How METALLICA's 'Enter Sandman' Transformed Virginia Tech Football's Entrance Into One Of Most Iconic Scenes In Sports

Kris Schwartz, an ESPN feature producer, has filed a six-minute video report for "ACC Huddle" on how METALLICA's "Enter Sandman" became the Virginia Tech Hokies football team's entrance song more than a quarter century ago.

Regarded among college football's most powerful entrances, "Enter Sandman" is a tradition that dates to August 27, 2000 when Virginia Tech installed its first video scoreboard in Lane Stadium and needed a new walkout song.

After testing a few contenders — like GUNS N' ROSES' "Welcome To The Jungle" and THE ALAN PARSONS PROJECT's "Sirius" — the Hokies landed on "Enter Sandman". The heavy riff hit, the crowd roared, and a tradition was born.

Brian Walls, senior associate athletics director at Virginia Tech, explained: "1999 was obviously a magical year for Virginia Tech. We went 11 and 0 in the regular season, and Michael Vick was our quarterback. We fell just a little bit short of the national championship, but that afforded us the opportunity to buy a video board for the very first time. And so in 2000, we got our first video board here in Blacksburg [Virginia]."

He continued: "We were throwing out ideas of just buildup songs, pump-you-up songs. [Other contenders were] AC/DC's 'Thunderstruck', GUNS N ROSES' 'Welcome To The Jungle'. But, obviously, there was only one choice for us to make."

Walls added: "The first 10 years that we edited this video, we would get to the crescendo of 'Enter Sandman'. The team runs out, and we would fade out the music, and the [Virginia Tech] band would start in with our fight song, 'Tech Triumph'. And we got so many complaints about that. The fans were, like, 'We don't wanna hear that stuff. We just wanna hear METALLICA.'"

For 25 years, Hokie Nation has jumped, screamed, and shaken Lane Stadium to the sound of "Enter Sandman". On May 7, 2025, METALLICA finally returned the favor.

Under the lights of Blacksburg, METALLICA brought its "M72" world tour, alongside SUICIDAL TENDENCIES and PANTERA, to a packed Lane Stadium. The setup started days in advance, the buzz building with each passing hour. By showtime, more than 66,000 fans filled the stands, ready for a moment decades in the making.

When those unmistakable opening notes of "Enter Sandman" ripped through the night, the dream became real. The crowd erupted, jumping in unison for the band itself, live on the very turf that made the song a Hokie legend. The Virginia Tech Seismological Observatory, located a mile away, detected tremors during the set and later confirmed that the crowd had, quite literally, shaken the earth. The low but prolonged METALLICA quake — which didn't even register a 1 on the Richter scale — wasn't dangerous for concertgoers, according to the local Fox News station and made for a memorable encore.

"The magnitude would have been less than 1.0," said Virginia Tech Seismological Observatory research associate Martin Chapman. "Too small to be felt even a mile away."

METALLICA has spent the last two and a half years touring in support of its latest album, "72 Seasons", which entered the Billboard 200 chart at No. 2 upon its release in April 2023. The set debuted with 146,000 units earned. It marked METALLICA's 12th Top 10-charting album, of which nine have reached the Top 2.