On one hand, I thought we were ranked too high last week - but I think wherever we were ranked, a 4-position drop is on the money. I had us at like 14 -15 last week, so I guess I'd put us at 18 this week?
But. I look at this week's rankings and I don't see any team below us who should be above us. I think we are probably better than Miami and Wazzou, but they're undefeated.
That should clear things up. Ha
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I've watched parts of a couple Miami games and they always look like they do just enough. I felt like watching the Duke game was more Duke not executing than Miami being good.
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They can have a word, but Clemson has beaten 3 top-15 teams in the opening month. Twice on the road. Two of them being some of the bets teams in the ACC. And probably one of the best SEC teams.
Alabama beat an FSU team that is 1-2 and not ranked, an FCS team, and two weak SEC teams.
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And all I'm saying is "good luck convincing a voter that voted Bama #1 before they won their first 2 conference games by a combined 125-3 that Bama should drop in the rankings".
Clemson is the most talented team with the best resume. And yet, Alabama has 75% of the first place votes. Do I think Clemson is the best team in America? Yes. But I'm not surprised that voters voted the way they did.
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I don't feel like it's too hard to justify Alabama being #1. Alabama returns 8 starters from each side of the ball including Hurts, Scarborough and Ridley and lead nearly the entire title game last year when Clemson had Watson. If you're voting for the team with the best wins, Clemson clearly would be #1. But if you're voting for who you feel is the best team, there's a perfectly solid argument for Alabama.
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The way I look at it, Alabama was voted ahead of Clemson in the preseason because the assumption was Clemson was going to lose more with the departure of Deshaun Watson than Alabama would lose with their graduated players. But I think Clemson has pretty much answered that question.
Ultimately it doesn't matter much if you're rabies in the top 4, but I'll personally believe Alabama is the best team in the country only after they beat Clemson.
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Clemson received more first place votes after beating us then they did in last weeks poll. However, tough to knock off an undefeated Bama team after winning by 63 points.
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I mean its easy to feel like we should be 20-25 but when you actually look at how everyone else is playing, there is a lot of mediocrity. I don't think mid teens is unreasonable right now for having a top 25 win and loss to #2. I don't see anyone behind us that has a clear claim to be ahead of us.
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It all depends on the year and like some have said no one below us really should be ahead of us. If we end up winning against BC, UNC, and Duke, we will be sitting at #10 fr the miami game. But gotta regroup and go 1-0 this week.
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Need to focus on the upcoming games. Still have a lot of football in front of us for the year. Too easy to slip up if you're not focused. Look at FSU vs Wake yesterday. Or even more scary, look at LSU vs Troy.
We're 0-0 this week.
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Could see several coaching changes in the SEC this year...LSU, Tennesse, Florida, A&M...too early to tell really, but if it happens, would love to see Venables get one of those jobs and bring some of their staff with him.
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LSU has to be kicking themselves right now. Their big money boosters puffed their chests and forced Miles out in the middle of the year, only to appoint the Orgeron as interim and put themselves in a very tricky situation. Orgeron is not a great head coach, but he knows how to circle the wagons and get players fired up. That basically forced them in to giving him the full time gig when they really didn't want to, and now they're going to end up regretting it. They should have waited the season out with Miles last year and conducted a full coaching search in earnest afterwards.
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No matter how angry or frustrated you are, never fire your coach unless you're prepared to hire someone significantly better. The transaction cost will undermine any small improvement. Miles is one of the best coaches in the country. If you can't get significantly better, stick with him
On the other end of the spectrum, the same logic applies to ECU firing Ruffin McNeill. Yeah, he wasn't good enough for you, and yeah, you got rid of him. Now where are you?
And note once again, the miracle of our transition, in which we saw a hall-of-fame coach retire, and we got better.
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Even if we're just being propped up to make it another Top 15 matchup in Charlotte come December, I take it. Dabo has to be setting that Miami game up on his DVR (because he still uses a DVR).
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I'd imagine the younger generations are mostly using WatchESPN (or whatever they call it now) for pre-recorded sports if they are staying entirely legal, or various grey-area streams.
