I am choosing, in spite of last Saturday, to believe that we can win one of the next two games. Call me crazy, but I'm willing to be optimistic that we can beat a similarly meltdown-level struggling Miami and/or UVA. A little optimism never hurt anyone, plus its probably healthier than allowing myself to be depressed and stressed before those games even happen.
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I'll see your 1 of 2 optimism and I'll raise to 2 of 2. I think we beat a Miami team that seems to be mailing it in and a UVA team that has never actually had the pressure of playing for something. Assuming they beat GT.
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I mean, each of those statements has been true sometime in the last 8 years (beat UVA to become bowl eligible, 2012, 2014, 2015; beat UVA to keep them out of the ACCCG, 2011). It's just that this year there's a chance it'll be both, but that assumes that they beat GT on Saturday and that Pitt loses to both Wake Forest and Miami.
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So neither of these things have been true at once, and I'll admit i don't see it happening this year, as i don't think Pitt is losing both of those games, no matter what UVA does.
To me, the original comment was highlighting an awful truth, that we are looking at the remaining high point to our season as the potential to knock UVA out of ACCCG contention and become bowl eligible.
It is demoralizing to see the good guys returning to mediocrity while your rival is on the upswing. To me, its a real pathetic state of the state that the last remaining chance to get some retribution, to get a feel-good moment on the season, is to knock UVA down a peg and earn a spot in the Beef 'O' Brady's bowl.
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It is demoralizing to see the good guys returning to mediocrity while your rival is on the upswing.
I'm not hating on you or your perspective because this season has been rough, but I really don't understand this rationale. Of the last three seasons, this one has been bad by all accounts. UVA goes 2-10 (2016), 6-7 (2017), currently sits at 7-3 and all of the sudden UVA is on an upswing because of one season. But Tech is destined to drown into football mediocrity because of one bad season after going 10-4 (2016) and 9-4 (2017).
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Eh, they started the upswing last year, and it's a pretty dramatic shift from 2-10 no matter how you slice it. And they're bowl eligible in back-to-back seasons for the first time since a run of 4 straight from 2002-05.
That said, I agree that this isn't a good take. Yes, they might beat us. Yes, they definitely look better than us this year. However, this is also their best season since at least 2011 and probably 2007, and this is our worst season since either 1992 (when our 8 losses came by a combined 60 points, with a worst of 20 to #1 Miami) or 1991 (when we went 5-6, capped off by a '38-0 bro' by UVA), so if that's what it takes for them to get their first win over us in 15 years then so be it. I'll still be there, cheering on my team, regardless of how the season is going.
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Each season is a data point, allowing for trend analysis. What else can you use to compare two coaching staffs in Y3 at rival programs outside of the records they have turned in and w/l improvement?
Can outliers be detected from such a small dataset? 'Trending' is fine with me, i think 3 seasons is sufficient data to notice the trend, VT wins less games each year after year. UVA does the opposite.
Thus my thought that,
It is demoralizing to see the good guys returning to mediocrity while your rival is on the upswing.
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If you have three data points, and one is significantly off from the others, THAT is the outlier, the other two form the trend. Which is why three data points isn't a very good set for prediction, and even worse when one of them doesn't match.
You're trying to draw a conclusion that isn't supported.
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Lol. Unless we shut out 2 of those 4 teams, nothing will change the fact that this is the worst defense Blacksburg has seen since well before Beamer arrived.
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Yea but literally 90% of us accepted that might be a fact prior to the season and then for some reason, half way through decided to get pissed about it anyway even with a handful of more injuries thrown in there.
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I'll bite. I thought they would be bad, but not historically so. Also, the FSU game totally skewed my expectations for the whole year, and I can't be alone in that.
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We knew it could take a step back, but Bud has worked wonders before. We figured it could be bad, but still good in the national scene. Maybe a nationally average defense, but still bad for us. But it would be ok, because even though they were young, you'd expect to see it slowly improve as the season went along.
Nope, we got a nationally bad defense that is getting worse as the season progresses to the point where they only forced 2 punts total in the past 2 divisional games. And the last game set a NCAA defensive low mark for Yards Per Play over the course of a game (which isn't going to count because we couldn't stop Pitt enough to have them run enough plays to count for the statistic, making the defensive outing even worse). Nobody saw this coming. Not from a Bud Foster defense.
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True never sawing it being this bad, but I guess since I was prepared for it to be our weak spot, our offensive struggles have bothered me the most. The only thing this really reminds me off is in 2011 against Miami when we got down to our 3rd and 4th string dlineman and couldn't stop their run game in the 4th quarter. Pretty sure Courtney Prince had to come in and play DT, and he had converted to OG that year. It wasn't pretty.
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Yes, we knew this season could be bad. Most of us even expected it to be bad. But if you go back and look at the preseason staff predictions, even the most conservative prediction was 7-5.
And even when looking specifically at the defense, this season is horrifically worse than anyone could have expected. Looking at the S&P+ rankings, which have been around since 2005 and provide a quantitative analysis of the quality of a defense, after adjusting for strength of their opposing offenses, this is how our defense has ranked each season:
- 2005: 1
- 2006: 1
- 2007: 2
- 2008: 10
- 2009: 7
- 2010: 35
- 2011: 18
- 2012: 8
- 2013: 1
- 2014: 10
- 2015: 39
- 2016: 17
- 2017: 9
- 2018: 93 (in progress)
I think we can all agree that we expected it to be bad. Maybe even the worst Bud Foster defense ever. That condition could have been reached with a 50th-place effort, but we turned the "bad" knob all the way to 11 and currently sit at 93rd. I don't think anyone expected this team to have the 58th-best P5 defense out of 65 teams, better than only GT, Kansas, UNC, UCLA, Baylor, Rutgers, and Louisville.
By the way, according to those same rankings, our defense is only a field goal better than P5-worst Louisville, expected to hold the average FBS offense to 31.7 points as opposed to 34.7 points against Louisville. That's... That's bad, y'all, and far worse than anyone on here would have predicted, especially after the beatdown we handed FSU to start the season.
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To be fair, most of those staff and fan predictions didn't account for our best d-lineman being dismissed.
We cannot minimize the effect of the loss of Hill. If the dude continued to play at the level he was before dismissal he would have been drafted and there is no way the defense would be as bad as it currently is.
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My point was, most Hokies expected this season to be bad. Pretty much nobody expected it to be this bad. And yes, there are explanations for why it is worse than expected, most of which have little to do with the current coaches and a lot to do with prior recruiting failures and recent player attrition, but that doesn't change the fact that nobody saw 4-7 as a possibility.
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Here's saying you have two seasons that are essentially identical (one extra win in one extra game played in 2016 vs 2017) and then a bad season this year. First of all, you can't derive a trend from there data points, but secondly, recency bias is influencing people to weigh the results of this season more heavily than the previous two and claim a downward trend to the program that isn't evident.
