Still fresh off our 15th consecutive victory in the 100th game, I was wondering if anyone has ventured over to peruse the Platinum level meltdown? Sure, the digital format of the site sucks as much as their team, but the content is absolutely splendiferous for the TKPer. Spectacular content for any time of the day and night (& if you require a quick pick-me-up). Enjoy!
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I like how there are a couple of posters there who can't even appreciate our adventurous fans offering them well wishes. Accusing them of trolling and whatnot.
If that's the best message board community (fans plus format) that they can muster across their entire fandom, that's just pitiful.
Ahhhh it was a beautiful sight seeing all those hoo fans crying
Unbelievable their position about bowl games being participation trophies and that they hope they reject whatever bowl bid they receive. Must be hard being such a good attempted that you feel above any bowl you might receive. S/
"Doesn't really matter. Anything below the top ones [bowls] are all garbage"
LOLUVA.
The best part about that comment was reject the bowl bid and practice as long as they can. Obviously they don't realize that no bowl = no extra practice.
It's been so long their players and fans probably don't remember that that is the case
Wow...that was beautiful!!! (sniff)...The funniest part was the guy who kept posting links for his HooTV replay and the responses he was getting LOL. We need as many jaded hoo fans as possible to watch our game with Marshall hoping for us to lose for good karma.
edit...They completely Chooked
Is there a good reason why the format of the site is so awful? Why wouldn't SportsWar update things?
I can't even read it, every time I go anywhere near other teams sites I thank Hokie God for Joe and this site.
They did. A while back, maybe around 5 years ago, they went to a more natural vBulletin format, much like you see with 247, with vastly improved UI.
A very vocal segment of TSL rejected it, pulled their funding, and never accessed the site again. Eventually they scrapped the migration and went back to their home grown 1995 era format, and decided they'd never do that again.
And TSL owns SportsWar. That's why the format is the same between those sites. (They also own Boneyard Banter for ECU)
Yep. I'll never understand why anyone would prefer that format. One topic can take up an entire page.
I hate the format... it's absolutely terrible. It's the reason I didn't ever read up on the Hokies, until TKP came around.
By the way, what an idiotic business move. Whenever you pivot your business to make it better, there is going to be some sort of cannibalization of sales. You can't fear it, or your business will be taken over by the next one. IE TKP is 1000 times better than TSL.
I hate to the that guy but I think you meant to say "better than" not "better then", but I think that is the only error made ;)
TSL used to be my go to Hokie fan site. I was happy when they switched to a new format. But if you recall they tried to piecemeal it. You could view the forum through either the V-bulletin threaded format or the old linear format. Replies to a post above in linear format would appear as a totally random unconnected post when viewed in the V-bulletin format. So they tried to make a rule saying you had to reply with quote for every post, which almost nobody did.
A bunch of vocal people who like the old format threatened to leave the site, so they switched it back which in turn caused all the people who like the new format to leave the site. It was a disaster. About that time I discovered TKP and have never looked back. I go on TSL a couple times a year now instead of every day.
I was a subscriber at TSL when they migrated. In fact, I subscribed when they adjusted to help them out, because they were losing members, but I thought they were on the right track.
Then they switched back, and I pulled my money, came over here, and now my money goes toward Joe. They begged for subscribers when they moved to vB, and then they abandoned it because they were more concerned over what they lost rather than growing the new relationships they had. Nope, that was enough for me, I was out.
They also made a few statements that they moved back to the current format because it forced more page clicks, and as such, they could game more ad revenue.
Wow....their site really sucks.
This season has been a months long storm of attrition and adversity, but this is a respite of sunshine in the maelstrom. Just the thought of it will make me smile for months to come.
After Friday is was littered with various conspiracy theories about the refs pulling for VT (e.g. the lead official was a former season ticket holder that grew up in Giles) yada, yada, yada.
The whole thing about Walker is stupid, he went facemask into a player that was ducking his head for impact. It was a good no call.
//I can't remember if the crown matters anymore or if i's simply doing your head, targeting rule changes to much.
The rule has two important parts, one, the rule only applies to defenseless players which is specifically not a player carrying the ball (i.e. the UVA player Ricky pummeled), and two, it has to be leading with the crown, which Ricky did not. The fact that they even went to the video was a blunder by the refs.