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Oh, but I'm using cable AND dvr. Ever try to pause, fast forward, or rewind a WatchESPN stream? It's crap. Still doesn't match the ease and effectiveness of DVR (or VHS). And nothing beats actual TV for watching actual TV shows.
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And nothing beats actual TV for watching actual TV shows.
Yes. My roommate and I just use our parents logins for their cable, so we just stream it through the gaming systems for ESPN, RedZone, ect. The NBC app is so bad though, we finally caved and found an really good antenna on Amazon for $20 and for the first time this season, no streaming issues.
It's amazing, but ESPN's app is unwatchable. No problems ever with RedZone via the PS4, or WatchESPN for college sports/soccer/ect, but when you try and watch MNF, good luck getting any play uninterrupted.
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All you'll need to get started is some paper, aluminum foil, flexible plastic (like a document cover—available at any office supply store), a matching transformer (and the nuts and bolts needed to mount it), and some glue (and motivation/belief in oneself to create things instead of just buying it and having it delivered)
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Check out https://www.antennaweb.org first to make sure an antenna will give you what you want. If you are in or near a major city odds are pretty good you can get channels like ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX but if you're in a suburban area you might not get any channels, no matter how expensive the antenna.
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I love my DirecTV DVR. I rarely watch a sporting event fully live anymore. I start it about 1/3 of the way through and skip all the commercials and half time.
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Glad we're still ranked fairly high. Makes all of our games worth talking about, but I just want to rain down an ungodly number of points on BC next week. First, to exorcise the demons from yesterday and, as an ulterior motive, to make them hate playing us so much they lobby for a different crossover opponent (I'd switch with LOLUVa any day).
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I like all these little Recruiting gimmicks that the coaches have done like NC2VT and ExitLight and all that, but at the end of the day we need to get Virginia's top 5, heck top 10 (i mean a good number of them not all them) to stay. If we are to win in the next 2-5 years we need to get on board with getting those top guys in state. I know we had a lot of visitors last night and I hope they decide to come to VT. I still think we need help at running back, we need help at Wide Receiver, we need tight ends that can block, we need more DBs, at times there was no substitutions for those DBs, they were getting tired.
I don't know what to say about the slow starts. CORNFU is known for setting up teams for the third quarter, can they mix in some Dive plays where our line can get hat on hat early and then mix in other setup plays like the jet sweep? I hope so. We need to run some play action early on to get on the board. There's got to be something we can do to make ourselves more competitive early on and then just put teams away late. I would be slightly concerned about the BC game at this point, they have a staunch defense...
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Very surprised to be honest. Can't help but wonder if the hype leading up the game helped open some eyes to what's happening in Blacksburg. Great news!
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Given the ongoing FBI investigation, I am questioning any school that annually pulls in elite classes. Kentucky, Duke and UNC basketball, and Alabama, Ole Miss, Clemson, FSU and UNC football all just have that stink of shadiness right now.
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Not necessarily? It shouldn't shocking that a team like FSU or Alabama can pull in elite talent year in year out. They have elite national brands. It's teams like Ole Miss (and now kind of Maryland?) pulling in top classes out of nowhere that make me raise my eyebrows.
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Honestly, I don't care at reputations. The whole lot is stained, and given how rampant this has already been proven to be, at this point I am assuming anyone who annually recruits at that kind of level is having outside assistance to pull it off.
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I think the point was, a top-tier recruiting class can be explained either by cheating or by a great football tradition. if you have the tradition, you probably don't need to cheat (as much).
The thing that bothers me about Clemson is that they don't have that great of a tradition, and otherwise they have the same structural disadvantages we do (in terms of location, etc.). Maybe CJF's third or fourth class will start to reach that elite level, but if not, it makes me wonder what they're doing better than us, and why.
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Once again, given what we know through this FBI investigation, I personally don't think its unreasonable to think all programs who recruit at that kind of elite level are dirty. There have long been whispers that certain programs have players being funneled to them, and now we're starting to see that these whispers had more truth to them than we thought. I don't care what kind of tradition you have, the collegiate ranks have such a stain in recruiting through a legitimate sphere of influence that you can't give anyone the benefit of the doubt. And yes, I do fully believe we will see this scandal erupt within football in the near future, its naive to think the influence remained only in basketball.