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Here's saying you have two seasons that are essentially identical (one extra win in one extra game played in 2016 vs 2017) and then a bad season this year.
And I don't agree with that. Sure, if you look at 10-4 and 9-4 you can say 'those numbers look similar, so it's the same,' but the 2016 team was clearly better than the 2017 team. The talent was better, the execution was better, the wins were better.. I actually don't understand how you could argue 2016 and 2017 were 'essentially identical' in terms of the teams.
One team has gotten worse each year (for whatever reason) over a 3 year span, the other has gotten notably better over those same 3 years. Saying you can't see that is a trend is a bit O&M-myopic
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I do think we can win this weekend (why do I keep doing this to myself....). That would leave us needing to beat UVA to keep both streaks alive -- no pressure, guys! Not as confident in that outcome.
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I want to believe this and there may be reason to. Both BC and Pitt have great offensive lines and running backs.
Miami has performed worse offensively against every we played in comment with the exception of UNC and FSU.
Against UNC they were MUCH better and against FSU they were slightly better.
We'll look at offense first, then defense.
Opponent,Miami Points For, VT Points For
FSU,28,24
Duke,12,31
UNC,47,22
GT,21,28
BC,14,21
It should be noted Miami scored 21 direct points off of turnovers vs UNC which makes their offensive total 26 points. I know I'm going to jinx us by saying this but I don't think we have six turnovers vs. Miami.
Problem is, I'm not sure Pitt is a huge aberration, especially with losing Gaines for the season. Hopefully we get some guys back in the lineup, but I'm expecting to have to win a shootout if we're gonna beat either Miami, UVA, or Marshall. We haven't proven to be able to stop a competent passing or rushing attack these last few weeks, and we seem to be trending worse on D. The offense is going to need to step it up if we're going to win another game.
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I understand that UVA has a good record but I've watched them play and I have no idea why everyone thinks they are so good. I'm not necessarily confident that we will beat them, but they certainly haven't shown me any reason to be terrified on their own merits.
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They have a RB who has gone for 835 yards and a QB who has gone for 650 yards on the ground this year. Watching us attempt to defend the run the last few weeks does not give me much hope in being able to slow that down.
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Unfortunately we don't really have that luxury of seeing if the 12th game is needed for bowl eligibility before we schedule it. We're asking a team to pack up and travel for an away game when their season was supposed to be over. That takes some heads up time.
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Another comment here that drives home the state of the state.
When did upset wins for VT become home games against coastal division foes. A middle of the pack, struggling ACC team and your primary rival that you have beat the last 14 years consecutively.
I am against a 12th game. If these guys can't get eligible in the next 2 games, they don't deserve to go bowling. Felt the same way about FSU, and they rescheduled a makeup with a team they had already been slotted to play.
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If we'd played (and beaten) ECU, and the rest of the season played out the way it has, we'd be bowl eligible with a win over Miami or UVA and there wouldn't be any question that we'd be bowl-eligible. How is this any different, aside from the fact that ECU tried to screw us over?
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How is this any different, aside from the fact that ECU tried to screw us over?
You are right on that. If ECU had played out as you stated, that would be the situation.
To me it has a most to do with how the season has played out and timing of these rumors. If this was something we heard about a few weeks after the hurricanes as teams were scrambling to set up new match-ups it would have seemed like a normal occurrence. You lose a game, you try for a new one on the schedule.
Heading into the season's end, knowing you need 2 wins to get to a bowl game with 2 games on the schedule and trying to sandwich in another game to reach eligibility feels entirely different to me.
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Eh, whatever. If it helps us make a bowl game I'm all for it. As most people are saying in this thread, I'd rather play in a shitty bowl against a mediocre opponent than not have a bowl game at all, even if only for the extra practice time and another chance to get the defense to learn some fundamentals heading into the offseason.
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If you don't want a 12th game because there isn't a bowl streak to play for, I'd like you to go to practice one day and tell the players that have busted their asses all year that to their faces. They deserve a 12th game.
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There's a home basketball game at 1pm on December 1. I'd imagine that makes scheduling a bit more difficult. Do they have the football game kick at 3:30pm or later on Saturday, or have it on Friday night or Sunday? If you have it on Saturday, how do you handle parking?
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I saw this scheduling dilemma as well. Honestly, I think they would just move the basketball game to accomodate the football game. Either move the bball game up to noon and play a 6pm game or the mor likely scenario of playing football at noon and then pushing the bball game back to 5 or 6.
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I'm sure they can move the basketball game start time a little, but probably not too much since I'd imagine Central Connecticut is chartering a flight for it. Maybe it's still early enough to where they could move the basketball game to Sunday?
Honestly, I wonder if we'd play the football game on Friday night.
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Football, if played, will be noon.
Basketball game, if football game happens, is listed at 5pm. If no football, then the game will still be at 1.
Per Hokiesports site.
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247 has been saying an additional would be Southern Miss or Marshall since the ECU game was cancelled. I haven't really followed beyond that, but it seemed like Southern Miss was the more likely option.
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Both teams are in C-USA, which doesn't have any sort of bowl hierarchy. The only rule they have is that all teams with 7 or more wins have to be selected before the 6 win teams. It's not like an extra win would boost any of their teams into a "better" bowl.
With Marshall already having 6 wins, they have nothing to risk (at least in terms of bowl eligibility) by coming to Blacksburg.
Southern Miss is like us, sitting at 4-5. They have multiple scenarios:
-If they win out, they would be coming to Blacksburg at 6-5, already bowl eligible.
-If they lose out, then the only reason for them to come here at 4-7 would be the payout.
-If they split and come here at 5-6, then they're looking for that sixth win and bowl eligibility. Playing us would be a 50/50 shot at getting that sixth win (screw metrics, I'm just going with the basic probability that you either win or lose a game), which is better than the 0% chance they would have by not playing a 12th game.
I wonder if there would be a contingency clause in the game contract, so that it would only be played if at least one team would be bowl eligible afterwards.
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I believe Chris Coleman said on TSL that it wouldn't be signed until after the UVA game, one way or another. If we beat Miami and UVA, we won't play it. If we lose to Miami and UVA, we won't play it. But if we win one, we would.
That's hella awkward. But we got ourselves in this spot.
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I don't understand that. How is it not worth the revenue and extra practice time to play a 12th game? Also, there's still a chance of a bowl at 5-7, since I'm pretty sure our APR is fairly high.
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Found out today our APR sucks overall. We won't make a game with 5 wins this year unless ALOT of teams win their remaining games.
If you're holding out hope #Hokies can use APR standing to get to a bowl that needs to fill a spot, don't. Tech is 23rd in APR standings (2016-17 football) among FBS teams that currently have 4 or 5 wins. Two of those teams are from Pac 12, which won't let 5-win teams go bowling— Norm Wood (@normwood) November 12, 2018
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All I'm hearing is that, of the 22 teams ahead of us, we just need 18 of them to either win again if they always have 5, or to lose out if they only have 4.