Not a 100% accurate. If Ricky had led with the crown of his helmet it would have been targeting whether or not the player is defenseless. Basically any forcible hit where a player leads with the crown could be called targeting It doesn't have to be a shot to the head and it doesn't have to be a defenseless player The defenseless player part expands the rule to include shots to the head or neck by other parts of the body including the shoulders and parts of the arm.
This article from sbnation gives a pretty good rundown. Given the differences in criteria it honestly seems like it should be two separate penalties. It might provide some clarity to the casual fan, but if I recall the ref did a pretty good job explaining why Ricky's hit wasn't targeting
Thanks for clearing that up, no time to read rules this morning. With targeting i get it confused with the NFL rule too much (though i dont really watch NFL so not sure why).
Jeff Flanagan is the same ref who called them Virginia Tech during their Miami game, so they already had cause to hate him.Edit: I just re watched that clip to confirm my assertion and I was wrong on both counts. But I will say UVA fans have no grounds to complain about officiating after that
non-horsecollar call.If anything, doesn't that show lack of favoritism? He doesn't even know the difference between schools that share the same state.
Yeah but too bad they thought it was David Epperley, despite numerous Hokies pointing it out over and over and over again.
I won't bash on the TSL format (kudos to them for endowing a Comm/MJ&SMA scholarship), but I will bash on the overall football knowledge of the UVA fanbase based on that site. Shew.
"quick pick me up"? That message board is to be slowly and leisurely enjoyed. That was delightful, thanks!
Lol Bryce perkins Heisman hype? Give me a break. Dudes good but he is no tua
Or Haskins or Murrey or any of the other much better QB's.
He's a less talented Denard Robinson.
Don't worry guys they're back behind their team now.
I almost fell out of my chair laughing at this. Oh my god that's next level delusional. Hahahahahahahaha
The best part is of the 11 retweets, it looks like 5 are Hokies. One other is a Miami fan. So more than half are just passing along this ridiculous take to the rest of their followers.
This is what an actual low-ceiling mentality looks like.
I see a lot of that mentality out of our fans too
I wanted to make my post about how some Tech fans will say that other Tech fans have a low-ceiling mentality and thought better of it, but lo and behold you've done it for me.
Can't fix stupid (sthoopid)
I think most Hokies would agree with this...if you catch my sarcasm. Just like the dontfirealgroh.com campaign.
I actually clicked on this guy's profile to see what in the world he could possibly mean by that. He later tweeted something like, "doubling down on this tweet." Explained that he feels Bronco is the perfect fit for their culture, while the others are not. The only way I can understand that is to assume he doesn't want a football staff that would try to be the #1 sport on campus, taking attention and revenue away from the basketball, baseball, and cricket programs.
As much I love going over to the Sabre for their meltdown, I don't understand the mockery of their website format.
People act like they are the only site that's like that. The TechSideLine.com (and other Sports War websites) are exactly like that but no one mocks that. And I know a lot of us go over there for other posts/opinions but say nothing about the format.
False.
I mock them all.
That's fair, I just don't see it being mocked as much. If people's excuse to mock it more because it is UVA, then I get it.
It's just another point to toss on the pile of LOLUVA LOLUVAing.
I go on no other site for Hokie news except the Roanoke Times, so I didn't know there were other sites as miserable as theirs. Certainly, the fact that it is UVA makes the content easy to mock and deride, but the format of the site is just poor, unfriendly, and clunky. If TKP looked like that, I'd certainly spend very little time on it.
I too mock all bad web design.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure every time TSL is mentioned or linked on here there is inevitably at least one, most of the time multiple, comments about how awful and unreadable their format is.
I never seen it, but that just me
I should've submitted this on the Hatin' On: Bronco Mendenhall thread.
Bronco Mendenhall finds the Sabre Forum format to be clear and concise and feels it's the gold standard
I'd love Bronco to stay around. He's been walking the line from normal person to Larry Fedora insane for quite some time now, it won't be long until he goes over the edge.
Hard to differentiate while surrounded with Wahoos...
Hoos of a feather ram together
hard things together
There's no reason to bring VCU into this.
