The season of 1998 was an exciting time for Virginia Tech football.
That season, as a member of the Big East, the Hokies went 8-3 in the regular season, which in turn earned them a trip to the Music City Bowl in which they beat a Southeastern Conference power in Alabama, which featured Shaun Alexander at running back. Once more the future looked bright as an 18-year-old redshirt freshman named Michael Vick waited in the wings after being touted as one of the top five quarterbacks in his recruiting class.
It would have been a solid and strong precursor to a national championship season had it not been for one colossal black mark.
On Oct. 17, during homecoming weekend, an undefeated No. 14 Tech team hosted the Temple Owls, a Philadelphia program that had a history of consistently playing somewhere between mediocre and awful. That season, they were much closer to the latter.
Therein lies the reason why Tech selected Temple as its homecoming game opponent.
The Owls had not won more than three games in a season since 1990. Coming into Blacksburg, Temple was 0-6 on the season, including losses to Akron, Toledo and Division I-AA William & Mary.
But they came into Blacksburg and shocked the Hokies.
Nothing unusual happened in the game until the last 33 seconds in the first half. The Hokies had put up 17 unanswered points before fullback Rasha Harrison caught a short screen pass and broke loose from Hokie defenders for a 67-yard touchdown run. That play in itself left the fans in attendance dumbfounded, and the Owls appeared to seize the Hokies' momentum going into halftime.
Tech's morale seemed to continually decrease as it began to realize that it could not just roll over Temple. The teams battled throughout the second half, with the Owls finally taking a 28-24 advantage on a quarterback sneak with six minutes remaining in the fourth quarter.
The Owls didn't quit once they took the lead, either. On the ensuing drive, a Temple interception by Leon Gray ended the Hokies' first attempt at a comeback. The visitors could not, however, extend the lead, and the Hokies found themselves with one more chance.
Sophomore quarterback Nick Sorensen (who currently plays in the NFL as a backup safety for the Cleveland Browns) had two minutes and change to lead his offense from Tech's 12-yard line to the end zone. They could not settle for anything less than a touchdown.
And for a few minutes, it appeared as if the Hokies had collected themselves and were on track to a sloppy victory instead of a monumental defeat. Sorensen made five consecutive completions to bring the Hokies all the way to the Owls two-yard line on fourth down and with only a handful of seconds left on the clock.
The crowd was enthusiastic to say the least, and you would have never thought that such an audience could ever be excited about the possibility of defeating the worst team in Division I-A.
It all came down to senior running back Lemont Pegues who had rushed for 166 yards in the game. Pegues had one chance to punch it in and win the game for the home team.
But he could not do it. The Temple defense swallowed Pegues and did not allow any gain of yardage.
As time expired, the only sounds one could hear were the faint-by-proportion, yet fervent cheers that arose from the visitor's sideline and the little sliver of Temple fans in the east end zone.
It was one of the first Tech football games that I attended and, to this day, it remains my favorite out of all the sporting events that I've seen in person. I love Tech, but this was a game that made the impossible seem possible.
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