All about it.
The stage is set for...WEEK 2: VIRGINIA TECH VS. VANDERBILT🎟️: MAROON EFFECT📍: LANE STADIUM, BLACKSBURG, VA📺: 7:30 PM ET ON @accnetwork #ThisIsHome | #TeamOverMe pic.twitter.com/IkwJwWzJe5— Virginia Tech Football (@HokiesFB) September 2, 2025
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This makes me happy.
Can't see the helmet in the graphic....so hoping that doesn't mean they will roll out with white helmets (WMM is the worst kit we
weardon't wear, IMHO)I don't know of a time we've ever worn White- Maroon-Maroon.
We have worn Hokie Stone- Maroon- Maroon before though.
We've also done Orange - Maroon - Maroon twice
The chrome orange-maroon-maroon looked so damn good IMO.
That is my second favorite helmet, only to the fightin gobbler.
No W-M-M in our history.
Only O-M-M (2-1 record) and stone-M-M (1-0) outside the M-M-M.
See how bad it is? So be we've never worn it!
I can imagine it (so it must be true)...maybe we wore for a spring game or something.
Irregardless...let's keep it out of the rotation.
Seen rumors its the one seen here.
Fitting for a game of such tremendous narrative importance.
Yes, "preseason" games carry only narrative importance
Lots of angles at play: For VT, for the ACC, for Pry, etc. I think the Pry angle is most important here. I think he realizes how important this game is for his job security. Whether anyone agrees with it or not, after last season's disappointing record relative to expectations, you "can't" lose to Vandy twice, the second coming at home, to lock in an 0-2 start.
"Can't" in quotes, because idk if he would be fired immediately, probably not, and if we finished 9-3 or something after starting 0-2, then I highly doubt he gets fired, AND the hype train is back through the roof.
If we lose, I don't think he's fired immediately, but I do believe he'd be a dead man walking. He would need a helluva ACC showing to overcome everything you just said.
If we win, I think the vibes are pretty good - which sounds kind of funny to say. But we should be 3-1 going into ACC play and I would feel pretty good about our chances in the games we'd tagged as toss ups earlier on (NCST, Wake, GT especially given rumors on King's injury)
...I mean, just about every game is "can't" lose for Pry (in quotes, of course)
That said, of the next 3, Vandy is the most losable. The pain of starting 0-2 just isn't quite the same as the pain of losing to either ODU or Wofford. If VT and SCAR both win their next 3 games, that loss to them in the opener is more forgivable. Going 2-2 is pretty much exactly what everyone expected. Pry has thus far been a perennially .500 coach so .500 out of conference fits. He has 0 non-con P4 wins as a head coach so losing those two non-con games to SEC teams is exactly on par for him. I don't think Pry is at risk of losing his job with a loss to Vandy. However, if he loses to one or both of ODU and Wofford, then I think that is the last nail in the coffin.
Being completely frank here, I like Pry a lot but I just don't see him being a successful head coach here, or anywhere, really. His teams consistently shoot themselves in the foot with lack of focus and poor attention to detail. Winning coaches don't allow that. Especially in year 4. He just doesn't have it. I have accepted this. I will continue to watch VT football until he no longer coaches for us and I'm resigned to the fact that we're just going to be a bad team that makes back-breaking, costly mistakes week in and week out under him. It's a shame. I've seen enough in the 3 seasons he's been here to know that we're extremely unlikely to ever win more than 7 games with him at HC.
I don't think there's anything wrong with holding this position. I think I would fall a little bit further toward a possibility that Pry can be the guy, but I don't think this take is off-base at all. I am giving him this season to show me something that he failed to prior. He earned that right for me by firing both coordinators. Monty is a win now hire, and I like the Siefkes hire so far as taking a chance on someone on the cutting edge. Early returns are solid on Siefkes.
yeah, this is totally fair.