Problem solved.
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I'm pretty sure why the first team was allowed to be sub .500 was the sun belt team that won the sun belt the first year they had a bowl tie-in. They were 5-6 with all win in the conference. If I recall correctly.
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I can't imagine any school that would go for that. They money and logistics that go into moving nearly 100 people and tons of equipment for an Away game require significant forethought and planning. 6 days ain't enough.
The only way I can see anyone biting on a deal like that is if VT would either pay or fully refund the costs if the game isn't played. That seems like an expensive proposition for our Athletics Dept.
Moreso, the economics of paying a team to come to Blacksburg to chase a birth in a lower-tier bowl game make little financial sense. Many times, schools lose money on Bowl games if they can't sell a bunch of tickets...I don't see a 6-win VT going to anything particularity attractive. So in essense, we would be paying a team to play us so that we can then (likely) lose more money at the Gasparilla Bowl.
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We're paying a team to come to Blacksburg so we can sell a couple million dollars worth of tickets and concessions, all while getting an extra week of practice for our young players and a chance at extending that week out to a full month of bowl practices to help prepare for next year.
Maybe overall we lose a bit on the 12th game, but travel costs for bowl games are reimbursed by the ACC before taking into account bowl payouts (the teams that lose money are generally G5 schools who don't have such arrangements with their conference), and overall getting the extra practice time seems to be worth a little bit of expense even if you don't consider the bowl streak itself to be a tangible benefit.
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While I still think the game should be played for a bunch of reasons, I don't think we come anywhere close to $2M on this. I'm actually surprised they refunded season tickets before the season was over.
But there will be a positive effect for local businesses.
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The only true value here is in the practice time. I'd be interested to see how many "millions" of dollars a week 12 matchup with a G5 opponent to try and scrape out bowl eligibility will bring to VT. Yes, tickets and concessions create revenue, but you conveniently ignore the fact that there are lots of costs associated that could very easily eat revenue and make this game a money-loser, especially if it is sparsely attended, which certainly isn't far-fetched. For the first time in my memory, there are copious amounts of Miami tickets available--apathy is creeping up quickly. A friend of mine in SWVA had trouble GIVING 2 tickets away. Marshall or So. Miss is going to create more demand than Miami?
I would be shocked to see Lane half-full for a week 12 game--and that's if we can even manage to beat UVa or Miami and have the game mean anything.
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The way this season is going for us, an extra 2 games and month of practice will just mean a few more guys getting hurt and possibly out all off season and the beginning of next season.
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Oh i'm team bowl game. I think experience gained and sending your seniors out right is what its all about. I was really just joking that with our luck this season, that somehow making a bowl game would screw us in the end.
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If Whit wants to maximize revenue, he should schedule Marshall. Marshall fans always travel well.
With that being said, Marshall's AD might want a home and home, even if it is just a makeup game. He got Louisville to come to Huntington two seasons ago when they were ranked #3 and got NC State to come this season. The game Marshall is making up is the South Carolina game, though, which was a one way ticket, so maybe they won't ask for a home and home.
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Marshall's AD would do that in a heartbeat. VT doesn't have a lot to gain from playing in Huntington every other year though. It's not a fertile recruiting ground, and there aren't a lot of Hokie fans in the area contrary to Greenville.
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It seems like we've recruited and lost (or not even been close) a fairly big recruit out of the Huntington area almost every year recently. Darnell Wright was this year's. I can't seem to find other ones, but I swear I remember seeing several kids out of that area.
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Darnell Wright is the only player from Huntington that I can remember being a P5 prospect in recent years. Spring Valley is about 20 minutes away and always has good offensive linemen. There are a lot of other G5 schools with more high school talent in the area though.
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we are recruiting a sophomore lineman out of Spring Valley right now. Almost got current 4/5 star senior lineman to flip from OSU, but doesn't look like that will happen now.
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We're not the only ones pissed about that. We hear it every so often by the radio guys that they prefer the bigger schools coming into the area once a year, and having us split our trips to Duke and UNC helps keep the momentum of college football for the region. Obviously, State playing FSU and Clemson helps, but on the Coastal side, it definitely feels like a missed opportunity. Miami and VT should alternate home/away between Duke and UNC every year.
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From 2004 to 2012 we were alternating, one game in North Carolina and one game in Lane. Miami complained about having to go to both Tallahassee and Blacksburg every other year and the conference caved. In 2012, we traveled to Miami and Chapel Hill and got Duke at home. In 2013, for the second year in a row we traveled to Miami and got Duke at home but also played UNC at home.
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Just saw an article on The Athletic that mentioned that it is likely anywhere from 3 to 7 six-win teams will have to be left out of bowls. There are too many FBS teams and not enough bowls this year.
I personally don't think this will matter for us, but wouldn't that be something...
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another reason for USM and Marshall to be hankering for another win vs. VT. Difference between 6 and 7 wins could be the difference in a bowl game for them.
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Per S&P+, we are 75th, Marshall is 44th (and 6-3) and Southern Miss is 76th. Stats like these aren't the end-all-be-all, but these games would not be pushover by any means.
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Their wins have all been kind of spectacularly weird too.
1. VT: (in retrospect, this is the least surprising given how we have looked the rest of the season)
2. WKU: penalties, untimed downs, three field goal attempts in like 2 seconds of game time and only one of them good. (edit: it should be noted, two of the attempts were by WKU and the third by ODU for the win)
3. North Texas: Came back from being down 28 points to score 10 points right before halftime and ended up winning 34-31.
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If the Southern Miss football team is going to earn bowl eligibility, it will have to win its final two games.
USM athletic director Jon Gilbert told the Sun Herald on Tuesday he has decided to end the program's pursuit of a 12th football game, which would have been played on Dec. 1.
"We are not going to play a 12th game," he said. "We ultimately decided that, based on all the factors, we're going to conclude the regular season on Nov. 24 against UTEP. The goal is to finish strong with the possibility of postseason play still alive."
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I have no clue. Just some rumblings at TSL. UNLV isn't making a bowl game though. I'm not sure what the rules on the amount of regular season games a team can play are.
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UNLV plays at Hawai'i this weekend, that makes them eligible for 13 games though I think road games in both Hawai'i and Blacksburg would probably a bit too expensive for their athletic department regardless of what kind of pay day or future scheduling we might promise them.
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Yeah, but the point of the 13th game is to be a home game to generate extra revenue to offset the travel costs (in theory).
That being said, only two of Hawaii's opponents scheduled a 13th game this year - Navy and Rice. (Everyone else just opted for the extra bye week.) Rice still only managed 6 home games, but they also played Wake Forest and LSU on the road. (And we all know that LSU isn't ever going to play at Rice.)
Navy is a special case with only 5 true home games, but they were the "home" team for the Notre Dame game (ND at Navy is never played at Navy), and they have Army at the end of the year.
