If five of y'all get fully dipped and join TKPC before this Friday, French's Pitt preview, and Brian's 2500-word, Lester Bangs' inspired column will be published for all to enjoy. Moreover, the other two posts that were just published get unlocked.
The season has featured a pair of gut punches, but TKP's still cranking out the good stuff. (For anyone who is a TKPC member, feel free to chime in or disagree on that.)
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800%1000% good stuff here800% 1000%69420% good stuff hereFTFY
One of the things I love about French's breakdowns is learning how things are rarely what they seem to the average fan.
I say it every time: these pieces make me a much smarter football fan and are worth every penny
Agreed. Top notch with the stuff. Thank you all for the hard work. Get dipped.
Brian's articles on Fridays are fantastic, and a great way to start the weekend. I'm glad he writes for our community over ESPN or Sports Illustrated. Seriously, it's that good.
Well worth the 💰
Oldie, but a goodie:
Oh man. The good old days when this place was an absolute riot. Stuff like this would pop up and I would spit all over my screen trying to stifle laughter.
And then my office mate would ask what was so funny. I'd just say Key Play. He then knew it was something dumb that only I would think is funny.
Do yourself a favor and make the commitment.
I lurked for years before pulling the trigger. I regret not doing it sooner. For one the content is truly exceptional and secondly it is a great community to be associated with. I am very happy I came in from out of the dark.
Love this community and the common bonds we all have (our beloved alma mater and Hokie athletics).
Can you count sucka's? I say the future is ours if you can count. We need 5 of you to join. Can you dig it? Can you dig it?.....
Come on, you know you want to...
via GIPHY
Somewhat related: Check your email.
Done. Thanks Joe!
Who is this?
Maybe I should know who she is, but I don't consume a lot of media these days.
I don't think it's going to happen — or even add a single one — but since Brian's post published this morning I'll retroactively make it available for all if it does.
honest question - do you think TKP memberships would go up if the football team was regularly expected to win the Coastal and compete for the ACC?
yes
Yes 1000%. The decline of the football program has absolutely killed the business. We're not mailing it in though.
No question. Success and excitement fuels these types of things in a major way.
For example, I bet every VT site would see a major boost in users/activity if we got a new staff. There would be so much to break down: French's scheme reviews on what a new coach is likely to bring to VT based on the HC, and his major staff hires. New recruiting momentum, future of the program stuff.
If that staff actually starts landing big recruits and we start to see wins on the field, particularly big wins, etc. Then the spike would continue. It's just a lot more fun to follow the team when you're good AND/OR on the rise. Just look at how much excitement there is among UNC fans the last few years. Even at 3-3, the future still looks bright for UNC football. There is just a lot of optimism around the program becoming more aligned in their pursuit of football success, some proof of concept with an exciting offensive product the last few years, and of course their recruiting has been elevated to a level where they are beating UGA and Clemson head to head for recruits sometimes.
The trend is important. When your program has been largely backsliding for several years, with little optimism that things are heading the right direction, the apathy sets in. Apathetic fans are less likely to flock to schematic reviews of the stale product they've grown tired of watching on the field, the losses don't bother you as much, which is a good thing in some ways, but it's representative of the aforementioned apathy.
Agreed. If this team inspired confidence when they took the field and we were seriously in the hunt for the Coastal and ranked, I think things would be very different. There are still some who say, "We are two plays from being undefeated! Still undefeated in conference play!" Yes, but this team doesn't pass the eye or smell test. Tell me if anyone realistically thinks this team can win 5-6 of the next 7 games given the state of our offense and QB situation. WVU is a bad team, and ND is severely overrated. And we still couldn't find a way to win.
A coaching change would do wonders for fan interest and monetary support of the program and other VT-related interests. If they do make a change, I'm not getting my hopes up that suddenly we will hire an SEC-type coach and go all in on football. I think if we got someone like Dave Clawson it would be equivalent to the Mike Young hire and fit the academics-first mold the VT administration wants. We would also be a heck of a lot better coached and he would have more resources from a recruiting perspective than he ever had at Wake. VT needs to do something to give fans a reason to believe and want to contribute again.
