50 Fun Facts About Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech's HokieBird, whose student performers stay anonymous until graduation, is modeled on which bird?

A turkey has been the model since a college employee trained a live one to pull a cart before a 1913 football game. Performers reveal themselves at commencement by wearing the costume's feet.

Which Metallica song has played as the Virginia Tech football team runs onto the field at Lane Stadium since 2000?

Enter Sandman got its jumping crowd in 2001, when a marching band member started bouncing to it and his bandmates joined in. The ritual later spread to basketball games.

Which Virginia Tech quarterback played for the national title as a freshman and went first in the 2001 NFL draft?

Michael Vick became the first African-American quarterback taken with the top pick when the Atlanta Falcons chose him. In his first college game he ran for three touchdowns in just over a quarter.

Virginia Tech's main campus, laid out around the oval Drillfield, lies in which town in Montgomery County, Virginia?

Blacksburg began as a grid of 16 blocks that William Black laid out on his family's land in 1797, three quarters of a century before the college opened.

Virginia Tech dropped its original black and gray colors because the athletic uniforms made players look like what?

Prisoners wore similar drab outfits, so an 1896 committee chose burnt orange and Chicago maroon instead, a pairing that no other college was using.

Skipper, the cannon Virginia Tech cadets fire at football games, honors the wartime naval service of which US president?

John F. Kennedy had been the skipper of a PT boat, and the cadets who built the cannon heard he had been shot while hauling it back to campus in November 1963.

Virginia Tech built System X, the third-fastest supercomputer of 2003, from 1,100 desktops made by which company?

Apple Power Mac G5s kept the cost of System X to $5.2 million, at a time when the world's fastest computer had cost about $400 million to build.

Which former Virginia Tech cornerback coached the Hokies football team for 29 seasons, from 1987 to 2015?

Frank Beamer took the Hokies to 23 straight bowl games, and a campus road was renamed Beamer Way in his honor a few months before he retired.

Virginia Tech's Latin motto, Ut Prosim, adopted with a college seal in 1896, means which phrase in English?

That I May Serve was devised by the college's president of the 1890s and his son, and Ut Prosim is also the name of the last of the eight pylons at the campus war memorial.

Hokie Stone, which Virginia Tech cuts from its own quarry to face campus buildings, is mainly which type of rock?

Limestone rich in dolomite, Hokie Stone ranges from greys and browns to pinks, and stone from the university's quarry may be sold only to Virginia Tech.

Which Virginia Tech defensive end, the first pick of the 1985 NFL draft, retired with the league's career sack record?

Bruce Smith was called the Sack Man in college and won the 1984 Outland Trophy as the nation's best lineman before recording 200 sacks as a professional.

Which team beat Virginia Tech 46–29 in the Sugar Bowl of January 2000 to win college football's national championship?

Florida State trailed 29–28 after three quarters, the Hokies having erased a 21-point deficit, before scoring 18 unanswered points in the fourth.

Virginia Tech's football team left the Big East after the 2003 season to join which athletic conference?

The ACC gained an instant contender: the Hokies won the conference football championship in 2004, their very first season in the league.

Which battered object, carried to the sideline by a chosen player, symbolizes Virginia Tech's blue-collar defense?

A lunch pail has travelled with the Hokies since 1995, with a list of the week's goals tucked inside, and its care is entrusted to a leader of the defense.

Virginia Tech's Hokie nickname comes from an 1896 contest in which a student won five dollars for writing what?

A spirit cheer was needed because the college had just changed its name, and its author later said he made the word up purely to grab attention.

For decades Virginia Tech's football team played a Thanksgiving Day game against which rival military college?

VMI Keydets faced Tech in a game billed as the Military Classic of the South, which the two schools played every year from 1913 to 1971.

Which Virginia Tech cadet helped build the Skipper cannon in 1963 and later wrote the memoir filmed as October Sky?

