Why I hate noon kickoffs.

First of all let me say, what a game! Yes there were issues with all phases 3 of our team on Saturday, but in the end the players put together a great effort to damn near beat a pretty dang good team. They never gave up, and the stadium was packed.

Now to my topic. I live on a farm in Augusta County, which is a 2 hour drive in good traffic to Blacksburg. While I do have a full time job off of the farm I help as much as I can whenever I can, and in order for my father and I to go to games I help to get things done before we leave. We have sheep, cattle, and two chicken houses on the farm. So, my Saturday went like this:

I got up at 4:00 to feed the sheep. It's lambing season so this takes a while. By about 5:30 the sheep were fed and I met my father at the chicken houses where he walked through one house while I walked the other (they are big right now and it takes about an hour to walk one house). By about 6:30 we were done with the chickens and I headed home for a shower and to change for the game. We met and left for the game around 7:45, hitting the interstate at about 8:00. Things were going good until we ran into a back up around Roanoke, which slowed us down.

We got to our lot around 10:45, had enough time to throw some turkey sausages on the grill (first food I had all day) and head for the game. After the game we stuck around until Bud Foster got up for his interview on the Jumbotron, then we hung around with some friends in the parking lot for a little while. We usually stop in Christiansburg for supper and by the time we got back on 81 it was after 6. We immediately ran into a back up caused by an accident at the 124mm which took us nearly an hour to get by. It was after 9 by the time we got home, I quickly got changed and headed to the chicken houses to help walk through the chickens. We had arranged for someone to feed the sheep while we were gone. I finally got back home after 10 to carry my youngest up to his bed (he had fallen asleep on the couch). By then I was so worn out that it took me over an hour to get to sleep.

And that is why I hate noon kickoffs. I understand that it is actually a good time-frame for TV viewers and all, but it really sucks for trying to attend the games.

As for the game itself, I only really have 2 issues.

1) When we were kicking off after getting within one score, why kick it out of the endzone. When the other team is expecting an onsides kick and has everyone up with a man at the 5, I would love to see a team either squib it hard through the line, or pooch it over the line. Put a live ball on the field and cause a scrum. IMO it would work at least as well as kicking onsides in those situations.

2) Why in overtime did they bring McMillion back into the game when he had been out most of the 4th quarter? We had something that had been working with a certain personnel group, I say keep working that. Other than that it was a great effort, yes there were breakdowns and questionable calls (and some bad reffing), but overall they never quit and never gave up. Great game.