It’s been a couple of days since the Metallica concert in Blacksburg, and I still find myself blown away by the evening.
I mean, when it was first announced, I thought it would be a fun evening for a lot of Hokies, particularly the younger ones. It was a natural combination – Enter Sandman being Metallica’s Peanut Butter to our Hokie fans’ Jelly – so unless Metallica forgot to play the song, there was little doubt the night would be magical.
It ended up being far more than that.
I first got an inkling of how magical it would be as fans were filing in. Thanks to the magic of X, I and everyone else who didn’t attend got to live vicariously through those who posted pics and videos. The first I saw was a 21-second video panning the stadium, showing the stage and fans who had just about filled most of the seats already. It caused me to do a double-take and think “THAT is our stadium?”
With all due respect, this looked like something in a major, major city, not the place where when I was a student, me and a friend drove down a country road not more than 5 miles from Lane and thanks to a CB radio and a speaker in the grill of the car, made mooing sounds trying to get the local herd of cattle to stampede.
I don’t think people in NEW YORK CITY or similar places would know how to do such things.
Then the pictures and videos started flooding in. I’ve always thought the most iconic picture in Lane happened in a game with Boston College when a Sports Illustrated photographer captured a fiery sky at sunset as the game moved into the 4th quarter. But Trey Wilson on X posted a pic from his viewpoint that showed a similar sunset, the crowd and the “snake pit” where the band played that I’ll bet my house is now the screensaver for half a million computers or more in Southwest Virginia.
Eventually videos of the band playing “Enter Sandman” appeared and it was an experience I can only describe as incredibly unique. You expected it to be special given how the DNA from the song had intertwined with Metallica, Virginia Tech and Hokie football over the years, so there were high expectations to begin with.
But it was even beyond that. It was better than anything you hoped.
What makes me still smile about the evening – and will continue to do so for many more years – was the incredible energy created that night. The pics of the band and the crowd were nice, but it was all the selfies of individuals, couples and families who were smiling and happy in a way we haven’t seen during an event at Lane Stadium in decades.
They made YOU happy as they were sharing it, as if you were sitting with them just out of the frame.
It wasn’t just a rock concert. It was a family reunion that created seismic recordings that share the same qualities as an earthquake. And whether you were there or not, it created a tremendous sense of pride for how everyone came together that evening.
“Those are my people,” I said to my wife while watching the videos.
That energy and power could be a valuable asset for Virginia Tech one day if harnessed properly. I have little doubt that the NCAA will mishandle college sports to the point that in the near future, we’ll probably all be following the adventures of conference realignment. As a career salesman, I would love to be sitting at the table when a conference asks “what do you bring to the table that other schools can’t?”
I’d just slap a 2-minute video of the concert where Hokies are going crazy and say “An atmosphere like THIS.”
Granted, the school has to make some tough decisions if we’re ever going to have such excitement on Saturdays again. But at least on one Wednesday night in May, it all came together. The cheering, the comradery, the jumping up and down…and the happiness of sharing a great time with 80,000 of your closest friends.
Golfer Bubba Watson, when asked about winning The Masters a few years ago couldn’t really answer, saying “I never got this far in my dreams.” As I was watching all the videos come in Wednesday night, I thought the opposite. In my dreams I did get that far, and imagined a perfect storm of song, band and fans.
What I actually saw, however, was even better.
