TAMPA, Florida – Long before winning the Super Bowl as Tampa Bay Buccaneer, coach Bruce Arians was a Virginia Tech Hokie.
Arians, 68, played as a defender for Virginia Tech in the early 1970s. He became a team coach.
“It was very different, you know, we were not affiliated with a conference at that time, we were a Southern Independent,” said Arians during a press conference before the Super Bowl.
Arians said those Hokie teams were, in a way, like a melting pot with teammates from cities like Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York and Atlanta. But, like many college football programs at the time, the Hokies were not very racially diverse.
“We had very few minority players, black players,” recalled Arians. “One happened to be my roommate, James Barber.”
Barber’s sons, Ronde and Tiki, became football stars at the University of Virginia and the NFL.
Just by sharing a room, Arians and Barber made their own history.
As told by Arians in his autobiography, it was the first time that a white player and a black player lived together at Virginia Tech. They even hung a sign on the bedroom door with the words: “Salt and pepper Incorporated”.
“Nobody thought about racial issues in particular. We were all just football players,” said Dr. Charles Martin, co-captain of the Virginia Tech team. “You are likely to congratulate both black and white. I didn’t even think about it.”
After Arians made his last snap, he went from player to coach.
“I was a bit older on that team, being married for the four years I was there,” he said.
Hokies head coach Jimmy Sharpe made coaching look easy.
“Jimmy taught me how to make players believe they are going to win every game, even if they probably don’t have a chance, because it sucks,” he said.
Aryans have learned that mutual respect is the best way to train players who used to be their teammates.
His night work also helped.
“I was also a bartender at their favorite bar, so I could keep an eye on them,” he said.
It has been a long time since Arians left Blacksburg and became one of the great coaches of the NFL. But he said that Virginia Tech is always close to his heart.
“I love the Hokies,” he said. “I will be a Hokie for the rest of my life. I will not be anything else for the rest of my life, but I will be a damned Hokie for the rest of my life. I know that.”