So, this is a thing...
http://shop.hokiesports.com/Virginia_Tech_Hokies/Virginia_Tech_Hokies_vs...
Are we trying to channel our inner George Bush by declaring mission accomplished 2 weeks into the season? This makes Hokie Nation look bad.
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It doesn't concern me that it's out there. It concerns me that it's apparently sold out. As long as players don't start wearing them, I'm ok.
that is a terrible shirt..I will not be purchasing any...
i hope one man bought all of them and burned them...
Now there needs to be a shirt with the empty trophy case. There's more work to do, boys.
Yay, we won the National Champio..wait, wtf?
It was a shirt designed for/by Fanatics.com. They have a bunch of lousy shirts mixed in with the occasional good one. This falls into the lousy category.
I might be the loner here, but I don't really see the problem with it. I understand where everyone is coming from, but I don't see where it implies that our only goal this year was to beat Ohio State. To me, it's just saying that our "mission" for that specific weekend was to come out and show the country what we can do by upsetting a higher ranked team, which we accomplished.
Well my mom bought me one and I know I'm gonna wear it with pride.. Mainly because it means one less day I have to do my laundry
Having lived in Alabama, most SEC schools make score shirts for games. You could find ones for the Iron Bowl every year within a week of that game.
Yeah but the Iron bowl is the last game before the SECCG. Maybe if the shirt had something on the front and then on the back said mission complete or whatever with the score that would be ok but to me this screams of "that's all we wanted this year...we're good"
To add to what ^ said, the Iron Bowl is a longstanding rivalry game with much more historical significance (same with Georgia-Florida games here) than the first half of a home-and-home with a team we've never played before.
not my favorite, but it's a smart merchandising move as a lot of fans will probably buy them. Could have been a lot more clever though.
Don't have a problem with it, just a t-shirt. As far as the reference to the former Prez, guess it depends on your political stripes whether it offends or not. I still wear a pre-game t-shirt from a forgettable Orange Bowl that we should have won easily. Keeps me humble to remember we lost to Kansas once.
I still wear my VT-Michigan bowl game t-shirt. My wife's sister and her husband both went to Michigan (my wife's a Hokie because I have standards), so my mother-in-law got us the t-shirts for Christmas 2011. Wearing the shirt is way better than pissing off my mother-in-law...
I find it funny some can object to this shirt, and yet fall over themselves to buy a Decade of Dominance shirt. They're both celebrating a win over a team. We set a goal this season to beat Ohio State, and we accomplished that. So what of it.
Well..one is for 10 straight years over a rival. Its mocking their inadequacies , which is why they are LOLUva.
I think dominance that spans 3 presidential terms earns a shirt. One hard fought win (that isn't the National Title) probably doesn't, but different strokes I guess.
I think it's a matter of what it says on the shirt as well. The decade of dominance t-shirt says "We've beat this team for 10 years in a row." The mission accomplished shirt says "We're done here. All goals we had have been acheived."
100% agree. This shirt completely undermines the team's/program's ultimate goal (ACCCG/Bowl Game) while also overshadowing intermediate goals (i.e. every regular season game left)
I think everyone is examining this way too closely. We always talk about how the players need to take it one game at a time, so to me, this just says they did what they came to do in that game. It doesn't say "pack your bags because we have nothing left to achieve this season." The other thing is that these shirts are often made by companies that feed on crazy fans like Smack Apparel and Fanatics, not the players. I have a shirt that says "Beating UVA: It Never Groh's Old. 5-0." Did our team stop at 5-0? Nope, Decade of Dominance. The shirts are made for fans to be able to use the bragging rights the team earned, but the team isn't going to don new uniforms Saturday with a 35-21 patch on them.
agreed. i took it as more of a "the season is 12 separate missions" type of thing while basking in the importance of this one mission. nothing wrong with it. cheezy? yes. pretty ugly shirt? again, yes. will i buy one? no. no. hell no.
But there is a market of people that will and money can be made so of course they were produced
no doubt. i have zero problems with them trying to squeeze every dollar they can from wherever they think they can. it adds up.
I see the game more as turning point than mission accomplished. As Coach FB said, this win it doesn't mean anything if we don't build on it.
Hopefully this is the foundation for greater things to come.
I think the shirt is pretty on point. If you think about it not one dag on person, besides Hokie Nation, and Desmond Howard gave us a shot at winning this game. I did hear a few commetators say that it would be close one but with us losing because they thought we werent the same VT as old teams. I feel this shirt is a much deserved slap in the face to everybody who doubted us, and I hope they keep on because in January, we will have another misson accomplished....