Agree with everything you said, except for UNC. I work for UNC and there just aren't a lot of people that care deeply about the football team like there are in Blacksburg. No one is talking about Mack or the recruits they've gotten; they've given up and want to clean house just like our fanbase. The only difference is, we're still filling Lane Stadium, while Kenan Stadium is at ~60-70 percent on a good day. UNC won't have the energy or juice that we have until they get that first 10-11 win season.
That being said, from our perspective, VT is a football school, and we can't afford too many more "meh" seasons. This community revolves around the football team, and I just don't think that's going to happen without a coaching overhaul. I hope we're all wrong, but yeah the trajectory right now looks like us becoming a perennial 7-5 team, and it's hard to get jacked for that.
I 100% believe that is true for your circles, but UNC has a HUGE subscriber base for 247sports (it might be the largest) and their online forum activity and subs have been rising and the internet discourse from their fans has been largely positive about the trajectory of the program, and the stuff Mack is doing behind the scenes with Boosters and getting money aligned has been well documented. They are building a foundation to be a real football school, and while the people around you may not be talking about it, they are raising a generation of younger fans who are getting bought in to football and believe in their future in the sport.
Leg, but I respectfully disagree. Even during their ten-win seasons in the 90's, very few showed up to the games, and as soon as Mack left they returned to being dreadful for 10+ years. I know that times are different now and more people realize that football is king, but heck they can't even get people to show up when they've got Sam Howell at QB. They might put together a few good years, but I just don't see the foundation yet.
* Side note, I checked the 24/7 boards, and funny enough a lot of the thread titles/discussions are very similar to ours: Fire the offensive coordinator / the administration doesn't care enough about football / we need to clean house and fire a bunch of coaches / etc.
Yeah they talk about normal football things (firing coordinators, new coaches) so does the Bama board after a loss or even a close win.
UNC fans are, however, much more confident about the direction and trend of the program than we are.
Bama never has to worry about firing an OC, they all leave after the season and Saban hires a new one.
I promise you they talk about firing their DC, however, almost every week. Much like us, they are spoiled by a history of good defense, and therefore hold the defense to a higher standard. If we had scored 30+ in 30 straight games or whatever streak Bama is on we wouldn't be worried about our OC either.
At the end of the day, fan engagement requires hope. The fanbase needs something - anything - to get excited about. Something that suggests we're moving in the right direction.
In hindsight, The Devyn Ford miss feels the point where the hope (slowly) started to disappear. Miss on a big recruit, followed by 5+ defensive starters leaving the team (kicked off, transfers, etc), followed by the 2018 fiasco, followed by the Duke Debacle, followed by a loss to UVA, followed by a garbage 2020 with an embarrassing loss to Liberty... Now, as Brian so eloquently put it, we're stuck in purgatory.
Anyways, when people are hopeful, they're going to tune in to TKP, TSL, SoS, etc
It's difficult to explain to outsiders, who haven't been paying close attention, how all these things just kept happening one after the other, after the other, after the other, in such compounding fashion that we are just completely beat down, and few can muster much optimism for the future.
The quote from Mel Tucker in a recent Athletic article about their quick rise as a program really stuck out to me in opposition to the messaging we've heard from Fuente about this.
Mel's quote was "The days of coming in for an initial press conference, lowering the expectations, talking about a four-, five-, six-year plan to be competitive," "I think those days are over"
[This quote is visible when you google the article or pull it up before you get hit with the paywall as it is at the beginning of the article]
YUP. It's like watching your best friend date someone who sucks, and little by little they change for the worse until one day you don't recognize them.
VT football used to be that program you didn't want to play. You may beat us, but it wasn't easy; opponents would be hurting the next week. Now we're a finesse team with no speed, no creativity, and average skill. We used to punch above our weight class. Now we're in a lower weight class, and punching down. We used to have a national identity - you may not know much about VT, but everyone knew about our defense and special teams. Now, we're unrecognizable. If the team isn't dressed in maroon and orange, there would be no way to distinguish between us and 15 other mediocre P5 schools.