I did some Bronco googling when he came onto our scene, and he has never been a normal person. Always been OWFD. There were hundreds of pages the were dedicated to highlighting all the stupid shit that comes out of his mouth. Go back through the Cougar and Ute forums if you are ever bored, the Utes were sad to see him go because he was such an easy target.
The comment is way hyperbolic but to be fair I do think Bronco is a really good coach.
Hey, he got a ton of mileage out of 27 ACC-caliber players this year.
...also a paver and sledgehammer!
Not to mention all the "Beat Tech" signs, chants and mentions.
And a toaster
Oh ya, it's terrible over there. I posted somewhere else that I ventured over there after the game and the crap they were saying was ridiculous. Most of it had nothing to do with football. They went on a rant about how this is our "Super Bowl" because we all apparently live in Southwest Virginia, are meth heads, and this is the only thing we have to look forward to all year. My gosh they're the worst.
Sometimes I wonder who some of these people actually are. I think back to when Andy Bitter had comments enabled on his Roanoke Times blog or twitter and realize that there are just some toxic fans out there who like to talk a lot on the internet.
I think a lot of the people that say that garbage aren't even UVA alum. Not that they don't have a voice or anything, but I know plenty of UVA alumni and none of them would stoop as low as some of the people on that site. You get it everywhere though with every fanbase.
I can almost guarantee you that nobody on that message board actually went to UVA.
You know what UVA and VT fans have in common? Neither of them went to UVA.
Hahaha nice. Ya, true UVA alumni don't follow such grotesque and uncultured sports such as "football".
Edit: (Until Thanksgiving week every year. Then after that they go back into their hole.)
Our Super Bowl? Our fucking Super Bowl???
My first thought as well. Just remember, Hell is a place where there is no reason.
at what point do they stop with the gimmicks? Something...Something empty national championship trophy case.
Are those supposed to be the Wasatch Mountains? Does Bronco know he's not in Utah anymore? sheesh....
Also, there's a joke in there: How many UVa players does it take to break a rock with "Beat Tech" on it? Nobody knows...
If you break a "rock" with "Beat Tech" on it, but don't actually beat Tech, what have you learned?
I believe you've learned the definition of insanity
You've learned irony, foreshadowing, and symbolism.
You've learned that pretending to be big and tough doesn't work. You have to be more than talk, you actually have to follow through.
The "rock" represented their hope for strength. It ended up being fragile and easily shattered like their dreams of borrowing the cup. And their egos.
Unfortunately, they haven't learned the one thing they should have:
humility.
This should be plaid.
The answer is currently unknown, other than we are sure that it is more than 15.
FTFY
How many LOLUVA players does it take to actually beat Tech?
More than 1575, although the world may never know....
They broke every huddle all year with "Beat Tech"
Hell, they bragged about "Beating Tech" in the bathroom
But right... its our Super Bowl...
We're all uneducated meth heads. It's the only thing we have to look forward to.
Oh please, do I look like a meth head to you?
Hit 'im again, hit 'im again, harder....harder.
How is this comment or the gif above it allowed on here?
The subject of a joke can be a politician without the joke being political. Just like the subject of a joke can be black without the joke being racist. Or, I can say Jerry Falwell Jr. runs a sketchy university without saying anything about religion. If I say I tweet more than Trump, is that a political statement or just referencing he reality that we have a president who is active on Twitter?
Please note i'm not defending this in particular, just pointing out that some people tend to be offended by jokes because they are associated with something taboo even though the jokes are not taboo themselves.
A comment saying to "hit Trump harder" seems pretty political to me.
And you're free to DV it. I did. Personally I think the gif is hilarious.
And I deserve it, for sure. It was just a joke, but I'm not surprised at the downvotes. It's not like the mascot actually hit the fellow, in which case I wouldn't have made the joke.
Trust me....It's not you. It's this society where a large segment are easily threatened.
Now back to football.
Just take one look at what had happened to the truck industry to see how.... threatened we are right now.
Seriously, why do you have to climb up into every entry level truck nowadays?
For the record, that's not what I said. If you're going to quote me, please do so accurately. Thanks.
Beating the Hoos.
The gift that keeps on giving.
