Hours after game, Virginia Tech keeping watch over ‘T’ in stadium sign

Georgia Tech left Lane Stadium Saturday with a W. Virginia Tech was determined to ensure that Yellow Jackets fans didn’t also abscond with a T.

After the “T” in a sign outside of Lane Stadium went missing each of the past two times that the Jackets have played in Blacksburg, Virginia Tech was evidently determined to prevent another theft.

The school had the sign monitored as early as Friday. Saturday evening, an employee of the event staffing company used by the athletic department was parked on the sidewalk next to the sign, hours after Georgia Tech had upset the Hokies 30-20.

The employee said that she was told to stay up all night in her car to keep watch on the sign until 8 a.m. – a Weather Channel forecast called for the temperature to dip to as low as 28 degrees overnight – at which point another employee would take up his or her post. If T guards were being paid on an hourly basis, that could be a cost of hundreds of dollars.

Students have attempted to steal the T from the school’s iconic Tech Tower since the 1960’s, a tradition that has spread to the theft of other T’s on campus and, evidently, to other campuses.