Yea, it's a great point. I think coaches can still play the long game (4 years), but doing so requires steady improvement year over year. People here hate PJ Fleck, but he did this at Minnesota - won a few more games each season than the previous (until 2020) - that gives fans something to hope for. You gotta show proof of concept. I thought we saw that in 2016, and 2017 was just a year with a new QB. Boy was I wrong.
As we say in r/gunners "hopium is one hell of a drug". And when you run out of hopium and have to switch to copium, that's when things start going downhill.
I'd love that saying a lot more if it didn't apply to our football team!
Boom, that's one.
I've said it before, but I'll keep saying it. I used to just search google on "VA Tech football" news and would look at all the results. Eventually I realized that all the best content was coming from TKP and just started coming here. I didn't get fully dipped right away for financial reasons, but have enjoyed access to the articles I couldn't see before. I think it's worth every penny. I also think the community engagement (well, community in general) is better here, so I think it's worth the expense just to help Joe keep that up and running. Yeah, Tech football isn't as much fun as it used to be, but I've loved it for a long time and still have hope for the future, so I'm going to keep participating here.
And it's $84 a year? That's $7 a month. That's a buy a frozen pizza instead of ordering out once a month thing and you've paid for it. Or have friends over and buy beer from the store rather than at a bar. I know that's over simplification, and I wasn't doing either of those when I couldn't afford it.
The other thing is - some people say that the team sucks so they don't want to pay for TKP. In my profession, one of the things we have to look at is cost of lapsed funding. So hypothetically, enough people decide they don't want to pay for the same reason. Joe decides he's not going to keep the site up and shuts it all down. Somewhere down the line say 3-4 years from now, we have a new coach who really turns things around, we're winning 10 or 11 games a season and we make the freaking playoffs! But Joe has moved on, so we have to go to one of those other, inferior sites for our VT Football fix. And that's a potential cost of NOT paying. No thanks - I'd rather make sure TKP is here when we make the right coaching hire.
Worth every penny, I would subscribe at twice the price. You won't regret the decision, the content is better-informed than any other source. Hokie-centric passion combined with talented writers.
Talented writers is right - and knowledgeable! If Corny had French's ability (or hired him on staff) for film review and analyzing opponents, we might do a lot better... But then there's that whole developing players thing he and Williams would have to get a lot better at. But my point stands - French's film analysis and explanation of technique is amazing! And the writers have such good and interesting takes on things! Like I said above, so much better content on here than any other site.
I woke up and two more were fully dipped. I'll set the deadline for noon today. Two more new TKPC members hits goal. Get after it early risers.
LETS GO HOKIES!! Get it done for your fellow TKPers.
There's one more to go.
Don't let your indecision be the reason hundreds of Hokies miss out on the opportunity for great content!
If you have been thinking about it, make the leap now!
One and done! Just like the big dog basketball schools, which CMY is rapidly transforming our program towards. Come on roundball fans, you know that TKP will be a sweet addition to your basketball season enjoyment.
Whoa we're close. I'll just say what everyone else has said. Its worth it as someone that for awhile was just going back and forth as a TKP member.
Slightly OT: Joe, do you have access to see the last 4 of our card on file....not sure if mines going to be valid next go round and I'd like to make sure that's correct.
https://www.thekeyplay.com/admin/config/people/the_key_players_club/manage
you can see your info on file and update it there if needed!
Exactly what I needed, thanks!
ut prosim baby
I posted French's Pitt preview. TKPC members, enjoy it, and thanks for all your support! If we one more signs up between now and noon I will make it and the other 3 posts that published this week available for all.
And there it is. Give me 30 minutes and I will get everything opened up.
Yay!
I prefer this guy.
Way to go TKP!
The horizontally sliding girl is odd.