Groh is ready to rock `n' roll. (College Football).

Van Halen is serenading Virginia coach Al Groh as he critiques video of high school prospects in his office. He leans over to adjust the volume.

Is that too loud?" he asks, as David Lee Roth hits a high note on "Jamie's Cryin'."

Nope. Classic Van Halen--not that Sammy Hagar stuff--never is too loud. It's hard-rocking music for the coach of the fastest-rising team in the nation's fastest-rising conference. You expect Groh to get Virginia to the top of the ACC--which is where it will finish this fall listening to Christopher Cross? Everything has a purpose in Al Groh's world, even music. This gets his blood pumping, and Groh has been pumped all spring, building toward the impending glory fall holds for UVa.

The video pauses, and Groh flips through a phone book-thick three-ring binder. There are more stuffed on shelves along a wall of his office, products of Groh's labor in the NFL. He smiles. This isn't a guy who builds ships in a bottle in his free time. For Groh, it's all football all the time--25/8 if he had his way. He is sustained by dreams of the perfect zone blitz and burdened by thoughts of how to convert a second-and-long into a third-and-short. He'll get some relief this afternoon at practice, where everything is scripted down to the minute. This is stuff Groh learned as an assistant to Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick and as coach of the Jets.

The smell of Sundays is everywhere at Virginia, right down to the rock music that blares over the P.A. on game days. And the recruits Groh and his young, energetic staff pursue know all about his work as an NFL defensive guru. That's why Virginia is becoming the new Linebacker U., with young studs such as Ahmad Brooks, Darryl Blackstock and Kai Parham. The talent level everywhere is swelling as rapidly as the expectations at a school that often used to shrug its shoulders in indifference at football. Groh has made sure those days are over.

"I came here to win a national championship," he says.

There's an intimidating presence about the guy. Maybe it's his unblinking, great white shark eyes that stare right through you. Groh is a confident man who knows no one knows more than he does about coaching a football team. He has taken micromanagement to new heights. Groh knows about the offense, defense, special teams, recruiting, academic advising, offseason conditioning, the pressure on the equipment carts and temperature of the drinking water.