Alex Gould/Special for The Republic / USA TODAY NETWORK
Virginia Tech has harnessed “Enter Sandman” to get the crowd going at football games since the start of the millennium, and it was only natural that Metallica scheduled a stop at Lane Stadium during its ongoing tour. The crowd predictably went nuts when the band pulled out the tune to the point where the reaction was able to trigger earthquake sensors.
In 2000, Virginia Tech installed a fancy new video scoreboard inside Lane Stadium, and the powers that be decided there was no better time to pick a new entrance song for the football team before settling on “Enter Sandman” by Metallica.
It was a solid choice but one that didn’t really garner a ton of attention until the following season.
On December 1, 2001, the Hokies hosted top-ranked Miami for a what The Washington Post once described as a “particularly chilly night game” (although weather records show the temperature was around 60°F ahead of kickoff).
A member of the marching band started jumping up and down when “Enter Sandman” came on in an attempt to stay warm, and it kicked off a chain reaction that eventually became one of college football’s coolest (and most imposing) traditions.
It’s been close to 25 years since Metallica was tapped to serve as the unofficial rock band of Virginia Tech football, and on Wednesday, the legendary group performed in front of the more than 65,000 fans who packed into the Lane Stadium during a show they capped out with en electric rendition of “Enter Sandman.”
That rousing finale got the crowd amped up to the point where the helicorder the scientists at the Virginia Tech Seismicological Observatory used to detect activity in the area was triggered thanks to the mass of people jumping up and down in the venue; it wasn’t enough to register on the Richter scale but was the equivalent of a “small earthquake.”
Well done.