http://hamptonroads.com/2015/08/unc-football-team-will-play-odu-2017
This is why our multiple games with them, taking those slots up is important, this makes he 3rd other ACC school to agree to play @ODU, and one that we directly compete with for recruits from the 757.
If we aren't going there, others will.
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If only we could get them to schedule ECU every year as well.
You know what else is a good recruiting tool? Interesting games
Like playing for a name program and then getting to come back and in front of all your friends and family in your hometown as opposed to a 5 or 600 dollar trip that some probably cant make at all?
If they are from the 757, making a day trip to Blacksburg for one of the other 7 home games isn't going to be $600. Yes, it might be a bit more work, but that isn't really a huge obstacle.
Filling the schedule with ecu, odu, an fcs team and bc breeds boredom in the fanbase, makes games less exciting and leads to non sellout crowds. Enough recruits mention the fanbase that keeping them pumped and excited for games will sell just as many recruits as playing a lower teir team on a regular basis just because they are 4 hours closer to some high schools you already have in roads with. Besides, all those kids already know who VT is, by doing home and homes another Big10 or sec school helps expose us to more kids and leads to more excitement and national conversations about us
http://www.dailypress.com/sports/teel-blog/dp-teel-time-acc-fcs-post.html
Great write up on schedules.
That last bit is very important. Opener vs in the middle of the season when we knew we weren't doing well and it was freezing. Uva being during thanksgiving also doesn't help
Yeah... losing to ECU really hurt attendance against GT, and then losing to GT, especially in the way in which we lost, completely took the wind out of the sails.
I love VT/UVA during Thanksgiving. Make that an annual game, get it in prime time. Name it some catchy name and take over the spot. It worked for AM/TX.
How about this?
Yea, no kidding.
Talk about a timeslot that VT should own.
Don't get me wrong, I love the game and time too, but most students aren't back on campus yet and a lot of people aren't going to be able to be able to make the trip down on that day
Know a reason for the down numbers in attendance for that game? 11 in a row!
A foregone conclusion gets old, but their tears taste so sweet every time!
For the individual kids to come to games, especially for official visits it isn't going cost them much.
But how about parents? Or Uncles and Aunts, or Grandparents, or neighbors and teachers, and former teammates, those are the groups that could potentially be priced out of going to Blacksburg but could go to a game at ODU.
And that opportunity to play in you backyard for family plays into the recruiting point of the family atmosphere Beamer tries to build, and doing it over a number of years means you can use the same point for multiple recruiting classes.
I will say that the ODU ticket might be harder to get than some. Small stadium, but decent fan base for a newcomer to FBS football. If you are from that neck of the woods, and would get a chance to play in front of the hometown peeps/family/old coach twice in your college career, its small little check mark in the plus column. And lets be honest, it should be a win for VT. (At least more of an opportunity for a win than ECU...) An early season game with ODU in Lane would allow for their friends/family to come to the Blacksburg to see a couple games during the year.
It's not far to go to UNC/Duke/NCState from the ODU area; closer than VT in fact, so if they start poaching that area it would be a negative to our recruiting efforts.
And I totally get what you are saying. But the kids that is affecting is those who we are competing with odu, uva, unc, duke and umd over. Yes, we miss out on a few of them, but you can't get them all and overall are doing OK with those kids.
Or issue lies in the kids in that area where we are competing with the sec and big10 schools. The ones we are losing obviously don't care about staying close to home, but want big games to say they played against the best. Going against odu isn't helping us there. And we are doing better than the last 3 years or so, but I'd much rather see us play even lower teir P5 schools like UK or Iowa or even MD again than just another cusa team
But which schools on the future schedule would you drop, we have at least 1 P5 OOC game between now and 2025, and 6 of those season feature more than one.
There are good reasons we should play FCS teams and the B1G is fooling themselves if they thing long term that banning them is helpful to not just themselves but the sport at large.
And at the end of the day I guess it comes down to how much of a difference you see in an Iowa/UK, and an ECU or Marshall, I dont see a large gap but I suspect you see a bigger one.
I'm not saying ban fcs teams. Im not saying we should stop playing the ecus and Marshalls and odus of the world. But as an alum trying to find a reason to justify buying season tickets, and I'm sure as a recruit looking to play at a program, is hard to get excited about playing a fcs team, ecu every year, AND odu on a regular basis. Iowa is probably a bad example I used, but after scheduling our fcs team and ONE of ecu/Marshall/odu/the like, we should try to fill the schedule with more p5 teams. I'd love it to be more Penn St/ umd/ wvu/ Tenn or whatever, but I get scheduling can be an issue. After big regional p5 schools, go after at least teams that are new and have some national interest or at least recognition to them. Outside of va do people even know where odu is or that its even a fbs team?