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This is a slippery slope to talk about. On one had, yeah...it's likely that Clemson, Bama, tOSU, etc. are doing some under the table dealing with recruits. But on the other hand, we probably aren't totally innocent either.
This whole thing is a large topic, and not the point of this thread, so I'll leave it there.
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The figure I keep hearing from a certain conference is $80,000 to land a top player. That money, as you can see from one coach, can be filtered through local churches. Usually, they are non-profits whose records can't be reached by media or the NCAA. Anyone remember Cam Newton?
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Their fan base stepped up with donations and in turn they used that money to help build top notch facilities.
Whenever I hear things like this, I think of that bagman article where they talk about regular boosters vs. bagmen. Both are necessary. The bag man is never going to give $150K for a new state of the art locker room, but the boosters are never going to slip a recruit's uncle $15K under the table for a new boat. For some schools, it's definitely a "why not both?" mentality.
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I don't think the 17 curse transferred to this season. Louisville has been in that spot in three polls (including the current one), and they've won the first two times. Miami was 17 for one of the weeks that they didn't play for hurricanes, and managed to move up from it.
Florida and Mississippi State lost while ranked 17, but it's not overly surprising. Or maybe it's just cursed for the SEC.
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I guess it's good we didn't drop that far but I think Saturday was more an indictment of the Hokies than a display of Clemson dominance. Maybe I'm just pessimistic but my takeaway was less that Clemson is "that good" and more that we are clearly nowhere near that talent level of actual elite competition, at least on offense. The polls seem to think the opposite.
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Clemson has impressed just about everyone this year. The thought going into week 1 was that they dropped a lot of talent after last season. The commentary now is that they clearly just reloaded.
We certainly didn't do the things we needed to win that game. And you aren't wrong, we were shown that we clearly aren't a blue chip program right now. But, that doesn't mean were not good or capable of beating a team like Clemson if we play a clean game.
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Gotta disagree, man. Clemson is at worst the 2nd-best team in the country, and plays mistake-free football with great athletes at every position. Yeah we're not at the level of "elite competition" right now, but personally I'm hardly embarrassed by the Hokies performance Saturday night.
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I agree 100%. We had more total yards than Clemson. It never felt like we were about to win, but I think the loss was more about mistakes than overall quality of play.
There were flaws in all three phases -- a couple defensive mistakes, three turnovers and a couple of open receivers that JJ didn't see, and of course the special teams lapses. But there was also a lot of good, solid play in all three phases. I was not embarrassed at all when we walked out of the stadium. I'm still hoarse, but I'm still not embarrassed.
To the original question, when I saw we were #12 last week I was disappointed, because I really wanted to break into the top 10. Then I saw the S&P rankings, which put us about 20, and thought maybe we were lucky to be as high as 12. I feel like 16 is about right, if not on the high end. We have the potential to move up to the top 10 by going 1-0 every week. We also have the potential to fall out of the poll entirely.
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We gained a lot of those yards while they sat back to prevent any big plays late in the game and while they went conservative on offense. We executed then but those stats are padded. We are at a talent gap and it showed in some phases. Our WRs couldn't win 1v1 battles. The good news is they are young and can develop but we need some play makers there who will frighten a defense. JJ seems like he is 1 second late in a lot of his reads and misses some open WRs (especially on the backside of plays but that may be coaching/scheme). That is something that experience will definitely help but I hope to see it improve as the season goes on.
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Anywhere in the top 20 would have been fine. Clemson has the best resume so far, followed by UGA probably, but Alabama still looks like the best team out there.
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We were a few plays away from being in a dogfight with Clemson. I think most neutral observers realized that. I'm surprised we didn't fall further but, guys, we are still a good team. This is not two or three years ago. As long as we don't have a let down this week we will be fine!
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There were plenty of moments in our game where we could've given up and let them run all over us. We didn't. And had we not made a few key turnovers, it could have been a game late. Maybe it's just me but that game didn't seem as bad as some are making it out to be.