I'm a pretty firm believer that you've got a pretty good idea what you've got in a coach after he's been in the same job for 3 full seasons. I would be completely done on Pry were it not for his staff changes. I think that bought him a year. But there were still big ugly appearances of poor management and lack of attention to detail in the first game, which is, I think, a bellwether that he hasn't fixed the major issues that have plagued his HC career. I'm very skeptical that these hires will be enough to save his job. Siefkes looks brilliant early on. So did Marve, though. The first game that he had "play calling duties" was a pretty good one. I'm not sold on Monty but, again, it's only been one game. I think there is a better-than-good chance we finish OOC play with a 2-2 record, which is right on par with what I've come to expect from Pry. If he beats Vandy, ODU, and Wofford I'll feel more encouraged going into ACC play. I guess if I had to describe my perspective at this moment in time I'd say I'm cynically skeptical but not completely out on Pry. Not yet.
Welp. After last night's complete collapse I am now completely done with Pry. This team might be lucky to finish ooc play 2-2. This team needs to make huge strides that I don't think they're going to make if they want to win more than 4 games. This might be our worst season in 30 years folks. Strap in. Things are about to get ROUGH
Firing Marve showed a culture of accountability stronger than I can remember, now having been a fan for over 15 years. Fuente was loyal to a fault but so was Frank. For that reason I agree with you that there is still a small hope for Pry.
This is my take.
As much as I've loathed Pry's incredible inability to not be able to manage a game, he is a first time Head Coach. Maybe it's taking him a little time to settle into some of these things. I am pulling for Pry. I think he is the type of guy we need. But, dang... he really needs to elevate his game management skills. I see a lot of things he does well.
Yeah sums up a lot of my feelings. I like Pry, he's very personable and fits right in with VT culture (starting to think that might not necessarily be a good thing), and he seems like he truly loves the school and wants the program to succeed. But I think it's really bearing out now that he's not a very strong football coach. I think his defenses had the benefit of a lot of top end talent that Franklin and his ace recruiting staff were bringing in at PSU. He himself was never known as much of a recruiter. And although I liked his approach of coming in and rebuilding relationships in VA, doubling down on the Beamer family approach to VT football, that just really doesn't resonate anymore in the modern landscape of college football. It's a business - top recruits are interested in what they can get paid, how they can develop for the NFL, how they can compete for national titles. We don't really offer much of that currently at VT when we're focused on being folksy and family feeling.
Really have been rooting for him but I just struggle to see how this works out to be honest. I think we need a true seismic shakeup.
To use an analogy, when Fu came onboard, if the program was a house, things were getting a bit dated and the foundation had started crumbling. But we thought we could slap a new coat of paint and put down some new vinyl flooring and keep on rolling. But the cracks continued to show.
With Pry, instead of overhauling, we just doubled down on the nostalgia and convinced ourselves that nothing was wrong with the old house to begin with. Now we have water in our crawlspace and bats roosting in our attic. The whole thing needs to be gutted IMO.
at a certain point, you just tear it all down and build new
Once again, I find myself on the same page as VTJ12.
Like you, I can't help but wonder if hiring Pry on the basis of folksy familiarity - as in, him fitting in so well here culturally - is not a feature but a bug. It's like Whit's takeaway from Fuente's failure was him not being intellectually honest enough with himself about our leftover Beamer-era flaws. Like Whit looked at Fuente and said "ahhh it's because he's not Beamery enough!", instead of examining the deeper problems in the program.
It should be an indictment then, that trying to return to the nostalgia well has not produced any water.
This has always been my biggest critique of Whit Babcock, his AD, and the Tech admin. He, and they, seem to be perpetually five years behind the curve at all times. Never proactive - always reactive. His presentation to the BOV is a decade late for example.
It seems absolutely bonkers to me that Whit - or anyone - thought we could follow up Frank with not one, but two straight HC hires who had never coached at the P5/P4 level. It's just such small-potatoes thinking. Whit never goes after the splashy hires, which to a degree I understand, but at the same time it's like... okay dude, but you aren't proving your point by hiring guys who literally cannot do the job at this level. Like who are you trying to impress? Whose expectations are you trying to subvert? The flashy hire isn't always the right hire, sure. But to seemingly go out of your way to not hire an established name, out of some weird sense of small-time, "not how we do it here" pride, is just utterly bizarre to me.
The guy just seems like a deer in the headlights at the helm a P4 athletics program. Just clueless.
Frank was so good at his job for so long, and with so much less resources than everyone else, that it created a culture of utter complacency that we still have not climbed out of.