Surprisingly Mark May picked us to win too and we all know how he felt about us last year...
The game was over when I heard Lou Holtz pick OSU to win. I started dancing right then and there. Then Mark May picked us because of our defense. Lou then said "Every team has a defense." Still the smartest comment by him to this day.
A Michigan heisman trophy winner picked against OSU. Shocking.
I was waiting to see if Herbstreet would do it, but he couldn't.
The page with the shirt on it isn't even loading for me to look at...
Good. Maybe that means they realized how phoned-in the things looked and decided to remove them.
If they wanted to make a shirt with the score and how we beat OSU in The Shoe, I'm all for it. It's the "Mission Accomplished" that I had a problem with. Politics aside, it sends the wrong message in every way. Yes, our mission for the weekend was to beat OSU, but it doesn't seem to convey that to me. We are far from accomplishing our mission. We still have to avoid the trap game against ECU. We still have the entire ACC to run through. We still have to put up number 11 on LOLUVA. We still have to remind Miami their place on a Thursday night. We still have to get revenge against Duke and BC. We still have to win the next game, and the next, and the next... That's all I'm getting at.
I'm with you. Just about any other slogan would have been fine. Yes, we deserve to celebrate the victory. Heck, it felt better than most of our recent bowl wins. But our mission is not done, just as you say. Not until the ACC fears us again and we're holding that
crystal footballoddly shaped lipstick container that mildly resembles a football...or something else.Well, to be fair, when Bush stood under a Mission Accomplished banner on the Lincoln, it was a banner he had nothing to do with, an it by no means meant the mission in the WOT was over -- the carrier's deployment mission was completed, and banners like this are common.
(As an aside, if none of you has ever gone to celebrate a carrier coming in from long deployment, this is something you simply must do. It's a hell of an experience.)
So in defense of this shirt, if you don't look at everything through the prism of politics, and if you accept that a mission is simply one step to a larger campaign, then it makes good sense.
I'd wear this shirt proudly.
I don't feel incredibly strongly about this, and my perspective has zero to do with politics, etc. like some others have invoked. I just feel it is a bit ridiculous to declare anything "accomplished" or "completed" after two games in a season. I love that we beat OSU in the 'Shoe. I'm still running on adrenaline from that, and it's about the happiest I've been after a VT game since...Miami '03? Nebraska '09? Not sure, but it's been a while. I just hate anyone getting notions in their head like, "yep, we're done." It's probably an over-interpretation and it won't affect the team or coaches, so let the students and fans have their fun. I just think there could have been a MUCH more clever slogan for the shirt.
Exactly. I wish I hadn't even made the Bush comment, because people are talking politics and I didn't even mean for that to be brought up. I was just comparing how he appeared with the mission accomplished banner when we clearly were nowhere near finished. Just like us and this season. I have no problem with the idea of the shirt, but as you said, "there could have been a MUCH more clever slogan for the shirt."
The mission has just begun! This was only an objective towards the big picture!
The mission will be accomplished when we bring home a national title!
Agreed. This is stupid. Staying hungry is what pushes us to success...
Act like we've been there before and expected to win.
Fans included.
I appreciate your reserve and your intensity.
But fans should especially be excused from acting as though we've been there before. And remember, we've had two down years, and zero OOC victories like this in a very long time. So for a lot of fans, they haven't been here before.
Indeed, it could be argued that the best fan bases go over the top to celebrate every big victory.
I'm not going to begrudge any fan from celebrating with a shirt like this.
Now, if we see the players buying into the hype, then I'll get worried.
I mean, we've NEVER been there before. A win on the road over a Top 10 opponent in their house? Let alone a historical national power playing in front of 107k strong in their biggest crowd ever?
Its hard to ask us to act like we've been there before when we literally have never been there before.
Perhaps my phrasing was off and my conservatism (age?) clouded my judgment. Celebrate however you wish, just don't stop being the fanbase we have been thus far this season. Neither our players' performance, nor the fans' performance, can suffer a down tick and still have this season be what we all hope it becomes. In other words, mission not accomplished, keep bringing it. Every game.
To each his or her own, but I personally think the T shirt is premature and I certainly won't be buying one, even though I enjoyed the elation of this past weekend just as much or moreso than the next person.
Gave you both legs for your passion, btw.
this is a joke and a half. I am just as pumped from the win against OSU as anybody but this shirt needs to go.
I want my retroactively produced William and Mary Mission Accomplished T Shirt.
I really think we're reading too much into a simple T-shirt guys...
Our mission this past weekend was to beat anOSU in the 'Shoe. We accomplished that. That mission is accomplished.