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Seemed strange to me at first too that the headlines were more about Clemson being dominant than VT underperforming, but I think it's because as fans we set our expectations/hopes very, very high relative to everyone else.
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I don't think it was bad by any means but being there, it didn't seem as close as the score showed. We ended up with more yards but a lot of that came real late. It felt like we were dominated most of the game due to the offense struggling. Our defense played well except for about 3 plays and those plays stung badly. I had to keep looking at the score to remind myself that we were still in it.
I haven't rewatched the game but the play before the pick 6, that non interference call looked terrible from the stands and would have changed that drive.
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See I had a lot of disagreement with the articles about us getting dominated. With the exception of about 5 plays, this was a very evenly matched game. Three turnovers and a completely blown coverage (60yd touchdown) were the difference between a 14 point loss and a Hokie win.
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I'm not saying we were dominated, but it felt like it especially the first half when we couldn't move the ball. Looking up and seeing a 1 or 2 possession game was almost surprising at times. I agree though that it was a handful of plays that made the difference and it wasn't an embarrassment by any means.
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Glad we are finally getting national respect back and only fell to 16. We don't have the talented depth of Clemson yet, and the offense had a bad night, but this is still a good football team, albeit young right now.
Miami looms large coming up in a month. I can see that being another top 12 matchup. Boston college might be tricky this weekend coming off such a big game, but I think we rest up over the bye and take care of UNC and Duke at home. Miami game will likely decide the Coastal, but GT is hanging around quietly too. Those two games will define the rest of the season for us.
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The way you put GT is accurate, just hanging around. But when you look at who they've played, it's not good. They lost to a horrible UT team, and beat a horrible Pitt team. Beat Jacksonville state (good job?) and soundly beat a bad UNC team. Their best win is over UNC, whose only win is ODU. The only win they have left on their schedule is UVA if you ask me. I'm sure their offense will sneak a win against someone they shouldn't beat (please not us!), but nothing they've done so far makes me think they can beat both Miami and us.
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I agree that their first game loss to UT looks less impressive now, but still the way TaQuon Marshall ran in that game was just amazing. Considering how much trouble we had tackling Kelly Bryant this weekend, I won't be circling that game as a win.
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Honestly, until proven otherwise there are only two real NC contenders in my mind. Clemson and Alabama. Just like the NBA with the Warriors and the Cavs, those two programs are just so far ahead of everyone else right now and while I would be completely shocked one of the two aren't in the title game, I'm still fully expecting Round 3 coming up in January.
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Comments
I think given what we know about all the other teams in the top 25 (which is not much) this is a reasonable place for us to land.
16 is about where we should have been last week. We're definitely a top-20 team, but 12th felt too high.
So do you think we should be lower than 16th after the Clemson loss, or that's still about where we belong?
Tough one.
On one hand, I thought we were ranked too high last week - but I think wherever we were ranked, a 4-position drop is on the money. I had us at like 14 -15 last week, so I guess I'd put us at 18 this week?
But. I look at this week's rankings and I don't see any team below us who should be above us. I think we are probably better than Miami and Wazzou, but they're undefeated.
That should clear things up. Ha
Luckily, we'll get a chance to prove our mettle against Miami. They looked pretty good against Duke, so buckle up, it could be a bumpy night.
I've watched parts of a couple Miami games and they always look like they do just enough. I felt like watching the Duke game was more Duke not executing than Miami being good.
The way Cutcliffe coached that game was irritating as hell. Timidity from start to finish.
They generally don't punish you that much for losing to #2 as long as the score is close.
We're ahead of Louisville, which is all I really cared about. We played Clemson better than the Cardinals.
Clemson should be #1. No argument.
Alabama would like to have a word. (And that conversation will likely take place the second week of January.)
They can have a word, but Clemson has beaten 3 top-15 teams in the opening month. Twice on the road. Two of them being some of the bets teams in the ACC. And probably one of the best SEC teams.
Alabama beat an FSU team that is 1-2 and not ranked, an FCS team, and two weak SEC teams.
And all I'm saying is "good luck convincing a voter that voted Bama #1 before they won their first 2 conference games by a combined 125-3 that Bama should drop in the rankings".
