Hello and welcome back to Power Hour. I'm Nicole Auerbach, National College Football Writer, joined this week by

my friend and colleague Annie Bitter, covers Virginia Tech. He's the host of our Atlantic and Coastal

podcast. And this is our Tuesday National College Football podcast. We talk about whatever we want

in the sport of college football in an hour or less.

And eventually one of these days, we will actually have a true power hour and record it and

see what happens. But not today. Today we are talking over coffee. We're talking about

Bruce Ariens' career in his Virginia Tech roots. And Andy, I am super thrilled that you are joining me because I

loved this story. I thought it was such a great story. And I really would love to know, first of all,

how long it took to put together? Was this something, you know, you were going to do when the bucks

were in the postseason and then they happened to make the Super Bowl? Like, how does the story

about someone's coaching roots that cover so much ground take,

like, how did it start?

Well, they won the NFC championship game, and I was thinking, trying to think of story ideas.

I had written, well, I had written a Hokies book a couple years ago,

you know, 100 things that every Hokies fan should know and do before they die.

Quick plug there for the book.

But Bruce Ariens was one of the chapters that I had in that. It was sort of later on in the book, and, you know, he was here a long time ago, and it was brief, but obviously that was in the back of my mind that he had played here. So I'd sort of written his story in a short form like that before.

And I figured it'd be a nice thing to revisit because you see, that he had played here. So I'd sort of written his story in a short form like that before.

And I figured it'd be a nice thing to revisit because you see Bruce Ariens at some of these press conferences and he's got like a Virginia Tech sweatshirt on or something like that.

It's got the logo like prominent and he go, man, he hasn't really forgotten where he came

from with this stuff.

He's a big fan of Virginia Tech, you know, went to't really forgotten where he came from with this stuff.

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