Homer Hickam and a classmate collected brass from fellow cadets to cast the barrel, and at its first game the cannon blew the hats off the rival cadets.

Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia have played their annual football game since 1996 for which trophy?

The Commonwealth Cup stayed with the Hokies for 15 straight seasons, from 2004 to 2018, the longest winning run by either side in the rivalry.

The Black Diamond Trophy, played for by Virginia Tech and West Virginia, is named for which Appalachian resource?

Coal is nicknamed black diamond, and the trophy introduced in 1997 honors the mining heritage that the two schools' home regions share.

Which Virginia Tech guard of the 1980s, whose number 30 jersey the school retired, is the father of two NBA players?

Dell Curry left as the school's all-time leading scorer and later won the NBA's Sixth Man of the Year award with the Charlotte Hornets.

Since the late 1980s, Virginia Tech fans at Lane Stadium have shaken what during an opponent's third-down plays?

Keys jingle because fans treat every third down as a crucial play to stop. Freshman cadets, meanwhile, do one push-up for each point the Hokies have scored.

Which party dance is the signature number of the tuba section in Virginia Tech's Marching Virginians?

The Hokey Pokey, respelled Hokie Pokie on campus, was danced by the tubas between the third and fourth quarters of every home football game until the 2017 season.

Which former co-anchor of NBC's Today show graduated from Virginia Tech in 1986 with a degree in broadcast journalism?

Hoda Kotb was her high school's homecoming queen before she studied at Tech, and she went on to anchor Today from 2018 to 2025.

Which Virginia Tech graduate became NASA's first flight director and gave his name to Mission Control in Houston?

Chris Kraft earned his aeronautical engineering degree in 1944 and shaped how Mission Control works; the Houston building was named after him in 2011.

Which poet, a leading voice of the 1960s Black Arts Movement, taught at Virginia Tech from 1987 until 2022?

Nikki Giovanni became a University Distinguished Professor, and one of her writing students, Kwame Alexander, went on to win the Newbery Medal.

Which Virginia Tech safety, a fifth-round pick in 2010, became a mainstay of Seattle's Legion of Boom secondary?

Kam Chancellor made four Pro Bowls with the Seahawks, having arrived at Tech as a quarterback recruit before he was moved to the defensive backfield.

Virginia Tech and Tennessee drew a college football record crowd of 156,990 in 2016 by playing at which racetrack?

Bristol Motor Speedway was chosen partly because it lies about the same distance from both campuses. Tennessee won the game, billed as the Battle at Bristol, 45–24.

The Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, run with a private hospital system, is located in which Virginia city?

Roanoke is home to the Carilion Clinic, the university's partner in the school, whose first class of future doctors began coursework in August 2010.

Virginia Tech runs its college of veterinary medicine jointly with the flagship university of which other state?

Maryland hosts a branch of the college at College Park, while the main site is on the Hokies' own campus and an equine medical center operates in Leesburg.

Lane Stadium at Virginia Tech is named for alumnus Edward Hudson Lane, whose company dominated the market for what?

Cedar chests made the Lane Company a household name, and the business began in 1912 with technical help from Lane's old shop class professor at Tech.

Virginia Tech was founded in 1872 with money from which federal law that created the nation's land-grant colleges?

The Morrill Act gave states federal land to sell for college endowments, and Virginia sent two-thirds of its proceeds to the new school and a third to Hampton Institute.

Virginia Tech's Steger Center, its study-abroad base in the town of Riva San Vitale, is in which country?

Switzerland has an Italian-speaking canton, Ticino, and the center's home there puts students within easy reach of Milan and other northern Italian cities.

Redshirt freshman Mekhi Lewis won a 2019 NCAA title, the first for Virginia Tech's program, in which sport?

Wrestling brought the breakthrough when Lewis beat a two-time defending champion 7–1 in the 165-pound final and was named the tournament's most outstanding competitor.

Virginia Tech's class ring, exchanged at the Ring Dance since 1934, stands out among college rings for being what?