And at the engineering company I work for UVA applicants are turned away and never even get interviews. Hokies at least get interviewed.
that seems like a odd business practice.
I mean, I don't know any UVA engineers worth their salt, but at the same time, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that
J/k. Kinda. Sorta. Not really.
Seems odd to go to loluva for engineering...just sayin.
A dude who goes to my fencing club just started engineering at UVA after not getting in to MIT. I didn't want to question his decision making, but it struck me as an exceptionally significant dropoff considering what his other in state option was.
It's a good chance they were denied admission to VT Eng also but weren't going to admit it.
Nah, this guy had the grades and scores to actually have a shot at MIT. He just never applied to Tech.
I'm sure you're correct. VT is more difficult to get into for engineering than UVA. I know of a couple people who had the grades and test scores to get into MIT yet were denied admission to VT. Yet, there were others admitted to VT with lesser grades and scores. I realize there are other factors in decisions but sometimes the decisions are a bit of a head scratcher.
No hoo would ever admit this. I had one try to convince me that UVA was harder to get into than a service academy.
That could be true if you look at it from a pure % accepted standpoint. UVa does reject a whole lot of applicants.
But that doesn't even come close to telling the whole story. The application process and admission standards for the service academies (at least for Navy, which I briefly considered in my youth) are so daunting, they prevent a lot of potential applicants, such as myself, from even trying. However, I'd say that the vast majority of students in the service academies could probably get accepted to UVa or any state university in the country, if they chose to apply.
Yeah, people don't apply to the service academies on a whim. If you take the time to do everything it takes to make it into a service academy, you likely have a good sense that you have at least a semi-decent shot of being accepted. If their claim is indeed percentage based, that would likely be the culprit.
hell, I've had multiple ones tell me LOLUVa is harder to get into than ivy league schools.
And my response....

I would add that most of the people that actually apply to an Ivy league school have a really good idea they have what it takes. Some that apply to loluva are just trying to go to school after college, and don't have what it takes in general. In the early 90's it was harder to get into JMU than UVA for out of state. Why? JMU was basically a commuter school and had like 85% in-state admission "policy." We also used to call it Just Missed Uva... (That is NOT a knock on JMU, just a saying.)
I only applied to Virginia Tech out of high school so I can't speak from personal experience, but one of the smartest guys on my hall (which was an all engineering hall) also applied to UVA, got in, and picked Virginia Tech because it simply is a better engineering school. He was undoubtedly the smartest person I've ever met in my life. He never studied and aced every class (pisses me off...). The last I saw, he was a manager at Microsoft. However, I still think (for what it's worth), UVA has a great engineering school. I personally don't like holding where I went to school over anyone's heads (not saying anyone here is); it just doesn't lead to good work relationships. At the end of the day, I want everyone to be happy and financially stable enough to provide for their family.
Amen to that. Some of my favorite baristas went to UVa and Starbucks has great benefits.
I chortled
I think this is one of the nicest posts I've read on TKP for a while. Thank you for a kind and reasonable post. You're the kind of person I'd like to have as a co-worker or neighbor. While most of us here might have a hard time agreeing, sports isn't all there is to life, and as personal as the rivalry can get, it's not the most important thing we'll deal with as we traverse this veil of tears. We truly are all in this together.
Thanks.
You two know this is the internet, right? And a sports discussion platform at that? I mean, c'mon with all the perspective and reasonableness.
Yeah, I'm sorry. I'll get back to my contentious self here directly.
In the companies 40+ year history, they have yet to have a Hoo engineer make it past a year before his sub standard engineering knowledge got him canned. So about 5 years ago, they just stopped interviewing them and being disappointed.
Can confirm.
Dad just retired after 30+ years of engineering for the Navy, ended up running the Engineering group in his organization.
Wouldn't interview UVA engineers, as they didn't have the requisite education they needed.
I know we shit on UVA sports quite a bit here, and thats all good and fun, but personally, I wouldn't want my company to turn away someone solely based on where they went to school. I feel like UVA's engineering school is pretty decent, a few of my ME/ESM professors at VT went to UVA. Also, my old boss was a UVA engineer, and he was probably the best engineer at my last job.
I agree.
Sports are sports, and business is business. You take the good job applicants where you can find them. There are lots of top-notch Hoo graduates.