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Actually, it can under the right circumstances. As of 2012, the process for bowl eligibility is as follows:
Teams that have at least six wins, at least a 50% winning percentage, and have at most one win over an FCS team. If there aren't enough teams to fill every bowl, then teams are chosen (in order)
a. Teams that are 6-6 (or 6-5) with at most 2 FCS wins
b. Teams that are 6-7 and lost in their conference championship game OR played at/are Hawai'i
c. FCS teams that are 6-6 and in last year of transition to FBS (this only applies to Liberty this year)
d. Teams that are 5-7 or 5-6 and have the highest APR among eligible teams. From what I heard last night, there are at least 20 teams ahead of VT that could still finish 5-7/5-6. Almost all of them would have to finish with 4 wins or less in order for VT to apply for this waiver
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In fairness, the only reason I know this is I posted it to Will Stewart's Twitter after a guy responded to Stewart that FSU would need to get four more wins to get bowl eligible. That was back on September 15, after they struggled against Samford.
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We are a completely below average team right now and ripe to loose another game versus another (ODU) pitiful non-conference foe. Does anyone really have any confidence this team can beat "any" team after the last two/three recording setting and pitiful offense and coaching performances?
Could we beat an ODU-like team? This group is in disarray and simply does not have the talent.
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Didn't you hear? It's just execution, Fuente was 3-9 once at Memphis, and Frank was 2-8-1 in his 6th year, so there's nothing you should be worried about.
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I can't tell from the rest of the thread/whole message board, but do you not agree with comparing this down year with down years Fuente and Beamer previously had?
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This is one of the underlying irritations of this season for me. I don't care what the truth is, whether it is that they aren't executing or coaches not putting them in a position to execute. It doesn't matter to me, and after this much losing it really doesn't matter at all. But don't blame the players in front of the mic.
Take care of all that behind closed doors. Hell, it would be more consistent with how little access we have to the program in the first place. Blaming the players with media present is bad form. End of story.
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Except you're ignoring (or missed) the part where he said execution is on the coaches. He wasn't blaming players over coaches. He just disagreed that the bad coaching was in the form of play calling as opposed to getting the team able to execute.
You can of course disagree with him and believe it is the play calling. But he wasn't shifting blame to the players.
I'm not a huge fan of the closed aspect either but this isn't an accurate criticism of what Fuente said.
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Bam, there it is! This is the single thing that has bothered me the most about CJF. You're the head coach, at the end of the day, it all comes back to you. Bosses deflect blame. Leaders take accountability.
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He's always followed those statements about players with something along the lines of "but that's the responsibility of the coaches to get them better prepared". He always makes sure that any criticism he makes of the players eventually comes back to a failing on the staff. The people reporting those quotes don't always include them, intentionally making them sound worse than they are, but he says it.
Like, are we seriously missing that part? Are we just hunting for reasons to hate our coaches? Because it sounds like we're hunting for reasons to hate our coaches.
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I am sticking with numb. Every time I get mad, I look at all the depth problems we've had and attribute the majority of them to a perfect storm of the sh*t variety. minus three sigma will happen.
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I swear I have heard him do it at a live press conference at least once, and maybe I heard the first part and rage closed my ears to the next. Like you said, I know that he has come back and said that the execution was ultimately on him before as well. Maybe I read the selective snippets from reporters for other pressers and conflated it all into a trend. I dunno. I'm like BoD, I'm just numb and pissed and want a damned win, bourbon, and some turkey.
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Maybe I'm hearing two different things, but when Coach Foster says it and Coach Fuente says it; it "sounds" different...like I've heard Coach Foster, even before this season, "Hey I take full responsibility for this performance" One thing that Beamer started saying after losses is that the effort was great, we just need to clean up some things"..like you could feel that he really meant what he was saying..Sometimes it feels like Coach Fu is just up there giving a company line...
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Ugh 😑
I dread thinking of what attendance would be like if we lose these next 2 games before then
I am going to go with "not ideal."
I am choosing, in spite of last Saturday, to believe that we can win one of the next two games. Call me crazy, but I'm willing to be optimistic that we can beat a similarly meltdown-level struggling Miami and/or UVA. A little optimism never hurt anyone, plus its probably healthier than allowing myself to be depressed and stressed before those games even happen.
I'll see your 1 of 2 optimism and I'll raise to 2 of 2. I think we beat a Miami team that seems to be mailing it in and a UVA team that has never actually had the pressure of playing for something. Assuming they beat GT.
It would be so sweet to beat UVA to become bowl eligible AND keep them out of the ACCCG.
It's true.
Man what a sad state of affairs for this program.. This is where we are at.
I mean, each of those statements has been true sometime in the last 8 years (beat UVA to become bowl eligible, 2012, 2014, 2015; beat UVA to keep them out of the ACCCG, 2011). It's just that this year there's a chance it'll be both, but that assumes that they beat GT on Saturday and that Pitt loses to both Wake Forest and Miami.
So neither of these things have been true at once, and I'll admit i don't see it happening this year, as i don't think Pitt is losing both of those games, no matter what UVA does.
To me, the original comment was highlighting an awful truth, that we are looking at the remaining high point to our season as the potential to knock UVA out of ACCCG contention and become bowl eligible.
It is demoralizing to see the good guys returning to mediocrity while your rival is on the upswing. To me, its a real pathetic state of the state that the last remaining chance to get some retribution, to get a feel-good moment on the season, is to knock UVA down a peg and earn a spot in the Beef 'O' Brady's bowl.
I'm not hating on you or your perspective because this season has been rough, but I really don't understand this rationale. Of the last three seasons, this one has been bad by all accounts. UVA goes 2-10 (2016), 6-7 (2017), currently sits at 7-3 and all of the sudden UVA is on an upswing because of one season. But Tech is destined to drown into football mediocrity because of one bad season after going 10-4 (2016) and 9-4 (2017).
Eh, they started the upswing last year, and it's a pretty dramatic shift from 2-10 no matter how you slice it. And they're bowl eligible in back-to-back seasons for the first time since a run of 4 straight from 2002-05.
That said, I agree that this isn't a good take. Yes, they might beat us. Yes, they definitely look better than us this year. However, this is also their best season since at least 2011 and probably 2007, and this is our worst season since either 1992 (when our 8 losses came by a combined 60 points, with a worst of 20 to #1 Miami) or 1991 (when we went 5-6, capped off by a '38-0 bro' by UVA), so if that's what it takes for them to get their first win over us in 15 years then so be it. I'll still be there, cheering on my team, regardless of how the season is going.
2-10, 6-7, 7-3*
vs
10-4, 9-4, 4-5*
No matter how the remainder of this season plays out, these programs are on opposite trajectories by record alone.
This is overstating my point, we are trending the wrong direction with a coaching staff in Y3.
Well, no.
One season doesn't make "a trajectory". One season is a data point.