It is redesigned every year by a committee of sophomores, a custom dating from 1911, though all versions keep a screaming eagle and an interlocking chain.

Growley, the canine ambassador of the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets seen on football sidelines, is which breed of dog?

Labrador retriever Growley takes his name, legend says, from a 1930s commandant's dog that cadets fed from their breakfasts, until the meal itself was called Growley.

Virginia Tech engineering professor Marc Edwards led the 2015 study that exposed lead in the tap water of which city?

Flint got its proof after a resident phoned Edwards, who formed a study team and travelled to Michigan. He had earlier exposed lead in the water of Washington, D.C.

Virginia Tech graduate Robert Richardson shared a 1996 Nobel Prize, for work on superfluid helium, in which field?

Physics honored Richardson and two Cornell colleagues for their 1972 discovery that helium-3 can become a superfluid. He held bachelor's and master's degrees from Tech.

Virginia Tech won its first major bowl game, the Sugar Bowl of December 1995, by beating which team 28–10?

Texas entered as a narrow betting favorite, yet the Hokies pulled away to win and finished the season 10–2 as co-champions of the Big East.

Virginia Tech pitcher Angela Tincher threw a 2008 no-hitter to end whose 185-game exhibition winning streak?

The US Olympic team struck out ten times in the 1–0 loss, its first defeat in a pre-Olympic exhibition since 1996.

Each year Virginia Tech's first-year cadets retrace the 26-mile walk made in 1872 by which student, the college's first?

Addison Caldwell hiked from his home in Craig County to enroll, and today's cadets cover half of the route in the fall and the rest in the spring.

Virginia Tech's cadet regimental band, which volunteered for duty in the Spanish–American War, goes by which nickname?

The Highty-Tighties so impressed the march composer Sousa in 1901 that he dedicated a performance of his newest march to the band.

Seventy-five towers along Virginia Tech's Smart Road, a limited-access research highway, can produce what on demand?

Artificial weather lets engineers test vehicles and pavement in controlled conditions, and the road also crosses a 175-foot bridge, one of the tallest in Virginia.

Which coach ran Virginia Tech's defense as sole coordinator from 1996 to 2019 and won the 2006 Broyles Award?

Bud Foster received the award given each year to the top assistant in college football, and he announced in August 2019 that the coming season would be his last.

Which bandleader, famed for his Pennsylvanians, composed Moonlight and VPI for Virginia Tech's Ring Dance?

Fred Waring wrote the tune with lyricist Charles Gaynor, and he also bankrolled and lent his name to the Waring Blendor, an early electric food blender.

Virginia Tech won the 1973 NIT by five total points over four games, including a 92–91 overtime win over which team?

Notre Dame fell by a single point as Allan Bristow led the Hokies to the first of their two NIT crowns; the second followed in 1995.

The Preston and Olin Institute, the boys' school whose building became Virginia Tech in 1872, was run by which church?

Methodist leaders named the academy partly for Stephen Olin, a minister who had been president of Randolph-Macon College; it ran from 1851 until the state took it over.

Which Virginia Tech defensive end won both the Lombardi Award and the Nagurski Trophy for the 1999 season?

Corey Moore piled up 31 sacks over his final two college seasons and was recognized as college football's defensive player of the year.

Which house, begun about 1802 and enlarged by the Preston family, is the oldest building on Virginia Tech's campus?

Solitude is a two-story log and frame house that Robert Preston received, along with the surrounding land, from his father, a governor of Virginia.

Virginia Tech graduate Kylene Barker, who studied clothing and textiles, won which pageant title for 1979?

Miss America that year performed a gymnastics routine as her talent, and Barker had earned both her degree and the Miss Virginia crown in 1978.

Which Virginia Tech receiver caught an 81-yard touchdown pass for the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl XXXI?

Antonio Freeman's catch from Brett Favre was then the longest touchdown reception in Super Bowl history, and at Tech he had caught 22 touchdown passes in four seasons.