LARAMIE, Wyo.—U.Va. might have set a record today for the shortest walk-through ever by a college football team.

The Cavaliers, whose hotel is about 45 miles away in Cheyenne, pulled up to the University of Wyoming’s War Memorial Stadium in three chartered buses around 3:40 p.m. local time.  They headed back to Cheyenne about 35 minutes later.

In the interim, U.Va.’s players and coaches trooped off the buses, checked out the visitors’ locker room and, finally, walked the length of the field and back.  Not a play was run or a formation practiced.

The Cavaliers had taken care of that stuff earlier in the day during a practice in Cheyenne.  The trip to Laramie, Al Groh said, was to allow his players “to see the environment, check the field out, make any decisions on what shoes to wear, get their lockers set, and just give them the opportunity to get out of that hotel and get over and see where the game’s going to be.”

War Memorial, whose 30,514-seat capacity is half that of Scott Stadium, has a FieldTurf surface.  The Wahoos will feel right at home.

“We practice on it every day,” Groh said.
Virginia and Wyoming meet tomorrow at noon Mountain time.  The earliest the Cavaliers could play at night this season would be Sept. 22, when Georgia Tech comes to Scott Stadium.  U.Va.’s Sept. 8 game against visiting Duke will start at noon, as will its Sept. 15 game at North Carolina.  The starting time for the Georgia Tech game probably will be announced Sept. 10.