In each of those sets of data, one season is an outlier, or more likely, we'd have to say "insufficient data".
You can say trending the wrong direction, but there really is too little information there.
Each season is a data point, allowing for trend analysis. What else can you use to compare two coaching staffs in Y3 at rival programs outside of the records they have turned in and w/l improvement?
Can outliers be detected from such a small dataset? 'Trending' is fine with me, i think 3 seasons is sufficient data to notice the trend, VT wins less games each year after year. UVA does the opposite.
Thus my thought that,
If you have three data points, and one is significantly off from the others, THAT is the outlier, the other two form the trend. Which is why three data points isn't a very good set for prediction, and even worse when one of them doesn't match.
You're trying to draw a conclusion that isn't supported.
Where do you count '1 season' in those numbers?
It's a stretch, but If 4-5 turns into 8-5, this year will look very different.
I'm just saying we can't assess this year
In the middle ofat the end of our first multi game losing streak and treat it like a complete season.Lol. Unless we shut out 2 of those 4 teams, nothing will change the fact that this is the worst defense Blacksburg has seen since well before Beamer arrived.
Yea but literally 90% of us accepted that might be a fact prior to the season and then for some reason, half way through decided to get pissed about it anyway even with a handful of more injuries thrown in there.
I'll bite. I thought they would be bad, but not historically so. Also, the FSU game totally skewed my expectations for the whole year, and I can't be alone in that.
We knew it could take a step back, but Bud has worked wonders before. We figured it could be bad, but still good in the national scene. Maybe a nationally average defense, but still bad for us. But it would be ok, because even though they were young, you'd expect to see it slowly improve as the season went along.
Nope, we got a nationally bad defense that is getting worse as the season progresses to the point where they only forced 2 punts total in the past 2 divisional games. And the last game set a NCAA defensive low mark for Yards Per Play over the course of a game (which isn't going to count because we couldn't stop Pitt enough to have them run enough plays to count for the statistic, making the defensive outing even worse). Nobody saw this coming. Not from a Bud Foster defense.
True never sawing it being this bad, but I guess since I was prepared for it to be our weak spot, our offensive struggles have bothered me the most. The only thing this really reminds me off is in 2011 against Miami when we got down to our 3rd and 4th string dlineman and couldn't stop their run game in the 4th quarter. Pretty sure Courtney Prince had to come in and play DT, and he had converted to OG that year. It wasn't pretty.
Yes, we knew this season could be bad. Most of us even expected it to be bad. But if you go back and look at the preseason staff predictions, even the most conservative prediction was 7-5.
And even when looking specifically at the defense, this season is horrifically worse than anyone could have expected. Looking at the S&P+ rankings, which have been around since 2005 and provide a quantitative analysis of the quality of a defense, after adjusting for strength of their opposing offenses, this is how our defense has ranked each season:
- 2005: 1
- 2006: 1
- 2007: 2
- 2008: 10
- 2009: 7
- 2010: 35
- 2011: 18
- 2012: 8
- 2013: 1
- 2014: 10
- 2015: 39
- 2016: 17
- 2017: 9
- 2018: 93 (in progress)
I think we can all agree that we expected it to be bad. Maybe even the worst Bud Foster defense ever. That condition could have been reached with a 50th-place effort, but we turned the "bad" knob all the way to 11 and currently sit at 93rd. I don't think anyone expected this team to have the 58th-best P5 defense out of 65 teams, better than only GT, Kansas, UNC, UCLA, Baylor, Rutgers, and Louisville.
By the way, according to those same rankings, our defense is only a field goal better than P5-worst Louisville, expected to hold the average FBS offense to 31.7 points as opposed to 34.7 points against Louisville. That's... That's bad, y'all, and far worse than anyone on here would have predicted, especially after the beatdown we handed FSU to start the season.
To be fair, most of those staff and fan predictions didn't account for our best d-lineman being dismissed.
We cannot minimize the effect of the loss of Hill. If the dude continued to play at the level he was before dismissal he would have been drafted and there is no way the defense would be as bad as it currently is.
My point was, most Hokies expected this season to be bad. Pretty much nobody expected it to be this bad. And yes, there are explanations for why it is worse than expected, most of which have little to do with the current coaches and a lot to do with prior recruiting failures and recent player attrition, but that doesn't change the fact that nobody saw 4-7 as a possibility.
Here's saying you have two seasons that are essentially identical (one extra win in one extra game played in 2016 vs 2017) and then a bad season this year. First of all, you can't derive a trend from there data points, but secondly, recency bias is influencing people to weigh the results of this season more heavily than the previous two and claim a downward trend to the program that isn't evident.
And I don't agree with that. Sure, if you look at 10-4 and 9-4 you can say 'those numbers look similar, so it's the same,' but the 2016 team was clearly better than the 2017 team. The talent was better, the execution was better, the wins were better.. I actually don't understand how you could argue 2016 and 2017 were 'essentially identical' in terms of the teams.
One team has gotten worse each year (for whatever reason) over a 3 year span, the other has gotten notably better over those same 3 years. Saying you can't see that is a trend is a bit O&M-myopic
I do think we can win this weekend (why do I keep doing this to myself....). That would leave us needing to beat UVA to keep both streaks alive -- no pressure, guys! Not as confident in that outcome.
I want to believe this and there may be reason to. Both BC and Pitt have great offensive lines and running backs.
Miami has performed worse offensively against every we played in comment with the exception of UNC and FSU.
Against UNC they were MUCH better and against FSU they were slightly better.
We'll look at offense first, then defense.
Opponent,Miami Points For, VT Points For
FSU,28,24
Duke,12,31
UNC,47,22
GT,21,28
BC,14,21
It should be noted Miami scored 21 direct points off of turnovers vs UNC which makes their offensive total 26 points. I know I'm going to jinx us by saying this but I don't think we have six turnovers vs. Miami.
Our offenses are pretty comparable.
Now defense
Opponent,Miami Points Against, VT Points Against
FSU,27,3
Duke,20,14
UNC,10,19
GT,27,49
BC,27,31
Outside of the GT game, on average, our defenses are comparable which makes no sense whatsoever. Make Richt does suck.
This might be shit show for the ages, but at least it may be a contest until the end.
Now for UVA
Opponent,Miami Points For, VT Points For
Duke,28,21
UNC,31,22
Pitt,13,22
Opponent,UVA Points For, VT Points For
Duke,28,31
UNC,31,22
Pitt,13,22
It's hard to say. Looks pretty comparable.
Opponent,UVA Points Against, VT Points Against
Duke,14,14
UNC,21,22
Pitt,23,52
The glaring difference here is Pitt.
I'm on the fence. If Pitt was a HUGE aberration we have a chance against both.
Problem is, I'm not sure Pitt is a huge aberration, especially with losing Gaines for the season. Hopefully we get some guys back in the lineup, but I'm expecting to have to win a shootout if we're gonna beat either Miami, UVA, or Marshall. We haven't proven to be able to stop a competent passing or rushing attack these last few weeks, and we seem to be trending worse on D. The offense is going to need to step it up if we're going to win another game.