I worked closely for many years at Harris Corp with a UVE grad SE. He was top notch. We are still friends n peers.
Any UVa grad that meets this criteria is not a sports fan. He wasn't.
I stick by my statement based on a dataset of 1.... 🙄
I work with a lot of UVA faculty and staff. Great people. Of course we don't talk sports.
I work pretty close with two uva engineers; one is an absolute pompass ass with an inferiority complex and the other is an awesome person and engineer.
I've worked with a small handful of UVA engineers. One was the absolute least useful engineer I've ever worked with in 25 years. The others have been fine.
I can say with 100% confidence that I have never met a decent UVA watchmaker. I Have also never met another Watchmaker who graduated from Tech. So that's that. Glad I could help.
Other than you?
I was fresh out of college, and everyone else had atleast 5+ years of experience, safe to say I was probably the worst. Also didn't have a passion for the work, which is why I switched careers.
No doubt, a smart move.
I was successful in my line of work primarily due to persistence rather than deep talent. When I was in early elementary school, my parents took me to an Easter egg hunt. When they "fired the starting gun", all the kids ran out picking up the eggs. I did not get far before I saw an egg in the notch of the tree just out of reach. I kept jumping up trying to get it. I don't know how long I tried but I finally heard my Dad calling out to leave it. As I ran thru the field trying to catch up with the other kids, all I saw were few broken eggs that had been trampled by the herd. I did get some Easter eggs but my basket was notable less full than the others. That same persistence (chasing something just out of my reach) showed up throughout my life, most notably in my dating life. It wasn't all bad; I had to wait until I was 44 but I ended up with a better wife than I deserve.
While we're on the conversation...my dad works for an architecture firm in RVA, who love hiring Hokies. I've been told the VT grads are "the most prepared".
completely unbiased opinion: My step-brother, who attended St. John's College in Annapolis, MD and never had any allegiance to any Virginia schools, once told me that he had hired both Hokies and wahoos in his career and every single Hokie outperformed every single wahoo. He was kind of astonished that the hoos seldom panned out and the Hokies were always a solid hire.
A couple years ago I was at a function with a bunch of architecture firms (they were bidding on a contract in Richmond), when the topic of schools came up.
One of the guys said, "If you want something to look pretty, hire a UVA architect. If you want something that functions well, hire a VT architect." Everyone laughed. None of them went to either school.
Obviously, we all want both.
If you're an architect, they're the same thing
(form follows function)
From an engineering perspective, we always joke about the triple axiom of quality, cost, and speed in regards to designing a new product. You can have any two, but you can't have all three.
In going through the UVA website when my daughters were looking at schools, it was quite clear that UVA undergrad is mostly geared towards getting students to grad school and academia over practical job-based knowledge, so the fact there are good engineering professors doesn't surprise me.
In my work experience, I have worked with UVA engineering grads and have seen a mixed bag. I was trained in my first job out of college by a really good Hoo engineer. My current boss is a UVA engineering grad (played two years of football under Groh), but he is probably a better businessman than engineer. The rest have not fared well.
You should see their board today, sad!
I really wish I could go to that site and read things but god that layout is so bad. How does anyone prefer a page where to read comments you have to keep going to new pages!
It's actually easier to read on mobile.
Still sucks. If I want to float on Monday morning, the only threads there are NFL threads because there's no separation so all football is just up there chronologically. So little thought put into that site. Thank God for Joe Lanza or we'd be languishing in a similar football board hell...
My favorite part about the site is the delusional elitism that'll pop up occasionally. I saw a comment about how UVA is known for dominating the Belk bowl, if anyone disagrees then they don't remember the CTB era, and if they don't know what the CTB era is then they aren't a real UVA fan.
For anyone wondering, the CTB era is referring to not Coach Tony Bennett, it is when UVA won back-to-back Continental Tire Bowls in 2002 and 2003. Those wins compose 2 of their 3 bowl wins since 1996.
Weird flex but OK.
I'll have you know that they've increased their season wins by 350% in two years. Not even Alabama has done that.
Again, heck of a result out of 27 ACC-caliber players.
UVA Football dominating anything...
They dominate some stat columns.