COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) -There once was a time when Frank Beamer and Ralph Friedgen coached together and were best of friends.
Now they’re friendly rivals who rarely speak during football season.
The duo began their coaching careers as graduate assistants at Maryland in the early 1970s. They were also assistants at The Citadel from 1973-78, and Friedgen was Beamer’s aide in 1981 at Murray State.
As each moved up the coaching ladder, their contact during football season waned.
Beamer now runs the Virginia Tech program, and Friedgen has the same job at Maryland. When the teams meet Saturday at Byrd Stadium in an Atlantic Coast Conference matchup, it will be the fourth time Beamer and Friedgen have been on opposite sidelines as head coaches.
“I don’t talk to Frank a whole lot during the season,” Friedgen said. “Frank and I will always be friends, but it’s tougher because we’re competitors now. I don’t think he likes it, and I know I don’t like it.
, and he’s going to do the same. Then, when the game’s over, we’ll talk about our families and everything.”
The Beamer-Friedgen competition has thus far been a one-sided affair. The Hokies won 55-6 in 2004, 28-9 in 2005 and 23-13 last year. It might be more of the same Saturday: Virginia Tech is ranked 20th in the nation, and Maryland is 2-7 with a four-game losing streak.
Although Beamer hasn’t had the opportunity to console Friedgen, he hasn’t lost respect for his friend’s prowess.
“I haven’t talked with him in a while. The thing I know about Ralph is he is a really, really good football coach,” Beamer said. “He has been on both sides of the ball, he knows the game and there is no question about his ability to coach football.”
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ON THE MEND: North Carolina State coach Tom O’Brien is getting some help from an unlikely source: injured linebacker Nate Irving.
“He’s been out there coaching the linebackers,” O’Brien said with a laugh. “He takes credit if they do something good. If they do something bad and I look at him, he turns around and won’t look at me.”
O’Brien says Irving, the team’s leading tackler in 2008, will soon run on dirt surfaces again. That’s a notable measure of progress for an athlete who was lost for the season after being involved in a summertime auto accident.
as cleared to run only on a treadmill, or what O’Brien jokingly called “the old-man machine.”
“For him, psychologically, to go outside and run, I think it’ll be big for the team to see him out there,” O’Brien said. “For what he’s gone through … it’s amazing that he’s back the way he is.”
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EVEN UP: Through nine games, Florida State (4-5, 2-4) has scored the exact number of points it has allowed – 278.
While the average of almost 31 points a game is an improvement for the offense from recent years, the defense is poised to break two dubious school records set by the 1973 team, which gave up 30.1 points and 445.1 yards a game.
The Seminoles have surrendered an average of 434.1 yards – the most by any ACC team. FSU is allowing 35.7 points and 456.2 yards a game in league play, and has yielded up 42 or more points in three of the last four games.
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HOOS FOR HERZLICH: Add Virginia to the list of teams doing something for Boston College linebacker Mark Herzlich, the 2008 ACC defensive player of the year who is battling cancer.
Cavaliers players are all donating their $15 food money for Saturday in Herzlich’s name to Uplifting Athletes, a nonprofit that works with the college football community to raise awareness and funds to battle rare diseases like Ewing’s sarcoma, which afflicted Herzlich.
linebacker when he visited campus.
“It’s tragic to see anybody who is considered to be in their prime for athletes in college, whatever it may be, to go through a situation where what that you worked so hard for is taken away from you,” senior linebacker Aaron Clark said this week.
The school will present Herzlich a check for $9,494.94 before Saturday’s game.
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PLAYING HOUSE: Virginia Tech linebacker Cody Grimm needs only two credits to graduate in December and is taking just one class: House planning.
House planning? What is that?
“I don’t really know,” Grimm said. “It’s all about setting up how you build a house and what should be what size and stuff. It’s kind of interesting.”
But it’s probably knowledge he will never put to use.
“I’ll probably just buy a house already built, if I can,” he said.
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GLOVER’S GREATEST THRILL: Lucas Glover found something even more exciting than sinking that 3-foot putt to win the U.S. Open: Running down the hill in front of Clemson’s football team.
The Tigers alum got the chance to soak up his favorite team’s famous entrance Saturday night before Clemson faced Florida State, rubbing Howard’s Rock and leading the team out with coach Dabo Swinney.
Swinney said Glover texted him later that night. “He said it was the highlight of his life,” Swinney said.
playing “New York, New York,” a nod to Glover’s win at Bethpage Black earlier this year. The golfer also dotted the “i” in Tigers.
Glover played golf for Clemson from 1997 to 2001 and is a member of the school’s hall of fame.
“We’re going to let him one more major,” Swinney said, “and then we’ll invite him back.”
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AP Sports Writers Joedy McCreary in Winston-Salem, N.C.; Hank Kurz Jr. in Blacksburg, Va.; Brent Kallestad in Tallahassee, Fla.; and AP writer Jeffrey Collins in Clemson, S.C. contributed to this story.
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