Has Miami actually shown themselves to be competent on offense, though? This is what has me feeling (relatively) optimistic about this week's game.
After watching us play against ODU and UNC, I don't doubt our defense to make any offense more than capable of beating us on any given day.
Like we have proven multiple times this season, you don't need a good offense to score 49 against us.
Crazy.
In comparison, both of teams are better to watch than ECU. Man I hate ECU.
I'm slightly disappointed that FifthFuller didn't drop his meteor on a ECU game.
Way I see it is simple, if we cant win against either UVA or hapless miami we should still play the 12th game and let hooker or QP loose
Wait a minute- I got a refund on my season tickets for the canceled game.... I guess we will all have to buy new tickets for this one?
Yeah and it will probably be GA
I WILL SPRINT TO THE OUTDOOR CLUB
Will they cancel the refund and just reauthorize the ECU tickets?
They'd be smart to wait until after the Miami to announce anything. If we take an L vs Miami this 12th game isn't needed IMO
I understand that UVA has a good record but I've watched them play and I have no idea why everyone thinks they are so good. I'm not necessarily confident that we will beat them, but they certainly haven't shown me any reason to be terrified on their own merits.
They have a RB who has gone for 835 yards and a QB who has gone for 650 yards on the ground this year. Watching us attempt to defend the run the last few weeks does not give me much hope in being able to slow that down.
Unfortunately we don't really have that luxury of seeing if the 12th game is needed for bowl eligibility before we schedule it. We're asking a team to pack up and travel for an away game when their season was supposed to be over. That takes some heads up time.
It's Hokie football. A 7+ month offseason is coming. We should schedule a 12th game.
Also VT will pull off an upset win in Lane in at least one of the next 2 and it will be epic.
Another offseason is coming!
I feel like the offseason never ended. It just took a 2 week break when we played FSU and W&M.
I hate how accurate this is.
Another comment here that drives home the state of the state.
When did upset wins for VT become home games against coastal division foes. A middle of the pack, struggling ACC team and your primary rival that you have beat the last 14 years consecutively.
I am against a 12th game. If these guys can't get eligible in the next 2 games, they don't deserve to go bowling. Felt the same way about FSU, and they rescheduled a makeup with a team they had already been slotted to play.
I'm all for them having the extra month of practice.
I'm all for having this team do wind-sprints for another month.
If we'd played (and beaten) ECU, and the rest of the season played out the way it has, we'd be bowl eligible with a win over Miami or UVA and there wouldn't be any question that we'd be bowl-eligible. How is this any different, aside from the fact that ECU tried to screw us over?
You are right on that. If ECU had played out as you stated, that would be the situation.
To me it has a most to do with how the season has played out and timing of these rumors. If this was something we heard about a few weeks after the hurricanes as teams were scrambling to set up new match-ups it would have seemed like a normal occurrence. You lose a game, you try for a new one on the schedule.
Heading into the season's end, knowing you need 2 wins to get to a bowl game with 2 games on the schedule and trying to sandwich in another game to reach eligibility feels entirely different to me.
Eh, whatever. If it helps us make a bowl game I'm all for it. As most people are saying in this thread, I'd rather play in a shitty bowl against a mediocre opponent than not have a bowl game at all, even if only for the extra practice time and another chance to get the defense to learn some fundamentals heading into the offseason.
They were discussing this idea the week after ECU canceled out.
I'm sure they were discussing it then.
Funny we hear these rumors again all of a sudden that Tech needs to win out to qualify.
If you don't want a 12th game because there isn't a bowl streak to play for, I'd like you to go to practice one day and tell the players that have busted their asses all year that to their faces. They deserve a 12th game.
Exactly! Definitely the seniors who always want that 1 more chance to suit up and put the pads on.
Do we have any of those? /s
You know, or the older freshmen.
There's a home basketball game at 1pm on December 1. I'd imagine that makes scheduling a bit more difficult. Do they have the football game kick at 3:30pm or later on Saturday, or have it on Friday night or Sunday? If you have it on Saturday, how do you handle parking?
I saw this scheduling dilemma as well. Honestly, I think they would just move the basketball game to accomodate the football game. Either move the bball game up to noon and play a 6pm game or the mor likely scenario of playing football at noon and then pushing the bball game back to 5 or 6.
I'm sure they can move the basketball game start time a little, but probably not too much since I'd imagine Central Connecticut is chartering a flight for it. Maybe it's still early enough to where they could move the basketball game to Sunday?
Honestly, I wonder if we'd play the football game on Friday night.
Noon would be good - we haven't lost a noon game all year!
I would be rock hard if I could watch Tech basketball and football live simultaneously
If 25K show up for Marshall it would surprise me. Parking won't be a problem
Football, if played, will be noon.
Basketball game, if football game happens, is listed at 5pm. If no football, then the game will still be at 1.
Per Hokiesports site.
Just saying... If we do schedule it and win out, 7-5 is what a lot of people guessed for this team at the beginning of the year.
However you want to talk about rock bottom, if somehow we lose to ODU, Virginia, and Marshall all in the same year, that has to be it.
247 has been saying an additional would be Southern Miss or Marshall since the ECU game was cancelled. I haven't really followed beyond that, but it seemed like Southern Miss was the more likely option.
That tracks with what I dug up in the other thread.
Both teams are in C-USA, which doesn't have any sort of bowl hierarchy. The only rule they have is that all teams with 7 or more wins have to be selected before the 6 win teams. It's not like an extra win would boost any of their teams into a "better" bowl.
With Marshall already having 6 wins, they have nothing to risk (at least in terms of bowl eligibility) by coming to Blacksburg.
Southern Miss is like us, sitting at 4-5. They have multiple scenarios:
-If they win out, they would be coming to Blacksburg at 6-5, already bowl eligible.
-If they lose out, then the only reason for them to come here at 4-7 would be the payout.
-If they split and come here at 5-6, then they're looking for that sixth win and bowl eligibility. Playing us would be a 50/50 shot at getting that sixth win (screw metrics, I'm just going with the basic probability that you either win or lose a game), which is better than the 0% chance they would have by not playing a 12th game.
I wonder if there would be a contingency clause in the game contract, so that it would only be played if at least one team would be bowl eligible afterwards.
We are #75 in S&P+, and USM is #76, so your "50/50" estimation is pretty close to reality.
I believe Chris Coleman said on TSL that it wouldn't be signed until after the UVA game, one way or another. If we beat Miami and UVA, we won't play it. If we lose to Miami and UVA, we won't play it. But if we win one, we would.
That's hella awkward. But we got ourselves in this spot.
I don't understand that. How is it not worth the revenue and extra practice time to play a 12th game? Also, there's still a chance of a bowl at 5-7, since I'm pretty sure our APR is fairly high.