I want to Pry to be the guy. But realistically I don't think we will see any success as long as Whit Babcock is at the wheel. The complacency just goes too deep. We need a hard reset.
I firmly believe the "not how we do it here" is a major component of this kind of hiring, especially with Pry, because many or most of the influential voices in Babcock's ear are relics from the Beamer dynasty. I am starting to truly believe that a splashy, non-Beamer hire scares the shit out of them, and they still think it is possible to survive in college athletics doing it the "aww shucks," blue collar, right way.
I think they were getting a coach they could afford that looked like a decent bet.
I am in agreement. This matters a ton for perception, but not for season goals of winning an ACC Championship, hence the dig at the 'ol Beamer comment alluding to OOC games as preseason.
Looks like folks should be digging out their maroon raincoats.
Really don't want to hear that. I am just getting over Covid, I really don't want to stand outside in the rain for four hours.
Still listed as "scattered storms"- 'Mostly cloudy in the morning with scattered thunderstorms developing later in the day. Gusty winds and small hail are possible. High 77F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.'
So likely to be periods of showers, but not continuous hours of rain like the Purdue game gully-washer or the Military Bowl soaker.9and I'll just do what I usually do for these type forecasts- not worry about raincoat or trying to stay dry(it's not gonna be COLD) ; and then just have a complete change of clothes to wear for the late night ride home.
Low 56, wind and showers would chill me were I wet, but I'm old now and have good rain gear. Hope you have a great night and a safe ride home in the warmth of a win.
Well....switch the 'good night' to 'good day tailgating' and the 'warmth of a win' for 'wondering if the snacks at halftime gave the entire team food poisoning' (cause I can't see any other explanation for the putrid 2nd half play) and you nailed it....
At least you could imagine a possible explanation for that 2nd half. I couldn't for the life of me.
lol...I've seen half the team(offense OR defense) not show up before ...but never literally the ENTIRE team. Even our punter-normally a solid kicker-seemed lost in the second half....Literally told my friend as we walked back to the parking lot that I think we could have called out 50 random seat numbers and that the people in those seats could've played the second half better than the team did.(and that's even if half the folks had been kids...or even empty seats...
Ooh thought of another possible explanation-it was all a video game and someone was playing on Vandy's side and had all the cheat codes and God mode turned on while the VT side was played by a combo of Helen Keller and the three stooges.....
Well, the Stooges still make me laugh, so there's that.
As for Helen, I was an attendee at the Helen Keller Centennial Congress in Boston and I can assure you that you'll not find many more accomplished persons in this world than she was. She'd have done the coaching and Moe's a tough customer with a lot of experience in head slaps, Curly was big enough to open holes in the line. Larry, well, he'd have replaced the water boy, I guess. Slowly I turn...
And these types of sub-threads are one of the reasons TKP is such a great place and helps us through all the challenges that come with being a Hokie fan....
They all quit after Pry punted on 4th and inches. The team, coaches, ball boys included. Everybody rolled over that and didn't even try.
Yeah, forecast doesn't bode well for you, but who knows? Looks pretty sure there will be something though, not excluding thunderstorms. Hope it turns off fair for all concerned, glad I'll be home and dry.
If it forces Vandy into a run offense than I consider this a huge positive...especially since I will be home on my comfy couch with buffalo wings
I love our stable of running backs and defensive line vs their running back and defensive line.
Weather should be fine. Currently showing less than 30% chance of showers until after 11pm. Winds 5-10mph. Mid-70s for tailgating and mid-60s for the game.
When on one's iPhone they can go to the Weather App and hit the specific day to land on the menu page. There one can access the precipitation page. I just checked Blacksburg. Currently, there is one sliver of rain forecasted from 4-5pm calling for light rain.
Apple weather is notoriously awful to the extent that one of the good meteorologists posts online about not golding him accountable for apple always being wrong
Lol yeah Apple weather is pretty bad. I've seen it before say there will be perfect weather, full sun. Then out of nowhere a huge storm came up, and I checked the app and it updated to Thunderstorms 100% chance.
NOAA disagrees with you, but I hope your forecast turns out.
iPhone has moved its goalposts to 6pm to 8pm light rain. Bastards