With the football team’s staff out of town, Massenburg explained, the group seized the opportunity “for real grassroots action against the coaching status quo” after meeting and organizing through private messages on Internet message boards.

“We wanted to stage a sit-in hunger strike, like those Living Wage hippies did,” he said, “but the doors were locked.”

Undeterred, the gathered protestors disperesed temporarily, returning before noon with camping supplies and provisions for a protracted stay on McCue’s grassy front lawn.

“I refuse to put off working on my dissertation to follow week after week of fruitless gridiron futility!” philosophy grad student Erik Bayes opined as he inflated a bed inside his Coleman-brand tent.

“If I’m going to pull all-nighters wracking my brain on how to answer the question of free will well enough to get a master’s degree from this school,” Bayes said, “I expect the football coach to be similarly thoughtful about the awful results he’s getting. Lose a cupcake game, lose six games—lose every game this season, for all I care—but at least take a lesson away from it.

“Bemoan that ‘the best laid plans of mice and men’ fall to pieces. Question whether the end of winning justifies the cutthroat means used by the schools who rise to the top. Realize the insignificance of a game in a world torn by war, poverty, and disease.

“Expand your mind, for crying out loud!”

When told that many Virginia supporters are calling for Groh’s dismissal, the protestors seemed taken aback.

“Fire him?” townie and lawn maintenance contractor Ted Spargo wondered as he taped his “Emphasize The Positives” sign to a wooden paint stick. “That’s so harsh.”

“I mean, his program’s graduation rate has never quite lived up to the school’s reputation, and those six consecutive losses sting a little right now,” Spargo acknowledged. “But he’s coached up 23 NFL draft picks in his eight years, including five first-rounders. And his defenses have always been competitive in the ACC.

“Then again, these are the same fans who dress for football games like weddings and drink a fifth of liquor before the last home game as a rite of passage. I wouldn’t trust them with operating a weedwhacker, let alone a football team.”