Found out today our APR sucks overall. We won't make a game with 5 wins this year unless ALOT of teams win their remaining games.
Dammit! Why do all the smart school suck this year!!!
All I'm hearing is that, of the 22 teams ahead of us, we just need 18 of them to either win again if they always have 5, or to lose out if they only have 4.
Problem solved.
Not getting to .500 and still going to a bowl is the pity party of NCAA.
If there aren't enough eligible teams, don't play the damn bowl games.
The bowl committees and sponsors won't let that happen, which is why sub-.500 teams could become eligible in the first place.
Why?
I'm pretty sure why the first team was allowed to be sub .500 was the sun belt team that won the sun belt the first year they had a bowl tie-in. They were 5-6 with all win in the conference. If I recall correctly.
2001 North Texas, Sun Belt co-champion, went 5-1 in conference, but lost the other five games on their schedule to go to the bowl with a 5-6 record.
Middle Tennessee was also 5-1 in conference, 8-3 overall, but didn't go to a bowl. I guess North Texas got picked due to the head-to-head tiebreaker.
There were only 25 bowl games.
If I had to have guessed I would have gone with NT, but 2001! I would have been way off,
I didn't think it was that long ago
Every team after that was for money because they realized idiots like me would watch a bowl with a sub .500 team.
Exactly. And thus the machine keeps chugging along.
I can't lie and say I was upset about that one Sun Bowl in which 6-7 Georgia Tech embarrassed USC.
I can't imagine any school that would go for that. They money and logistics that go into moving nearly 100 people and tons of equipment for an Away game require significant forethought and planning. 6 days ain't enough.
The only way I can see anyone biting on a deal like that is if VT would either pay or fully refund the costs if the game isn't played. That seems like an expensive proposition for our Athletics Dept.
Moreso, the economics of paying a team to come to Blacksburg to chase a birth in a lower-tier bowl game make little financial sense. Many times, schools lose money on Bowl games if they can't sell a bunch of tickets...I don't see a 6-win VT going to anything particularity attractive. So in essense, we would be paying a team to play us so that we can then (likely) lose more money at the Gasparilla Bowl.
We're paying a team to come to Blacksburg so we can sell a couple million dollars worth of tickets and concessions, all while getting an extra week of practice for our young players and a chance at extending that week out to a full month of bowl practices to help prepare for next year.
Maybe overall we lose a bit on the 12th game, but travel costs for bowl games are reimbursed by the ACC before taking into account bowl payouts (the teams that lose money are generally G5 schools who don't have such arrangements with their conference), and overall getting the extra practice time seems to be worth a little bit of expense even if you don't consider the bowl streak itself to be a tangible benefit.
While I still think the game should be played for a bunch of reasons, I don't think we come anywhere close to $2M on this. I'm actually surprised they refunded season tickets before the season was over.
But there will be a positive effect for local businesses.
The only true value here is in the practice time. I'd be interested to see how many "millions" of dollars a week 12 matchup with a G5 opponent to try and scrape out bowl eligibility will bring to VT. Yes, tickets and concessions create revenue, but you conveniently ignore the fact that there are lots of costs associated that could very easily eat revenue and make this game a money-loser, especially if it is sparsely attended, which certainly isn't far-fetched. For the first time in my memory, there are copious amounts of Miami tickets available--apathy is creeping up quickly. A friend of mine in SWVA had trouble GIVING 2 tickets away. Marshall or So. Miss is going to create more demand than Miami?
I would be shocked to see Lane half-full for a week 12 game--and that's if we can even manage to beat UVa or Miami and have the game mean anything.
Let alone planning time needed for local businesses to schedule staff and order food, etc.
While I'm sure they would like to, there's no way they wait until after Uva game to announce.
Sauces?
I really just want an extra month of practice.
The way this season is going for us, an extra 2 games and month of practice will just mean a few more guys getting hurt and possibly out all off season and the beginning of next season.
Which would mean even more guys getting valuable in-game experience that will prove to be invaluable next year.
Oh i'm team bowl game. I think experience gained and sending your seniors out right is what its all about. I was really just joking that with our luck this season, that somehow making a bowl game would screw us in the end.
I am also team bowl game, but wonder about benefit of extra month of practice vs extra month more focused on recruiting.
(* I don't know the details of recruiting rules and they're probably too complicated for me to bother with anyway)
If Whit wants to maximize revenue, he should schedule Marshall. Marshall fans always travel well.
With that being said, Marshall's AD might want a home and home, even if it is just a makeup game. He got Louisville to come to Huntington two seasons ago when they were ranked #3 and got NC State to come this season. The game Marshall is making up is the South Carolina game, though, which was a one way ticket, so maybe they won't ask for a home and home.
Can we replace ECU with them for the duration of the ECU contract? I'd be happy with that and I expect that Marshall would too.
Marshall's AD would do that in a heartbeat. VT doesn't have a lot to gain from playing in Huntington every other year though. It's not a fertile recruiting ground, and there aren't a lot of Hokie fans in the area contrary to Greenville.
It seems like we've recruited and lost (or not even been close) a fairly big recruit out of the Huntington area almost every year recently. Darnell Wright was this year's. I can't seem to find other ones, but I swear I remember seeing several kids out of that area.
Darnell Wright is the only player from Huntington that I can remember being a P5 prospect in recent years. Spring Valley is about 20 minutes away and always has good offensive linemen. There are a lot of other G5 schools with more high school talent in the area though.
we are recruiting a sophomore lineman out of Spring Valley right now. Almost got current 4/5 star senior lineman to flip from OSU, but doesn't look like that will happen now.
We play in NC enough that dropping the ECU game wouldn't hurt our recruiting.
But thanks to Go ACC we get Duke and UNC home and away in same year.
We're not the only ones pissed about that. We hear it every so often by the radio guys that they prefer the bigger schools coming into the area once a year, and having us split our trips to Duke and UNC helps keep the momentum of college football for the region. Obviously, State playing FSU and Clemson helps, but on the Coastal side, it definitely feels like a missed opportunity. Miami and VT should alternate home/away between Duke and UNC every year.
But poor Miami "was traveling so much".
Blame Miami and the ACC.
From 2004 to 2012 we were alternating, one game in North Carolina and one game in Lane. Miami complained about having to go to both Tallahassee and Blacksburg every other year and the conference caved. In 2012, we traveled to Miami and Chapel Hill and got Duke at home. In 2013, for the second year in a row we traveled to Miami and got Duke at home but also played UNC at home.
Who Cares and Why Not.. me.. care Less...
If there's anything Word Crimes taught me, it's that if you could care less that means you do care! :3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc
What if you couldn't not care less?
Can we start digging up all the posts of complaints when FSU did this last year?
Just saw an article on The Athletic that mentioned that it is likely anywhere from 3 to 7 six-win teams will have to be left out of bowls. There are too many FBS teams and not enough bowls this year.
