Illinois Hokie's Recent Comments

IMO, you want to keep both Cline and Malleck in close to the line, to disguise who is going to release into a passing route. If you split them wide, you take away that moment of transition when a defender has to realize their assignment.

We could run a no-wide set with four legit passing targets...

I think you've hit the nail on the head here. I'm betting Whit's involvement was along the lines of telling the people who organize on-campus events, "Get the biggest draw you possibly can that weekend." I don't think as AD Whit would have anything to do with actually nailing down a contract with an artist or anything like that, but it shows the culture shift from Weaver to Whit. Whit wants to manufacture events, not just games. He gets the spectacle of the thing.

After reading my original post again, my "too much credit" line might have sounded harsher than I meant it to. I wasn't trying to insinuate Whit didn't deserve praise, some of the comments just sounded like Whit was the one who called up Brad's people, and I'm pretty certain that's not what happened. There's channels at VT that reach out to artists to plan events.

I'll grant you that Hitler was an equal opportunity asshole, and he had no qualms wiping out any race or ethnicity that varied from his Aryan ideal. But the Third Reich was propped up specifically on a foundation of blaming the Jews. Mein Kampf is a manifesto of everything the Jews had supposedly done to undermine the integrity of the German state. And in justifying the genocide of other groups, Hitler and the Nazis invariably tied it to these groups' supposed ties to the Jews.

As for saying only the people physically there would feel the insult more deeply, let me just give a practical example. If someone were to make a joke about 4/16, anyone could (and should) take offense to it. But as Hokies, wouldn't you agree that we feel it more deeply, even if we ourselves had graduated prior to the event and weren't physically present for it? It's become ingrained as a part of our cultural identity, and people who aren't affiliated with this culture, while feeling justifiable outrage, don't feel it exactly the same way we do. That was the point I was trying to make.

Absolutely no need to invoke the fact that you're Jewish, because it insinuates that those of us who aren't Jewish don't have the same capacity for offense when it comes to casual holocaust jokes, and I take great exception to that. It's simply not the case.

Sorry, no. Anyone can take exception to a Holocaust joke, but actually BEING Jewish adds a dimension that gentiles will simply never quite be able to identify with. (And I say this as a gentile.) It's one thing to know that it's abhorrent. It's another to have a grandmother or a grandfather with a tattoo from a concentration camp, or to know that some of the claw marks on the walls of the gas chamber at Auschwitz were made by one of your ancestors.

My wife (also a Gentile) worked as a counselor at a summer camp for Jewish children after graduating college. She got to know several of the families that sent their kids to camp there, and became probably as well versed in Jewish customs as anyone who has never been to temple ever has. And from talking to her about it, I can honestly say, as a Caucasian American of Irish heritage, there is NOTHING that comes even remotely close to affecting me and my cultural identity as the Holocaust has for modern Jews. My ancestors were spat on as they got off the boat at Ellis Island, but theirs were herded by the millions like cattle straight to their deaths, subjected to torture-porn-level medical experiments without consent, and an assortment of other atrocities too hideous to discuss.

So, yeah, no, sorry. You can take exception to a Holocaust joke. But you have no idea what it's like to even think about the Holocaust if you're Jewish.

I'm with you, the piling on in these comments is a little much. It's newsworthy and topical. Yeah, it was a double post, but like I've pointed out before, the search function is poor when searching for forum topics that have dropped off the front page.

This incident reflects poorly on OSU and its band. Sure, it's been discussed and addressed by the university and the band, but it's definitely worth bringing up. I don't get the criticism you're receiving. You thought it was worth bringing up for discussion. So do I.

Dude kinda looks like AMo.

Literally every significant development in the game of football came about through someone first using it as a gimmick to gain an advantage. At one point, the forward pass was a gimmick.

For clarification, I don't think this is the wave of the future for football. But the word gimmick gets thrown around by football fans way too much. When you have all teams playing by the same rules with the same number of players, coaches will always look for different interpretations to find an advantage. Frank did it in the 90s when he put starters on special teams and gave way more practice time to that aspect of the game. People called it a gimmick, now all the successful programs are serious about ST.

The game evolves, and that evolution is driven by gimmicks.

We called Gucci Kroger "Harris Kroger" because we were in school when it converted from a Harris Teeter to a Kroger.

The science part of your post is sciencey. Well done.

I think having an open stadium with only 66k fans that produce one of, if not THE loudest fan noise is something that we all should be immensely proud of. And something that Whit and the Athletic Dept should do a lot more to promote IMO.

In regards to this specific thought, I think we need an honest decibel meter that can be displayed on the new HokieVision during third down plays as a standing challenge to the crowd to be louder. When the decibels hit a certain threshold such as "747 at takeoff," that could flash on the screen for a moment. Have the decibel record clearly marked on the meter so fans know how close they are to breaking it. Etc.

I know a lot of venues do the fake meter-looking animation included in the "make some noise" video, but having an honest one could add something to the Lane experience.

Did they pull Roethlisberger after the first or is he not playing tonight at all?

Granted. So it's up to our program to make sure good info is put out there regarding the situations of CJ Reavis and Holland Fisher. As for Caleb, let's see what he does with the rest of his career.

The fact that Reavis and Fisher were both positive about VT in their "goodbye" posts plays into our hands here.