Clemson is the most talented team with the best resume. And yet, Alabama has 75% of the first place votes. Do I think Clemson is the best team in America? Yes. But I'm not surprised that voters voted the way they did.
I mean its great Bama beat the shit out of bad teams, but Clemson has 3 top 25 wins.
Yeah, I think Clemson should have jumped Bama in the polls this week, not that it matters much.
I don't feel like it's too hard to justify Alabama being #1. Alabama returns 8 starters from each side of the ball including Hurts, Scarborough and Ridley and lead nearly the entire title game last year when Clemson had Watson. If you're voting for the team with the best wins, Clemson clearly would be #1. But if you're voting for who you feel is the best team, there's a perfectly solid argument for Alabama.
The way I look at it, Alabama was voted ahead of Clemson in the preseason because the assumption was Clemson was going to lose more with the departure of Deshaun Watson than Alabama would lose with their graduated players. But I think Clemson has pretty much answered that question.
Ultimately it doesn't matter much if you're rabies in the top 4, but I'll personally believe Alabama is the best team in the country only after they beat Clemson.
If you have to contract rabies to get into the playoff, is it worth it?
Yes, it is. I'll bite the bullet here and get rabies if it means the Hokies in the Playoff.
Fuck it. Leaving it.
Clemson received more first place votes after beating us then they did in last weeks poll. However, tough to knock off an undefeated Bama team after winning by 63 points.
I think we should be around 20-25 and if we can beat Miami and GT then we warrant a ranking between 10-15
I mean its easy to feel like we should be 20-25 but when you actually look at how everyone else is playing, there is a lot of mediocrity. I don't think mid teens is unreasonable right now for having a top 25 win and loss to #2. I don't see anyone behind us that has a clear claim to be ahead of us.
It all depends on the year and like some have said no one below us really should be ahead of us. If we end up winning against BC, UNC, and Duke, we will be sitting at #10 fr the miami game. But gotta regroup and go 1-0 this week.
About where we want to be, if we care.
Need to focus on the upcoming games. Still have a lot of football in front of us for the year. Too easy to slip up if you're not focused. Look at FSU vs Wake yesterday. Or even more scary, look at LSU vs Troy.
We're 0-0 this week.
October is for improvement.
@BC, vUNC, vDuke. Let's get better every week.
It's moving month for the Hokies! Like Saturdays on the PGA tour and all the pin placements are set up to favor your draw.
LSU is hot garbage this year. Syracuse almost pulled off the upset last week and that Miss St blowout is looking worse every week.
Could see several coaching changes in the SEC this year...LSU, Tennesse, Florida, A&M...too early to tell really, but if it happens, would love to see Venables get one of those jobs and bring some of their staff with him.
Ed Orgeron has a $12 million buyout at LSU, and they're still paying Les Miles not to coach there.
LSU has to be kicking themselves right now. Their big money boosters puffed their chests and forced Miles out in the middle of the year, only to appoint the Orgeron as interim and put themselves in a very tricky situation. Orgeron is not a great head coach, but he knows how to circle the wagons and get players fired up. That basically forced them in to giving him the full time gig when they really didn't want to, and now they're going to end up regretting it. They should have waited the season out with Miles last year and conducted a full coaching search in earnest afterwards.
No matter how angry or frustrated you are, never fire your coach unless you're prepared to hire someone significantly better. The transaction cost will undermine any small improvement. Miles is one of the best coaches in the country. If you can't get significantly better, stick with him
On the other end of the spectrum, the same logic applies to ECU firing Ruffin McNeill. Yeah, he wasn't good enough for you, and yeah, you got rid of him. Now where are you?
And note once again, the miracle of our transition, in which we saw a hall-of-fame coach retire, and we got better.
Even if we're just being propped up to make it another Top 15 matchup in Charlotte come December, I take it. Dabo has to be setting that Miami game up on his DVR (because he still uses a DVR).
What are the kids nowadays using? If I had cable, I'd have DVR, too.
I'd imagine the younger generations are mostly using WatchESPN (or whatever they call it now) for pre-recorded sports if they are staying entirely legal, or various grey-area streams.