I personally don't think this will matter for us, but wouldn't that be something...
another reason for USM and Marshall to be hankering for another win vs. VT. Difference between 6 and 7 wins could be the difference in a bowl game for them.
Per S&P+, we are 75th, Marshall is 44th (and 6-3) and Southern Miss is 76th. Stats like these aren't the end-all-be-all, but these games would not be pushover by any means.
Sad to think it might be ODU (3-7) that kept us out of a bowl.
You spelled Virginia Tech football wrong.
Wait, ODU is 3-7?!
Oh my. I did not realize this...
Their wins have all been kind of spectacularly weird too.
1. VT: (in retrospect, this is the least surprising given how we have looked the rest of the season)
2. WKU: penalties, untimed downs, three field goal attempts in like 2 seconds of game time and only one of them good. (edit: it should be noted, two of the attempts were by WKU and the third by ODU for the win)
3. North Texas: Came back from being down 28 points to score 10 points right before halftime and ended up winning 34-31.
Maybe the NCAA will investigate them for having a record that suggests that they should not be winning in games such as these...
Yeah, surprising. Last time I checked they were 1-6. They're better than I thought they were.
Sadness is the only thing I know anymore.
So it will be Marshall or no one at this point.
https://www.sunherald.com/sports/college/conference-usa/university-of-so...
UNLV is apparently a possibility as well.
How so? They already have 12 games scheduled.
Unless we would travel out there to be their 13th game and extra home game to offset travel expenses for travelling to Hawaii.
I have no clue. Just some rumblings at TSL. UNLV isn't making a bowl game though. I'm not sure what the rules on the amount of regular season games a team can play are.
12 unless you play on the road at Hawaii, then you can schedule a 13th to recoup the travel costs
Plus I'm sure that if more than 12 games were allowed, everyone would be scheduling more than 12 games.
UNLV plays at Hawai'i this weekend, that makes them eligible for 13 games though I think road games in both Hawai'i and Blacksburg would probably a bit too expensive for their athletic department regardless of what kind of pay day or future scheduling we might promise them.
I hope tech gets a home and home with UNLV.
Yeah, but the point of the 13th game is to be a home game to generate extra revenue to offset the travel costs (in theory).
That being said, only two of Hawaii's opponents scheduled a 13th game this year - Navy and Rice. (Everyone else just opted for the extra bye week.) Rice still only managed 6 home games, but they also played Wake Forest and LSU on the road. (And we all know that LSU isn't ever going to play at Rice.)
Navy is a special case with only 5 true home games, but they were the "home" team for the Notre Dame game (ND at Navy is never played at Navy), and they have Army at the end of the year.
Could also be a 1AA school as well. Wouldn't count towards bowl eligibility but would still get players another game.
You can count two FCS wins toward bowl eligibility, you just can't be selected over another 6 win team that only has one win over an FCS team.
Actually, it can under the right circumstances. As of 2012, the process for bowl eligibility is as follows:
Teams that have at least six wins, at least a 50% winning percentage, and have at most one win over an FCS team. If there aren't enough teams to fill every bowl, then teams are chosen (in order)
a. Teams that are 6-6 (or 6-5) with at most 2 FCS wins
b. Teams that are 6-7 and lost in their conference championship game OR played at/are Hawai'i
c. FCS teams that are 6-6 and in last year of transition to FBS (this only applies to Liberty this year)
d. Teams that are 5-7 or 5-6 and have the highest APR among eligible teams. From what I heard last night, there are at least 20 teams ahead of VT that could still finish 5-7/5-6. Almost all of them would have to finish with 4 wins or less in order for VT to apply for this waiver
I feel like such a loser reading these scenarios. Makes me mad about this season, but
In fairness, the only reason I know this is I posted it to Will Stewart's Twitter after a guy responded to Stewart that FSU would need to get four more wins to get bowl eligible. That was back on September 15, after they struggled against Samford.
We are a completely below average team right now and ripe to loose another game versus another (ODU) pitiful non-conference foe. Does anyone really have any confidence this team can beat "any" team after the last two/three recording setting and pitiful offense and coaching performances?
Could we beat an ODU-like team? This group is in disarray and simply does not have the talent.
Didn't you hear? It's just execution, Fuente was 3-9 once at Memphis, and Frank was 2-8-1 in his 6th year, so there's nothing you should be worried about.
I can't tell from the rest of the thread/whole message board, but do you not agree with comparing this down year with down years Fuente and Beamer previously had?
This is one of the underlying irritations of this season for me. I don't care what the truth is, whether it is that they aren't executing or coaches not putting them in a position to execute. It doesn't matter to me, and after this much losing it really doesn't matter at all. But don't blame the players in front of the mic.
Take care of all that behind closed doors. Hell, it would be more consistent with how little access we have to the program in the first place. Blaming the players with media present is bad form. End of story.
Except you're ignoring (or missed) the part where he said execution is on the coaches. He wasn't blaming players over coaches. He just disagreed that the bad coaching was in the form of play calling as opposed to getting the team able to execute.
You can of course disagree with him and believe it is the play calling. But he wasn't shifting blame to the players.
I'm not a huge fan of the closed aspect either but this isn't an accurate criticism of what Fuente said.
CJF has passed the buck on multiple occasions.
Bam, there it is! This is the single thing that has bothered me the most about CJF. You're the head coach, at the end of the day, it all comes back to you. Bosses deflect blame. Leaders take accountability.
He's always followed those statements about players with something along the lines of "but that's the responsibility of the coaches to get them better prepared". He always makes sure that any criticism he makes of the players eventually comes back to a failing on the staff. The people reporting those quotes don't always include them, intentionally making them sound worse than they are, but he says it.
Like, are we seriously missing that part? Are we just hunting for reasons to hate our coaches? Because it sounds like we're hunting for reasons to hate our coaches.
Tbf I did forget about that when I made my post. Lack of caffeine got after me.
I don't know man, I'm just going back and forth between numb and mad. It sucks
I am sticking with numb. Every time I get mad, I look at all the depth problems we've had and attribute the majority of them to a perfect storm of the sh*t variety. minus three sigma will happen.
I swear I have heard him do it at a live press conference at least once, and maybe I heard the first part and rage closed my ears to the next. Like you said, I know that he has come back and said that the execution was ultimately on him before as well. Maybe I read the selective snippets from reporters for other pressers and conflated it all into a trend. I dunno. I'm like BoD, I'm just numb and pissed and want a damned win, bourbon, and some turkey.
Maybe I'm hearing two different things, but when Coach Foster says it and Coach Fuente says it; it "sounds" different...like I've heard Coach Foster, even before this season, "Hey I take full responsibility for this performance" One thing that Beamer started saying after losses is that the effort was great, we just need to clean up some things"..like you could feel that he really meant what he was saying..Sometimes it feels like Coach Fu is just up there giving a company line...