I have something I just need to get off my chest right now...

Let me get this out of the way... First of all, I appreciate a lot of the comments on here recently, I couldn't have chosen a better time to join TKP, as we're really knocking it out of the park right now in terms of content and humor.

With that said, I'm bothered about the peer pressure that is being placed upon TKP right now, and specifically some of the messages I'm seeing within a couple of the threads the past couple days in relation towards needing to focus on the entire season. I don't like the direction the discussions on here are taking, because I know where this path goes, and as a fanbase, we don't want to go there. I appreciate the need to take the season one game at a time, but I don't want to get ourselves to the point where we absolutely melt down and consider a season a failure if we don't make or win the playoffs. That was our fanbase from 2000 to about 2010, and while it was nice to win ACC titles and be highly ranked during those seasons, I look back on those years remembering that I was pretty miserable as a fan at the end of each and every one of those years because we never made it back to the national title game, and that was during the legitimate glory years of VT football.

We had allowed ourselves to get to the point where no matter who we beat, we were constantly hyper analyzing the college football landscape to see what it meant, big picture. Every big win was met immediately with a 'this doesn't matter if we don't win next week'. We never allowed ourselves to sit back and legitimately enjoy the ride because we were putting way, way too much pressure on the team to do something that the school had never accomplished in any of its sports over the history of the university. I don't want to go back to that point.

We just beat Ohio State, arguably the single biggest regular season win in school history. We went into the largest venue with the largest crowd to ever witness VT play any sport, and we came away with a 2 TD win over a Top 10 nationally ranked team in a game where very few legitimately gave us a chance of winning. Let's enjoy the fact we won that game. If the schools wants to make shirts to commemorate the occasion, let them. If people want to buy the shirts, don't shame them for 'not being focused on the big picture'. If people want to act like we've never been there before, let them, because we HAVEN'T been there before, and there's always a chance we won't get there again. I mean, as a Carolina Hurricanes fan in hockey, I remember when we won the Stanley Cup in 2006, the reason the team wanted to keep the banner hanging in the arena understated was because they expected to be there again. In the 8 years since, we only made the playoffs 1 other time. You never know when the bottom is going to fall out, and after the football we just witnessed over the last couple years, all I want to do right now is just enjoy the ride. Should this young team drop a game or two down the line this year, the last thing I want to see happen is the fanbase look back on the Ohio State someday and think "man, we really blew that 2014 season after the start" instead of "wow, we went into the Horseshoe and beat #8 Ohio State".

Enjoy this ride. Whether it takes us to 15-0 or not, we've already accomplished more this season than just about anyone in college football said we could before it started. We have a roster chocked full of young talent gaining invaluable experience, and we're primed to bring in even more with the recruiting class. At this point, we're just playing with house money, and I don't know about you, but to me, that's pretty awesome.