Funny, I never have buffering problems with cable. And I get my own login for streaming WatchESPN.
Kids and their new toys.
But since you're not using a DVR, you're technically one of those using the new toys. ;)
"New?" DVR has been around for almost 20 years.
Oh, but I'm using cable AND dvr. Ever try to pause, fast forward, or rewind a WatchESPN stream? It's crap. Still doesn't match the ease and effectiveness of DVR (or VHS). And nothing beats actual TV for watching actual TV shows.
Yes. My roommate and I just use our parents logins for their cable, so we just stream it through the gaming systems for ESPN, RedZone, ect. The NBC app is so bad though, we finally caved and found an really good antenna on Amazon for $20 and for the first time this season, no streaming issues.
It's amazing, but ESPN's app is unwatchable. No problems ever with RedZone via the PS4, or WatchESPN for college sports/soccer/ect, but when you try and watch MNF, good luck getting any play uninterrupted.
Yo fam, hook us up with a link to that Amazon antenna if you don't mind
https://lifehacker.com/5919128/build-your-own-paper-thin-super-powerful-hd-antenna
Check out https://www.antennaweb.org first to make sure an antenna will give you what you want. If you are in or near a major city odds are pretty good you can get channels like ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX but if you're in a suburban area you might not get any channels, no matter how expensive the antenna.
DVR is a blessing when you have a couple of kids sports games to go to on Saturdays.
Plus if I fall asleep ding a late west coast games that is interesting cause I'm old I can watch it the next day without issue.
DVR is one of the greatest things about cable.
VCR Beta Format
DVR is the clutch for recording Jeopardy. Gotta be able to cruise through the commercials.
Also, DVR > WatchESPN for re watching the games every week. Fast forwarding on WatchESPN is a gamble if it will work or freeze up.
I love my DirecTV DVR. I rarely watch a sporting event fully live anymore. I start it about 1/3 of the way through and skip all the commercials and half time.
Looking at the teams behind us, we are perfectly ranked.
Louisville, USF, sdsu, Utah, ND, UF, WVU, ncsu, UCF
The only team I would consider above us is ND. That UGA loss looks solid now. But they still look a notch behind us offensively and defensively.
16 looks perfect to me.
Glad we're still ranked fairly high. Makes all of our games worth talking about, but I just want to rain down an ungodly number of points on BC next week. First, to exorcise the demons from yesterday and, as an ulterior motive, to make them hate playing us so much they lobby for a different crossover opponent (I'd switch with LOLUVa any day).
I like all these little Recruiting gimmicks that the coaches have done like NC2VT and ExitLight and all that, but at the end of the day we need to get Virginia's top 5, heck top 10 (i mean a good number of them not all them) to stay. If we are to win in the next 2-5 years we need to get on board with getting those top guys in state. I know we had a lot of visitors last night and I hope they decide to come to VT. I still think we need help at running back, we need help at Wide Receiver, we need tight ends that can block, we need more DBs, at times there was no substitutions for those DBs, they were getting tired.
I don't know what to say about the slow starts. CORNFU is known for setting up teams for the third quarter, can they mix in some Dive plays where our line can get hat on hat early and then mix in other setup plays like the jet sweep? I hope so. We need to run some play action early on to get on the board. There's got to be something we can do to make ourselves more competitive early on and then just put teams away late. I would be slightly concerned about the BC game at this point, they have a staunch defense...
So......you're cool with us being ranked 16th?
yeah for now, but I'm wondering if we go undefeated and play Clemson again, will the pollsters give us a bump?
If we go undefeated and head into the ACCCG 11-1, were easily top 10.
Probably closer to #5 or 6 as well.
Very surprised to be honest. Can't help but wonder if the hype leading up the game helped open some eyes to what's happening in Blacksburg. Great news!
Am I the only one who thinks that a 70 point loss to West Virginia started this run of Clemson recruiting like Alabama?
I think they just have more money and great recruiters.
Given the ongoing FBI investigation, I am questioning any school that annually pulls in elite classes. Kentucky, Duke and UNC basketball, and Alabama, Ole Miss, Clemson, FSU and UNC football all just have that stink of shadiness right now.
