Clifton, Malone, and Green Leaving Hokies

Beamerball.com announced Monday that rising r-Sr. wide
receiver Chris Clifton, rising r-Jr. wide receiver Michael Malone, and true
freshman fullback Mike Green will be leaving the football program. Malone and
Green will be transferring, while Clifton’s plans are unknown at this time.

Clifton’s
departure ends a VT career that started at quarterback and ended far down the
depth chart at wide receiver. Clifton was one of three QB recruits in the 2001
recruiting class (Will Hunt and Bryan Randall being the other two), and when he
arrived in the fall of 2001, he had the best arm of the three. Randall and Hunt
adapted to the position more quickly though, and in the spring of 2002, Clifton
moved to wide receiver.

Clifton played sparingly in 2002, then played in 13 games
in 2003 and had three catches for 20 yards. He appeared poised for a productive
2004 when he emerged as a leader in spring football and earned his first career
start in the season opener against USC in the BCA Classic. But Clifton dropped
two passes against the Trojans, one deep in USC territory, and he virtually
disappeared for the rest of the season. He didn’t play a single down the next
week in a 63-0 blowout win over Western Michigan – a bad sign, if ever there
was one – and only played in five of Tech’s remaining 11 games after that. On
the season, Clifton caught just one pass for 10 yards (against Florida A&M),
played just 61 plays from scrimmage, and only one play on special teams.

Malone, the son of NBA Hall of Famer Moses Malone, has
good size (6-3, 212) and athleticism but was never able to make an impact at VT.
Malone was a special-teamer in 2003 (45 plays) and 2004 (41 plays) but never
caught a pass at VT.

Green’s departure continues an unbelievable string of bad
fortune for scholarship fullbacks at Virginia Tech. Brian Edmonds, who signed
with the Hokies in 1992, is the last player to enter VT as a scholarship
fullback and have a productive career. Since then, according to the past
recruiting classes listed on TSL’s Football
Recruiting Page, the Hokies have signed eight fullbacks, and only one –
Shelley Ellison – ever carried the football for Virginia Tech.

Edmonds served as VT’s fullback from 1994-1996, and the
position was taken over by converted tailback Marcus Parker in 1997. Converted
tailback Cullen Hawkins was the starter briefly at the beginning of 1998, then
was injured in the third game of the season against Miami. Redshirt freshman
walk-on Jarrett Ferguson stepped in and held the job through the 2001 season.
Walk-on Doug Easlick started in 2002 and 2003, and walk-on Jesse Allen (now a
scholarship player) was the #1 fullback in 2004.

(Editor’s Note, 5/20/05: Later research revealed that
Edmonds was not originally a scholarship fullback — he walked on with the
Hokies in the fall of 1992 [Hokie Huddler, Vol. 10, No. 1, August 24, 1992])

The ACC has wrapped up their annual meetings, which were
held from Sunday through Wednesday in Amelia Island, Florida. This year’s
meetings lacked the drama of meetings from the past two years but were
interesting nonetheless. Here are the highlights and info to come out of Florida
this week:

• The ACC title game has been rescheduled for 8 pm on
  December 3rd, 2005. It was previously scheduled for 1 pm. The new time will
  cause the ACC game on ABC to overlap with the SEC Championship game, which
  starts at 6 pm on CBS.

• Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville will host the
  championship game with a seating configuration of 77,497, and 42,000 tickets
  have already been sold, leaving about 35,500 tickets. 24,000 of those will
  go to the ACC, and of those, 16,000 will be allotted to the participating
  schools (8,000 tickets each). Each school will also have additional access
  to 2,000 tickets held in reserve, according
  to the Florida Times-Union, but it’s not clear what that means or
  where the additional tickets will come from. On June 1st, unsold tickets
  will go on sale to the general public.

• The ACC’s football coaches still support a fifth year
  of eligibility for football players (“five [years] to play five
  [seasons]” instead of the current “five to play four” setup).
  The ACC proposed this legislation to the NCAA last fall but withdrew their
  support when the NCAA didn’t appear receptive. The ACC now feels that other
  conferences will back them in the proposal, and the league will discuss it
  again with their school presidents and may push it again along with the AFCA
  (American Football Coaches Association) this coming fall.

• The ACC has had discussions with the Dec. 31st AutoZone
  Liberty Bowl, which currently has one open slot to match up against a
  Conference USA opponent. If the Liberty Bowl decides to sign with the ACC,
  that will give the ACC seven bowl tie-ins for 2005.

• The league’s bowl tie-ins all expire after the 2005
  season, with the exception of the BCS bowl tie-in, and that will lead to
  possible shuffling of bowl lineups. Something interesting might be happening
  with the Capital One Bowl, which currently matches Big 12 and Big Ten teams
  and has the highest payout of non-BCS bowls ($5.187 million per team).
  According to The
  State newspaper, Florida Citrus Sports executive director Tom Mickle is
  trying to set up an alliance among the Capital One, Champs Sports and Cotton
  Bowl under which the Big 12, Big Ten, SEC and ACC would provide the six
  teams for those three games. Under the proposal, the ACC could play in the
  Capital One or Cotton bowls once every four years and remain in the Champs
  Sports Bowl the remaining years.

On
Monday, TechSideline.com presented an $800 check to Major General Jerry Allen as
a donation to the Emerging Leader Scholarships established to honor VT alumni
U.S. Army 1st Lt. Jeffrey Kaylor, of Clifton, Va., and Army 1st Lt. Timothy
Price, of Midlothian, Va., both of whom were killed in action in Iraq in 2003
and 2004 respectively.

The funds were generated via a raffle at TSL’s 2005 spring
game tailgate. At the tailgate, several items were raffled off, with top prize
being a Bryan Randall signed print donated by TechLocker.com and framed by Original
Frameworks in Blacksburg. Funds generated by the raffle were used to pay for
the tailgate, and after all costs were covered, excess funds amounting to $800
were donated to the Kaylor/Price scholarships.

• TSL’s Future
  Football Schedules Page has been updated, now that the 12-game schedule
  has been passed by the NCAA. Though we anticipate that the large majority of
  12th games will be home games against Division 1-AA teams or 1-A
  “cupcakes,” we have filed most of the 12th games in the “home
  or away” TBD category.

• TSL’s Lane
  Stadium Historical photos page has been updated with nine new photos of
  Lane Stadium’s past. Three photos are from the construction of Lane back in
  1964/65, and the other six photos show various perspectives of Lane from
  1998-2000. Look for red “New!” text to denote the new photos.