I don't mind VT playing them. It's just that playing both of them every year seems, well, excessive. Too much of a good thing, let's say. Alternate them.
Take a look at this...
Future scedules
2016: Tenn (& ND), 2017: WVU, 2018: ND 2019: ND 2020: Penn St, Michigan 2021: Michigan, WVU, ND 2023: Purdue 2024: Wisconsin 2025: Penn St, Wisconsin
We do have things scheduled in the future. Not all games need to be in the top 50. And scheudling teams takes years to work out in the future, because things in the past have been scheduled so far out. (Even above it shows up to 2025, and we only have a slot open in 2022 and that's it.)
Granted I wouldn't mind trading ECU for someone else, since I feel it's a no-win situation for us. We win, fine, we were supposed to win. We lose, oh no, we lost to a lower tier team. As far as that goes, I like ODU since its where we recruit and SHOULD be a win for us. (And if we don't get the recruits we do from there, lets not kid ourselves, we're aren't going to replace those kids with ones from Ohio, Penn, Florida. Not happening, so we need to keep what we have where we have it.)
As far as the national interest; that comes with being ranked high year after year. We don't have to play a top 25 team every week to get national attention (see $EC, or F$U, or highly ranked teams in other conferences.) We've put our time in as far as the early season "big time" games and haven't won one yet. USC, Bama twice, Boise. We squeaked one out against GT in 2012 and that was even in-conference. Open up with an ODU, throw a bone to in-state kids, get the win, and go win 14 more.
I think most of us get that they've done a decent job with the schedules, and an OUTSTANDING job of scheduling top-tier teams. Just a little heavy-handed on the ECU/ODU games, that's all.
Ummm....don't mean to point out the obviouse but....
(but I know what you were getting at)
Actually we've done pretty well for ourselves on the home/away games (Nebraska, Texas A&M) it's the neutral site games that have been killing us
Just look at who those neutral site games have been against: USC won NC, ECU in Charlotte, Bama won NC, Boise State finished in top 10, Bama again finished in top 10. It's not like VT is playing an easy neutral site game, they are playing some of the toughest teams in those years.
Oh, I know. I meant to say FIRST games of the year. All the ones I listed were opening games. We beat tOSU second game, Nebraska in game 3, LSU in game 2.
Used to joke that the NC went thru us after USC and Bama (and tOSU!) Picked Boise the year we played them, which didn't seem a stretch with their team and what happened in the past with USC & Bama.
Yes ODU is making quite a name for themselves. Just 6 years into football they went 6-6 (including a win over Vandy who despite their own problems should just out talent them) in their first FBS year and now that they have finished the move should be pretty solidly in their chances to make a bowl.
And in particular their all offense pass heavy attack makes them exciting to watch and that is how you get noticed among the clutter of the G5, hell they scored 40 or more 4 times. Their now departed QB Heincke ranks now 3rd all time for FBS career yards, and 4th in TD's. For anyone following CFB on the national level, like most top recruits are they have just as much name recognition as any other sexy FCS team that made the transition much like Appalachian State.
So yes those close to the sport are aware of ODU and the fact that as much as it sucks to say they are probably the team with the most momentum in Virginia right now.
lol....
no. ODU hasn't gone through thick and thin, and when the going gets tough, that fanbase doesn't know what its like to stick with something that isn't working. Sure, they're on a hot streak now (their standards) but they're still a very large step below both UVa and VT. A very large step.
So, I mean yay, they went 6-6 in a mediocre at best conference and beat arguably one of the worst programs in a Power 6 conference. At the end of the day, they're still cannon fodder for the big boys, and a good tuneup for the regular season, which is why schools like UNC and VT are scheduling them. Them, like ECU, is a program you should be able to easily handle more times than not, and the only real disadvantage you can do to yourself is to schedule them long term enough they intimately learn your weaknesses and through annual trial and error work tirelessly to figure out how to expose them. Nobody could possibly be that stupid, could they?
Exactly.
At what point does a school which has gone through 2 level transitions in their first 6 years, along with never having a losing season and 2 championship runs, stop being on a hot streak and just be a school dedicated to building a winning program?
Seriously the dismissive nature which you guys seem to hold ODU in is dangerous when you see the trend they are on. Most FBS transitional teams don't win 6 games in their first 2 or 3 years let alone season 1.