Not necessarily? It shouldn't shocking that a team like FSU or Alabama can pull in elite talent year in year out. They have elite national brands. It's teams like Ole Miss (and now kind of Maryland?) pulling in top classes out of nowhere that make me raise my eyebrows.
Honestly, I don't care at reputations. The whole lot is stained, and given how rampant this has already been proven to be, at this point I am assuming anyone who annually recruits at that kind of level is having outside assistance to pull it off.
I think the point was, a top-tier recruiting class can be explained either by cheating or by a great football tradition. if you have the tradition, you probably don't need to cheat (as much).
The thing that bothers me about Clemson is that they don't have that great of a tradition, and otherwise they have the same structural disadvantages we do (in terms of location, etc.). Maybe CJF's third or fourth class will start to reach that elite level, but if not, it makes me wonder what they're doing better than us, and why.
Once again, given what we know through this FBI investigation, I personally don't think its unreasonable to think all programs who recruit at that kind of elite level are dirty. There have long been whispers that certain programs have players being funneled to them, and now we're starting to see that these whispers had more truth to them than we thought. I don't care what kind of tradition you have, the collegiate ranks have such a stain in recruiting through a legitimate sphere of influence that you can't give anyone the benefit of the doubt. And yes, I do fully believe we will see this scandal erupt within football in the near future, its naive to think the influence remained only in basketball.
This is a slippery slope to talk about. On one had, yeah...it's likely that Clemson, Bama, tOSU, etc. are doing some under the table dealing with recruits. But on the other hand, we probably aren't totally innocent either.
This whole thing is a large topic, and not the point of this thread, so I'll leave it there.
For those who are curious and haven't read this LINKY: Candid Coaches: Revealing how many teams cheat, commit major violations
Excerpt:
Their fan base stepped up with donations and in turn they used that money to help build top notch facilities.
This is why Whit is stressing the Drive for 25 so much, he saw what Clemson's IPTAY has done for their football program and especially recruiting.
Whenever I hear things like this, I think of that bagman article where they talk about regular boosters vs. bagmen. Both are necessary. The bag man is never going to give $150K for a new state of the art locker room, but the boosters are never going to slip a recruit's uncle $15K under the table for a new boat. For some schools, it's definitely a "why not both?" mentality.
No but it got them Brent Venables.
At least we're not ranked 17th. The cursed ranking
I don't think the 17 curse transferred to this season. Louisville has been in that spot in three polls (including the current one), and they've won the first two times. Miami was 17 for one of the weeks that they didn't play for hurricanes, and managed to move up from it.
Florida and Mississippi State lost while ranked 17, but it's not overly surprising. Or maybe it's just cursed for the SEC.
I guess it's good we didn't drop that far but I think Saturday was more an indictment of the Hokies than a display of Clemson dominance. Maybe I'm just pessimistic but my takeaway was less that Clemson is "that good" and more that we are clearly nowhere near that talent level of actual elite competition, at least on offense. The polls seem to think the opposite.
Clemson has impressed just about everyone this year. The thought going into week 1 was that they dropped a lot of talent after last season. The commentary now is that they clearly just reloaded.
We certainly didn't do the things we needed to win that game. And you aren't wrong, we were shown that we clearly aren't a blue chip program right now. But, that doesn't mean were not good or capable of beating a team like Clemson if we play a clean game.
Gotta disagree, man. Clemson is at worst the 2nd-best team in the country, and plays mistake-free football with great athletes at every position. Yeah we're not at the level of "elite competition" right now, but personally I'm hardly embarrassed by the Hokies performance Saturday night.
I agree 100%. We had more total yards than Clemson. It never felt like we were about to win, but I think the loss was more about mistakes than overall quality of play.
There were flaws in all three phases -- a couple defensive mistakes, three turnovers and a couple of open receivers that JJ didn't see, and of course the special teams lapses. But there was also a lot of good, solid play in all three phases. I was not embarrassed at all when we walked out of the stadium. I'm still hoarse, but I'm still not embarrassed.
