Recent Comments
That's the one. How neat, people on the internet actually exist in the outside world.
nope, I live in Florida now.
You might see my old car on campus though. My brother, tonkaberlin drives it. Black jeep cherokee, plate says BILDOZR.
I'm trying to not be biased, but why on earth would you want to go to UVA over VT to play football? They have accomplished nothing and their coach is about to be gone. Their is no tradition and no one that you would want to play for (a la Bud Foster). I don't think the academic argument holds any weight since, lets be honest, most of these guys don't was to be doctors or lawyers. Besides a flat out lie that you are going to save a shit ass program, why on earth would you do it? I think Prince said it best, I can't imagine myself waking up at UVA every day.
For one horrible minute I was almost expecting some bad joke about how his health is already taking care of that.
Seriously though, I'm very much OK with how he runs the program at this point, at the very least from a financial standpoint. Last thing I want is to end up like Tennessee, hiring hotshot coaches every few years and running the athletic department broke in the process.
In all of my years at LANE, I've never seen anyone look at one person or a small group of people and say get loud. Maybe just me though.
We need to win over these top-notch recruits. It's time scouts from non-Va schools be required to present visas to recruit inside the Commonwealth.
DaUmakesmeLOL
Side note: Billdozer, do you own a blue car that is often parked in a parking lot in front of an apartment complex off of main street? I saw a plate that implied it was yours. It made me happy. Been wanting to ask that for a while.
I'm the same way. You can't yell at random people to get loud and expect them to obey you. People aren't wired to be subservient and starting to cheer at that point is basically conceding to the other person. Nobody wants to do that in front of their peer group, so it's actually less likely the person will cheer and more likely they'll be defiant. The best thing you can do is lead by example and contribute to an atmosphere that is exciting and contagious. If a large group of people is doing something, then becomes fun to join in and be part of the crowd. On the other hand, if a one or two guys are screaming at everyone else, those guys are going to look like jackasses and further ostracize other fans.
CANNOT. CONTAIN. EXCITEMENT.
For everyone crucifying Heather Dinich and her article, back off. I stopped reading her blog ages ago because there's hardly anything of substance, but she's right when it comes to Miami's stance against the NCAA. Sure, that particular article is hyperbole to the max like pretty much everything else she writes, but she has a point.
Like many of you, I have a hard time separating my dislike for Miami's fanbase from their program as a whole - however, the NCAA has zero ground to stand on in this case because of how badly their investigators bungled this whole operation. For far too long the NCAA has acted as a moral authority over college athletics, yet at it's core it's an organization revolved around money. They want you to believe that college sports are about the spirit of competition, but if that were really true they would have taken a stiffer stance on problems like this ages ago.
For example: Bill Simmons recently had the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, on his podcast during NBA All-Star Weekend. In their conversation, they spoke about Duncan's work with the NCAA raising the penalties for teams with low graduation rates - for those who don't know, there's now a rule that you must graduate a certain percentage of your players to be eligible for the NCAA Tournament. You know what happened as a result? UConn, the 2011 national champion, was not eligible the following year. The UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT had to tell the NCAA that academics was more important than athletic accolades. Coming from a person who dislikes politics very much, that is absurd.
Getting back to the topic at hand - Miami and those surrounding the program were certainly guilty of violations, and I don't think that even Shalala would argue a lot of them. But given how the NCAA has handled the entire investigation surrounding Miami, I don't blame her one bit for firing back at the NCAA. Things could get very ugly, with possible lawsuits coming against the NCAA for their actions in this case - I'm not sure anyone involved wants that either.
i thought those would be the loudest most pumped up students
Why not just get loud instead?
I love going to football games and being loud... but... and maybe I'm in the minority here...
If someone standing next to me, who I don't know, tells me to "get loud", they are most likely going to get some type of sarcastic reply. Nothing personal.
This is as bad as my girlfriend.
#LandHand and the other teams backfield becomes #HandLand
#LandHand
Big chuckles from:
1. "Is this what being Matt Leinart is like?"
2. "...I'm calling FAU the Owlcatraz from now on."
3. (biggest laugh) "That's like Tyrann Mathieu busting Ricky Williams for weed." That one was obviously from the It-takes-one-to-know-one file.
These are the kind of posts that make the long, cold football-less days of winter a bit more bearable. Thanks for your work!
Blanding and Brown are much more likely to stay in state in Charlottesville than Blacksburg.
Few comments:
The whole Cincy saga is getting ridiculous. We get it, you want into the ACC, but right now we have no room. We have to see if 14 teams make sense before going to 16, and 15 doesn't make any sense unless the NCAA allows us to have 3 divisions with some sort of 3-way championship (2 games where the best of the 3 as determined by some arbitrary method gets a "bye" past the "Play-in Game"?).
It's too bad there's no governing body over the NCAA to give them the death penalty... might be interesting to see what happens to college football in a few years of relative anarchy.
I think the "Fear the D" thing is probably quite a bit overblown. Or maybe that's just the Hokie in me talking. "Stick It In" is a million times more blatantly suggestive, and that was a university-sanctioned thing while it lasted. And besides, I believe that a lot of things could be twisted into an innuendo, given a, um, "imaginative" enough mind... Next to last paragraph here agrees: http://www.sbnation.com/college-basketball/2013/2/19/4006056/depaul-bask...
It was, I'm working there M/W/F this semester doing some producing and a little bit of on-air stuff. Appreciate it!
Was that you on the JD Howell Show on Wednesday? If it was, good job!
I'm usually pretty into the game even though I'm not really one to yell the entire game (my voice can't take it and I'd rather save it for critical parts of the game) so I can't remember having any major issues personally, but I've seen fans call others out to stand and get loud and it only causes tension. Some people just aren't there to be loud, but the bottom line is more people will get loud if they feel like they are part of something bigger. If most of their peers aren't making noise, they probably aren't going to start on their own.
Overall I think the cheers, chants, and traditions that are meant to bring the crowd together as part of the experience have gotten a little stale. Everybody loves Enter Sandman and "key plays" still work well too, but outside of that, we fall pretty flat. The Hokie Pokey is, for lack of a better term, completely hokey and most students aren't going to get excited over doing it (I certainly wasn't). The "block that kick" motion is no longer exciting since the death of Beamerball and big special teams plays. The stomping and arm motion for kickoffs is ok, but it doesn't involve anything unique or tied to VT (i.e. Clemson or Notre Dame's cheers on kickoff). Other than that we have Tech Triumph (which the crowd only joins for the "Go Tech," "H O K I E S HOKIES" and "Hokie Hokie Hokie Hi" parts) and "LET'S GO... HOKIES," which is a bland, cookie cutter type of cheer that you'll hear at any other school. "Stick it in" was unique and obviously a favorite of the students and kept them vested in the game during red zone possessions. I don't know what the exact solution is, but I am pretty confident handfuls of diehard fans in the stadium trying to will the rest of the fanbase to be like them isn't going to be a successful method for rebuilding the excitement and atmosphere from ten years ago.