They haven't even completely overturned a roster twice and you want to start talking like they're maintaining momentum?
lolz
This is CFB, if you can put even two year of winning together I think you can safely say you are maintaining momentum.
So which of my claims are you actually refuting?
I claim that they are building a name as an exciting team to watch on a national level, you never address that.
I claim they play a more watchable brand of football, you never address that.
And I claim that they have all the makings of another program on the rise, you sort of address that.
So .5-3 I guess.
This is a school which has yet to have a losing season in any level of football, if that does not demonstrate that there might be something there I don't know what will. I would continue to be dismissive of them while you can, I fear it wont be long that we can say the gap is huge. So long as they remain G5 they will still be hampered by that, but they are clearly making the investment to be taken seriously.
Everyone in Texas thought Baylor and TCU were jokes of programs a decade ago too, now they will probably finish 1/2 in the Big XII and fight for a playoff spot for the second year in a row.
And if playing teams year in year out is a losing proposition how about we just say screw you to the ACC and go independent again?
ODU is in the American. Until they're in either the Big XII, B1G, ACC, SEC, or Pac12, they are no worry at all to us. They will peak out at a level close to where ECU has been recently, a very good mid major program that might be a nationally relevant team here and there, but will be locked out of breaking through that glass ceiling for the long haul because they just aren't big enough. They hopped on the football bus too late in the game, and there's too much distance to play catchup. They are going to be left behind when the Power 5 breaks away.
At one point, Virginia had momentum, too, and they were the team that was going to quickly overtake us in the commonwealth. Its easy to get hot and have a hot streak with a player that is better than most. Even we did that in 1999 with Vick. What's hard is maintaining that momentum. ODU, like Virginia, doesn't know what it takes to maintain, and it isn't something that is picked up on quickly. Right now, they're still wading in the kiddie pool of college football, yet they talk like they're swimming laps in the Olympic tank. They don't scare me, nor should they scare any Hokie.
No one is talking about being scared of them. This conversation seems to be about respecting them, which clearly most do not. Not respecting a team is how you lose games you shouldn't. And that only furthers their rise. Do we not remember Boise State suddenly being not only relevant, but a perennial top 25 team for a solid decade? ODU has the potential to be even better. All it takes is one committed administration, and so far, that's what I've seen out of ODU.
I don't think it's disrespectful to say we'd prefer not to play them EVERY YEAR.
The only team I want to play every year is UVA.
As far as I've seen, you're the first person to even mention playing them every year. It's certainly not based on anything factual. Several schools have signed deals to play them twice, which is normal. I don't think a single person would advocate giving them ECU's deal, which I am firmly against. Though, for the sake of argument, I do believe playing ODU for all eternity would have far greater benefits than doing the same with ECU.
They have a seven year deal over nine years starting in 2017 (ending in 2025). VT meets East Carolina seven times during that same period.
http://hamptonroads.com/2013/11/odu-virginia-tech-agree-longterm-footbal...
Well, I agree that we should respect them. From "lowly" Temple to JMU, we have experienced what happens when we don't show up, but it does seem to me that you have a pretty optimistic outlook for ODU. I don't think ODU will reach the heights that Boise State did, but posts above have laid out the reasons they likely won't. I absolutely agree with the sentiment that we should play them occasionally at most, again, for all the reasons already posted.
Edit: Never mind
ODU becoming D1 is getting to be a bigger threat every week. They sit in the hotbed of VA's talent. Can you imagine if they ever got into a P5 conference? Yikes....
If VT is taking care of business they way they SHOULD be, this shouldn't be a problem.
This is how I feel Coastal Caroline will react when they move up to FBS. CCU puts allot of money into facilities and coaching already, it's close to the beach and it's got great location.
Maybe the coaching staff would finally have to get off their ass and legitimately adjust their recruiting strategy to be more national, just like every other big time program has done.
In reality, ODU wouldn't do much, because it's not like that top talent is feeding into us anymore. It's all Bama, FSU, PSU, Michigan, Ohio State, etc, and it's been that way for nearly a decade.
That's already happened. Lefty has already landed QBs from PA (Good luck, Andrew), FL, and MI. Searels has made inroads to GA. We're targeting IN and NJ more and are dipping past NC into SC. Are we pulling Cali and Texas recruits? Well, outside of Brewer's transfer, not yet. But you're talking like we still live and die by the 757.
I think they finally got the memo, particularly after they lost their monopoly on the 757.