Recent Comments

I can relate to this very well...right after the Michigan game. And for days after. Then weeks. I STILL sometimes fume about that loss. But I finally did come to the realization too that it really doesn't effect my life at all, unless I allow it to. I don't want my mood to be altered by one single football game that didn't turn out the way I want...however easy it might be to let that happen.

I too am SUPER excited for the upcoming season!!! No matter what happens Hokie Nation, let's stay loyal and keep cheering on our beloved team no matter the outlook or situation!!!

I'd love to see us go to the Fiesta Bowl. Wasn't it thought back in MV7's last season, VT should have gone there instead of the Gator Bowl?

I can understand that. So many questions, so few answers! For example:

1. How many schools, before this incident, knew that VT took away bowl money/gifts as punishment, didn't do it themselves, and used it against us in recruiting?
2. How many recruits have shied away from VT, or flipped from VT, as a result of hearing VT did the bowl game stuff?
3. How often did it even happen? I have heard a few instances of the riding the bus back penalty, but nothing ever money/gift related.

Someone inside the program told me that the players only receive money on the bowl trip for meals not provided as a team and for mileage when not travelling with the team (e.g. from their home). So AFAIK they aren't getting say $100 (speaking solely in terms of cash; I believe they do get gift cards that I seem to remember some players using on needy families/children?) and the coaches are like "Go nuts at Best Buy!" or something like that.

Anyways, I would hope that the players we are recruiting hard are ones who would understand the difference between being told "VT will take your bowl money/gifts from you just willy-nilly." and our coaches saying "You follow the rules and show up on time and work hard, you won't have anything taken from you and you will get to enjoy all the perks of being a student-athlete." If a recruit is thinking "Man, if I screw up then VT is going to take my money...I better go to X where they won't take anything," then I would argue they probably wouldn't have been a good fit for VT anyways.

Finally, I also really hope that none of our VT boosters would ever try to pay one of our players (unless there is a circumstance where it is allowed by NCAA rules) and further that none of our players would be stupid enough to take it. And I am using the term "stupid" lightly here...I understand throughout history there have been many cases where personal/family poverty outweigh rules or thinking correctly. But hopefully VT has a good system in place to make sure that kind of desperation doesn't happen.

I'm fine with him redshirting for two reasons:

1. I trust the VT defensive staff. If they say he's not ready, that's good enough for me.
2. We have no great need for another quality DT coming into the season. We can still play him if injuries require it.

I swear ACC has the worst set of bowl tie-ins ever, having Notre dame possibly take one as well makes it even worse.

Awesome thoughts - thanks for sharing. I believe the ones posted to his site are the more complicated ones but I don't know for sure.

But since you kicked that soapbox my way I'll offer a little rant. Early in the BCS days, there was no limitation on what information the computers could use. Because they made the ratings more accurate, of course they took into account score difference because winning by 20 does mean something different than winning by 1. But then they noticed the computers disagreeing with polls, and -shocker here - took that to mean there was something wrong with the computers and not the polls! The point of the computers was to provide an element of the formula not subject to human bias...when that was shown to be working, they immediately decided that something must change.

So the system was changed to where computers could not take score difference into account, and only counted towards 1/3 of the BCS formula. Basically they tried to make the computers agree with the humans, which defeats the entire purpose of including computers.

In any event, as multiple people have done, the computer systems have all been compared for accuracy in predicting results. And surprise, the ones that include score difference are far more accurate than those that don't. One argument that was made with the change is that including the score difference encourages teams to run up the score. That is absurd for a few reasons:

1. The humans do that very thing, frequently citing the score difference between two teams as evidence of why their rankings are accurate.
2. Given the complexity of some of the rating systems, applying diminishing returns is a very simple task. You simply make higher and higher score differentials worst progressively less until scoring more essentially has no impact.
3. Before computers mattered, pollsters were using this information and very regularly teams with a large lead killed clock and/or played second string players, giving evidence that even in a system where this matters and not just winning and losing teams don't run up the score more than they feel necessary to ensure a comfortable win.

Well, thanks for the soap box...would you like it back now?

What would you rather be at the Toilet Bowl?

A Number 1 or a Number 2

It's more of a participate award. Everyone got one. I heard that's how London kept his job. He brought home a trophy.

Poor LOLUVA, they don't see many football trophies so they didn't know better.

I always thought of a toilet bowl game as a game where the worst two teams in college football play. So the champion of the game would be 2nd to worst.

We love and miss Exum's play and skillset.

But can he out bam BAMBAM KAM??

Or

I suppose it would depend on what the other loss is. I can't see the ACC champs being left out over a non-champ from the SEC.

I found their trophy, it was behind Timecops Recruitment letters