We have an overarching initiative that is the season split up into one mission a week aside from bye weeks. I just do not see how it is a big deal to have an interesting phrase on a game score shirt.
**edited for spelling**
Agree...its 100% for the fans to get excited and go a little crazy...as long as we don't act like we won the national championship. The players need to feel the fan excitement and feed off of it. There is a reason they say we are the best fans in the nation.
I think the late-night celebrations in Columbus and Blacksburg were great and likewise think there is nothing wrong with a commemorative t-shirt. Sure, we want the team to act like they have been there, but this is a big win and it will be fans that are wearing the shirt. Maybe a few students throw on that shirt and bring the same energy they brought last Saturday night to Lane in the future. Agreed that the motto is a bit tacky; the obvious solution is to outsource that to TKP staff in the future. Whit?
I don't agree with the shirt, and I will not buy one...simple as that. Now, if a coach or player is seen sporting one (Never gonna happen) then all is lost!
Don't worry about that. The odds of Brewer wearing one of these is about the same odds as UVa.....um, nevermind.
Having even a halfway decent crowd at their spring game?
Glad I am not the only one!
I'm going to use this quote from Joe's post from after the game
This is the mission.
I know a TON of JMU fans were acting like "mission accomplished" after that game that never happened on September 11, 2010.
They finished their season 6-5 or something mediocre like that. I guess the players thought that they were done too.
... we played JMU? ... we didn't play JMU...
I did say the game never happened.
Ok, so I clicked on the link and it says they are "sold out". Maybe they are, maybe they pulled the plug. End of the day, I see this as Whit trying to pump energy into our sports. This may have been a miss, where it may have worked for him in the past. Maybe it will be seen as a success since they sold out in a short period of time and there's now $X revenue for the department that wasn't there before; not to mention the pride in someone wearing it. Not every idea is going to be a winner and received by all. This site proves that. But, I at least give them props for doing something, and making it a positive.
I don't think its a miss at all.
I think people on here are really being way too hypersensitive about people wanting to celebrate arguably the biggest regular season win in our school's history.
There was a preseason goal of beating Ohio State. Few people gave us a chance in that game, and we beat them by 2 TDs. That specific mission was accomplished. To devalue the win because we have yet to win anything any division or conference titles is silly, and I would hope after the last couple years this isn't going to be the mindset over the final 10 weeks of the year. This was a huge win for the school, and we should treat it as such.
I mean, I would have hoped over the last couple of years while watching the team struggle to get to bowl eligibility on essentially the last weekend of the year that we're not going to regress back to hand-wringing the entire season over how we stand for the playoffs. If we win a HUGE game, allow yourself to enjoy it and allow yourself to bask in the glory of said win. If we keep micro-analyzing every single thing, like melting down a bit because someone happened to say that beating Ohio State crossed something off our preseason goals list, then we're going to regress to a miserable fanbase that isn't going to take joy in anything outside of shiny trophies.
I think maybe this shirt would be better received if there had been a definite stated set of goals hyped up over the summer.
Your choice of Bush as an example of a myopic plan is pretty enlightening....especially when there have been many more apropos examples since
would have been better with the score, and "Don't ring the bell"
I agree, we're not a low-level school (e.g. Youngstown State, Old Dominion, "fill in the blank") so we don't need stuff like this. And second, I'm not celebrating hard and wearing "we beat you t-shirts" until we beat Florida State in the ACC championship game and then going on to win the national championship. The win was a beautiful moment, but we still have 10 games left in the regular season.
Problem solved. Buy this instead.
http://www.campusemporium.com/smk-virginia-tech-ohio-state-2014-shirt.ht...
Thanks Campus Emporium
Holy crap that's bad. This is just a bad recycle of "who needs a Cadillac (Williams) when you have a Beamer?" From the sugar bowl against Auburn.
Agreed. I think I like this one even less because it's failed attempt to be clever. Could have been much better I think:
"Who needs a horseshoe when you have a Brew" (at least it rhymes)
"horseshoes may be lucky, but Hokies have a Bucky"
"at VT we only wear our horseshoes on the treadmill"
"luck only counts with horsehoes and hand grenades, unless you're playing a Hokie"
I realize the first two are player related and perhaps not acceptable in NCAA terms even though neither or the actual names of the player. My point is there are much more creative solutions to this t-shirt. These were off the top of my head in 5 mins so I am sure others could come up with A LOT better than this, and a hell of a lot better than what is shown here.
While I'm not crazy about this one either, I can accept a poor attempt at humor more than putting across the wrong message
They really need to stop trying to use some version of - 'We have a Beamer' because they've worn it out a long time ago. There have to be some better options.