To the original question, when I saw we were #12 last week I was disappointed, because I really wanted to break into the top 10. Then I saw the S&P rankings, which put us about 20, and thought maybe we were lucky to be as high as 12. I feel like 16 is about right, if not on the high end. We have the potential to move up to the top 10 by going 1-0 every week. We also have the potential to fall out of the poll entirely.
We gained a lot of those yards while they sat back to prevent any big plays late in the game and while they went conservative on offense. We executed then but those stats are padded. We are at a talent gap and it showed in some phases. Our WRs couldn't win 1v1 battles. The good news is they are young and can develop but we need some play makers there who will frighten a defense. JJ seems like he is 1 second late in a lot of his reads and misses some open WRs (especially on the backside of plays but that may be coaching/scheme). That is something that experience will definitely help but I hope to see it improve as the season goes on.
Anywhere in the top 20 would have been fine. Clemson has the best resume so far, followed by UGA probably, but Alabama still looks like the best team out there.
"You're never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you're never as bad as they say when you lose." Lou Holtz
We were a few plays away from being in a dogfight with Clemson. I think most neutral observers realized that. I'm surprised we didn't fall further but, guys, we are still a good team. This is not two or three years ago. As long as we don't have a let down this week we will be fine!
And for those who just looked at the score, 31-17 isn't embarrassing. It's one-sided but not a 41-0 or 66-3 demolition.
There were plenty of moments in our game where we could've given up and let them run all over us. We didn't. And had we not made a few key turnovers, it could have been a game late. Maybe it's just me but that game didn't seem as bad as some are making it out to be.
The strange thing to me is that I haven't really heard anyone make it out to be that bad to begin with.
Seemed strange to me at first too that the headlines were more about Clemson being dominant than VT underperforming, but I think it's because as fans we set our expectations/hopes very, very high relative to everyone else.
I don't think it was bad by any means but being there, it didn't seem as close as the score showed. We ended up with more yards but a lot of that came real late. It felt like we were dominated most of the game due to the offense struggling. Our defense played well except for about 3 plays and those plays stung badly. I had to keep looking at the score to remind myself that we were still in it.
I haven't rewatched the game but the play before the pick 6, that non interference call looked terrible from the stands and would have changed that drive.
See I had a lot of disagreement with the articles about us getting dominated. With the exception of about 5 plays, this was a very evenly matched game. Three turnovers and a completely blown coverage (60yd touchdown) were the difference between a 14 point loss and a Hokie win.
I'm not saying we were dominated, but it felt like it especially the first half when we couldn't move the ball. Looking up and seeing a 1 or 2 possession game was almost surprising at times. I agree though that it was a handful of plays that made the difference and it wasn't an embarrassment by any means.
FFY.
Glad we are finally getting national respect back and only fell to 16. We don't have the talented depth of Clemson yet, and the offense had a bad night, but this is still a good football team, albeit young right now.
Miami looms large coming up in a month. I can see that being another top 12 matchup. Boston college might be tricky this weekend coming off such a big game, but I think we rest up over the bye and take care of UNC and Duke at home. Miami game will likely decide the Coastal, but GT is hanging around quietly too. Those two games will define the rest of the season for us.
The way you put GT is accurate, just hanging around. But when you look at who they've played, it's not good. They lost to a horrible UT team, and beat a horrible Pitt team. Beat Jacksonville state (good job?) and soundly beat a bad UNC team. Their best win is over UNC, whose only win is ODU. The only win they have left on their schedule is UVA if you ask me. I'm sure their offense will sneak a win against someone they shouldn't beat (please not us!), but nothing they've done so far makes me think they can beat both Miami and us.
I agree that their first game loss to UT looks less impressive now, but still the way TaQuon Marshall ran in that game was just amazing. Considering how much trouble we had tackling Kelly Bryant this weekend, I won't be circling that game as a win.
Honestly, until proven otherwise there are only two real NC contenders in my mind. Clemson and Alabama. Just like the NBA with the Warriors and the Cavs, those two programs are just so far ahead of everyone else right now and while I would be completely shocked one of the two aren't in the title game, I'm still fully expecting Round 3 coming up in January.
S&P+ appears to agree with you: there is a pretty sharp dropoff between 2 and 3.